John Marks

In collaboration with Coursera, the online learning company, and starting September 3, The Curtis Institute will be offering at no charge the course Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, taught by Curtis Institute's Neubauer Family Foundation Chair in Piano Studies Jonathan Biss. The course will last five weeks, with an anticipated workload of 1–2 hours a week.

Dr. Amar Bose, founder and CEO of the most successful privately-held consumer-electronics company in history, died Friday, July 12, at his home in Wayland, Massachusetts. He was 83.

Bose became interested in research in audio engineering and psychoacoustics after buying a stereo system and being disappointed by its sound . . .

Reading the November 2012 Stereophile, my eye was caught by John Atkinson's very enthusiastic review (he bought the review sample) of Ayre Acoustics' new QA-9 analog-to-digital converter. Over and above the intrinsic interest of the QA-9's claimed flat response down to about 1Hz, and that it is a cutting-edge ADC from a maker of consumer rather than professional audio gear, I had just been engaged by early-music scholar and organist Beverly Jerold to produce and engineer a recording of historically informed performances of Baroque organ music by Buxtehude (b. 1637), Clérambault (b. 1676), J.S. Bach (b. 1685), and Domenico Scarlatti (b. 1685). The recording venue was the Auditorium of the Third Meeting House of the First Baptist Church in America, in Providence, Rhode Island.

Since its founding, Boston's famed Berklee College of Music has marched to the beat of its own drum section, preferring experienced working musicians over credentialed academics as instructors, and emphasizing practical knowledge over disembodied theory. In collaboration with Coursera, the online learning company, and starting March 1, Berklee will be offering at no charge the course Introduction to Music Production, taught by Berklee instructor Loudon Stearns.