[The Boston Symphony Orchestra has been entangled with Tanglewood for decades. This outdoor setting of historical (for America) lineage has seen more than its share of great orchestral works over the years, thus affirming the blessing of the original benefaction given by the Tappan family back in 1936. John Marks, editor and writer at The Tannhauser... Read More »
If you talk about music long enough, you tend to forget where you are coming from. I tend to talk about the succession of musical styles (baroque, late romanticism, modernism) while some others write about differences in formal technique, because for my amateur mind, the succession of styles is the history of music. And for... Read More »
This time around, John Marks introduces us to a recording by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Andris Nelsons. He points to the dicey realm of talented musical parents and the unknown musical outcomes of their children. Like the proverbial "pastor's kids," perhaps they will be inspired by parents...and perhaps not. An artist... Read More »
[a]pendics.shuffle: The name jumped off the screen during some late-night online record shopping. One day I'll share about the site itself, as I'm on there often - but admittedly I'm very protective of the outfit: For selfish reasons of course: The spot's usually got wicked underground electronic tunes (on vinyl, CD and hi-rez downloads via FLAC & .WAV).
The Rocky Mountain International Audio Fest (RMAF) has been notified by the Marriott Denver Tech Center (DTC) that second phase renovations have been delayed (see attached statement from the Marriott) and will not be complete by the start of the 13th Annual RMAF in October. In response to this development, RMAF and the Marriott DTC... Read More »
Lavish HiFi in Santa Rosa, CA, is hosting a special free listening GamuT event from 4 to 8 p.m. on Friday, September 30th & Saturday October 1st, featuring the premiere of GamuT's new flagship speaker, The ZODIAC, along with guest appearances from GamuT’s chief designer Benno Baun Meldgaard and GamuT’s US president Michael Vamos. Both will on... Read More »
Oh damn!! There goes my new dedicated power supply!
Late '60s let's-make-lots-of-money British mainstream studio action flick here (The Italian Job), generally well regarded for the acting and the action. John Marks of The Tannhauser Gate (http://www.thetannhausergate.com) discards the husk of the film and enjoys the fruit of the opening credits theme song by Matt Monro. As always, his choices and commentary are a... Read More »
In this week's "Vault Treasures," our trusty musical guide John Marks shares with us a jazzic voice that I was not familiar with: Blossom Margrete Dearie, AKA "Blossom Dearie." Last week's brief essay covered Julie London, a person of real renown; but this week's "Blossom Dearie" is likely to provoke a "Say what?!" even from... Read More »
Jimi Hendrix Machine Gun: The Fillmore East First Show 12/31/69 Out September 30 On CD, 2 LP 180 Gram Vinyl, High Resolution SACD And Digital Historic Debut Concert of Band of Gypsys to Be Released in its Entirety For First Time Ever Experience Hendrix L.L.C. and Legacy Recordings, the catalog division of Sony Music Entertainment,... Read More »
LP Gear®, a global analog resource specializing in phono cartridges, replacement styli, turntable belts, turntables, headphones, earphones, audio electronics and accessories, is happy to present the Vessel and BIN Cartridges. The Magic of Analog Most people would say they listen to music with their ears. But as you upgrade your system and resolution reaches some... Read More »
"On a cost vs. sound quality basis (alone), Digital Amplifier Company DAC DAC may be the best digital to analog converter to come along in 3 decades; all the way back to the extremely costly & extraordinary $12,000 Stax DAC-X1t Vacuum Tube Output Reference D/A Processor (1989)!" Introduction There are an extremely wide range of choices... Read More »
John Marks is a lover of fine music videos. In our generation, a major new blessing has been the marriage of high-quality audio with high-quality video to provide us with both the sights and sounds of major performers presenting us with their artistry. It started with videotape and NTSC resolution, but progressed to DVD, and... Read More »
