Issue 190

Octave Records continues to expand its musical horizons with the release of Ancient Rhythms by guitarist Bill Kopper, a diverse album that blends Brazilian, African, jazz and other musical influences into a compelling new sound that sounds contemporary, yet timeless. Ancient Rhythms features Bill Kopper on electric, classical, and seven-string nylon-string guitars, in a set of-all-original compositions recorded using Octave Records’ latest Pure DSD high-resolution audio system to deliver an extraordinary listening experience.

The songs are the result of pure inspiration. “Most of my music tends to come to me fully formed,” noted Bill. “A melody will come to me and then the chords will come and it just kind of happens. It’s like me being a radio, as best as I can describe.”

Bill Kopper. Courtesy of Octave Records.

Bill Kopper is joined by world-class pianist Erik Deutsch, who also co-produced the album, along with Bijoux Barbosa on bass, Paa Kow playing drums and percussion, and John Gunther on flute. Ancient Rhythms was recorded using PS Audio’s latest Pure DSD 256 process, featuring the Merging Technologies Pyramix recording system. As a result, the music can be heard with remarkable clarity and presence, where every instrument is conveyed with richly detailed tonality and dynamic shadings, from powerful to subtly nuanced. Bill’s guitars are simply a delight to hear, and the seven-string adds a depth and rhythmic drive not usually heard from nylon-stringed instruments. “It’s almost not a guitar,” Bill pointed out, since it adds a lower string to the guitar’s range.

Ancient Rhythms was recorded by Steven Vidaic, Recorded and mixed by Jay Elliott, and mastered by Gus Skinas. The album features Octave’s premium gold disc formulation, and the disc is playable on any SACD, CD, DVD, or Blu-ray player. It also has a high-resolution DSD layer that is accessible by using any SACD player or a PS Audio SACD transport. In addition, the master DSD and PCM files are available for purchase and download, including DSD 256, DSD 128, DSD 64, and DSDDirect Mastered 352.8 kHz/24-bit, 176.2 kHz/24-bit, 88.2 kHz/24-bit, and 44.1 kHz/24-bit PCM. (SRP: $19 – $39, depending on format.)

The up-tempo leadoff track, “From the Outside” sets the pace from the first burst of drums, percussion and electric bass to the sinuous interplay between guitar, piano and flute. The energy picks up with “Stars Rain,” featuring Bill playing electric guitar with understated elegance and melodic invention. The rest of the album flows through a variety of moods, tempos and musical textures, from the heartfelt “Elegia,” written in tribute to an old friend, to the haunting melody of “The Cup in Front of Us,” and the closing track, “Samba du Soleil,” capturing the mood of a warm summer day with its harmonic inventiveness and irresistible polyrhythmic bounce. On “Elegia,” because of a happy accident, percussionist Paa Kow even used items found in the forest instead of drumsticks, to achieve a unique sound and musical resonance.

I talked with Bill about the making of Ancient Rhythms.

Frank Doris: Did you have an overall idea or concept for the album? Because it sounds very contemporary, but it’s called Ancient Rhythms.

Bill Kopper: Most of the stuff I've written, and this is my fourth disc, has been in some way either Latin or African-inspired, or some mix of the two. Melodically and harmonically and everything for me kind of [comes] first from a rhythm. Brazilian music and Afro