HIFIMAN Updates Flagship HE1000 and Edition X Headphones with V2 Designation Highly Acclaimed Planar Magnetic Models Receive Styling and Ergonomic Improvements HIFIMAN, a leading designer/manufacturer of high performance headphones and portable audio products, announced important updates to their two top planar magnetic headphones. The highly acclaimed HE1000 and Edition X have undergone several styling and mechanical... Read More »
When the heads of Warner's headquarters learned of the sale of Polish Recordings, then—as Bartek Chaciński writes in the article Marka dużej wagi—they asked only whether it is a company that has Krzysztof Komeda's Astigmatic in their portfolio. This album is still among the best jazz recordings—not only in Poland but all over the world.... Read More »
James Matheson: A major new release from Yarlung Records! Todd Rosenberg photography Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Baird Dodge, violin Color Field Quartet (members of CSO and Chicago Lyric Opera orchestra) soprano Laura Strickling & pianist Thomas Sauer Executive Producers: J and Helen Schlichting Jim Matheson, Baird Dodge, Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Chicago... Read More »
In this continuation of his assessment of the artistry of Sergey Schepkin, John Marks spends a few minutes with him discussing how his ongoing maturity as a performer has affected and deepened his understanding of Bach over the years. Every musician must decide the point at which it's worth recording a new set of performances... Read More »
I love experiencing great sounding music. It's my favorite drug. The high is everlasting, and the withdrawals are nothing compared to chemicals flowing through my bloodstream. When the music stops, when I have to take a break from it (maybe I'm not in my car, or in my room, and my attention is required elsewhere, and music is not a welcome accompaniment during that time period) the great thing is I don't suffer physical withdrawals like I did when I was a dope-fiend ("dope" as in heroin, smack, or Oxycontin). Sure, I've messed with all sorts of drugs, and I don't wanna get too deeply into that here, as I probably said too much already! But music is the only one that I can return to every-time without blowing up the world around me! Now, when I say music is my favorite drug, I mean it's my favorite natural stimulant. Now, there are dangers when experimenting with any drug, natural or chemical, and music is like a narcotic for my soul. And I love narcotics! So, believe me when I say that music literally saved my life more than once.
A couple of years ago (wow, make that like 3 years and you can read it HERE) I had the pleasure of reviewing the Vandersteen Audio Quatro Wood loudspeakers here in our home. Yeah, we both fell head over heels for the speakers with the review being as positive as one could ever expect. Shortcomings?... Read More »
Music technology specialist MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) appoints Mike Jbara as CEO MQA, the music technology company founded by Bob Stuart, announced today that it has hired music executive Mike Jbara as CEO. In addition to day-to-day leadership responsibility, Jbara will sit on the Board of MQA Ltd. Bob Stuart, Chairman of MQA said: “We... Read More »
The Avalanches, Wildflower Astralwerks 2547900289 $19.99 for the two LP set "Is that serious music?" I remember my first wife asking me that question back in 1989 when I brought home Pixies' Doolittle and gave it an inaugural spin. I'd gotten all the way to the eighth song on the album, "Mr. Grieves," to the part where... Read More »
We had a great time at Lone Star Audio Fest 2016. From my vantage point inside the event as an exhibitor and listener from Thursday afternoon through Sunday evening LSAF 2016 was once again any audiophile's candy store. The first paragraphs of my Positive Feedback report on LSAF 2015 (HERE) details the history of this... Read More »
The Swiss company Goldmund has been present in Asia for more than three decades. The high demand for Goldmund products and the brand excellent reputation on this market are easily explained by the first strategic plan of the company. Issued in 1982, at a time when most audio brands were trying to conquer the USA,... Read More »
In this week's cross-published installment of "Vault Treasures" from his site, The Tannhauser Gate (http://www.thetannhausergate.com), John Marks shifts his attention to one of the lesser-known (today) singers of the 1950s, Julie London. Her story is a Hollywood-classic "I was discovered while doing something pretty mundane, and then I became a star." But her natural singing ability, unschooled... Read More »
David W. Robinson, with John Tucker Winston Ma at his garden: A portrait. Bellevue, WA, 2001. There seem to be a number of passings in 2016 already. Sure, that's always true, statistically. But this has already been a bad year for notable music figures dying…David Bowie, Prince, Natalie Cole, Glenn Frey, John Berry, Merle Haggard,... Read More »
Introduction: Interviews to listen to... For the English version of the second and third parts of the review on the Chord DAVE, we have come up with something new: You can listen to Rob Watts' comments on the individual pages of his presentation, and Mr. Roland Dietl's and my intermediate questions. Roland Dietl (left) and... Read More »
The SI-300.2d integrated amplifier is yet another milestone as Cary Audio forges deeper into the new era of sought after premium audio systems. Cary Audio is highly regarded for the rich, warm, yet detailed sound of our components. This includes both analog components and digital components, as we have become a reference standard in both.... Read More »
A Very Unique Power Amplifier First Watt's new F7 power amplifier (MSRP: $3,000) is a very unique power amplifier; a two-stage push-pull JFET (input)/MOSFET (output) topology with fewer parts than any First Watt amplifier to date. The new F7 has been created as an updated version of the earlier F5 amplifier. Conceived in 2007, the F5 was... Read More »
It's refreshing not to have to cringe at a "new" singer's technical flaws, as I find myself doing more and more. Klaus Florian Vogt, in a program is mostly drawn from the Heldentenor (heroic tenor) repertoire, offers a clear, compact tone, a reliable legato, and some interpretive smarts. Vogt's actual instrument sounds, as recorded, more... Read More »
This week, John Marks touches on one of the truly great popular singers of the 20th Century, Frank Sinatra. Where Are You? comes to us from the later 1950s, and shows Sinatra maturing in his mastery. It also shows us just how great the recording arts had already progressed by this time. With his "Vault Treasures"... Read More »
Isolates, improves sound, overcomes distance restrictions PS Audio is proud to introduce LANRover, the digital audio equivalent of our Power Plant products. Just as Power Plants isolate, clean, and regenerate AC, LANRover galvanically isolates a computer or server from the DAC, buffers and retimes packets of audio data, and allows the use of a LAN, rendering... Read More »
"The more things change, the more they remain the same." - Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr What a load of crap! Sometimes, when things change, they seriously change, and things are nowhere nearly the same as they were! What I'm referring to here is my personal situation, where, in the space of a couple of months, we bought... Read More »
The Sound Organisation is excited to announce the Rega Planar 2 Turntable, shipping now! The result of over two years of R & D, Rega engineers along with a skilled staff hand assembling, proudly release the Planar 2 on the heels of the recently announced Planar 3. The Planar 2 features a new tonearm, platter,... Read More »
Award-winning DACs are improved yet again--at no cost PS Audio's DirectStream DAC has, in the last two years, won just about every Product of the Year award that there is to win in the world of audio. Our DirectStream Junior (DSJ) offers the DirectStream DNA at a lower price-point, while including our Bridge II network card... Read More »
In which our hero meditates… Some plaudits where plaudits are due I have several items that have been accumulating in my notebook for a couple of months now. One was a notion for a full review that didn't need to be done, since another PF reviewer (Marshall Nack) did the main lifting; the others were candidates for... Read More »
For this week's "New Music" selection, John Marks shares with us Sergey Schepkin's Bach: The Six Partitas. I agree completely with John when he writes "Familiarity with at least some of Bach's masterworks is a matter of core Cultural Literacy..." Amen! Think of it as a matter of "cultural critical mass"...the truly worthy things that you... Read More »
"Carmine said one boy, here are two!" – Larry London, The Freshman I'm not sure why I started hearing the late Maximillian Schell's heavily accented voice in my head the first time I listened to Jane Ira Bloom's new CD, Early Americans. I suspect it had something to do with reviewing Todd Hunter's Eat, Drink,... Read More »
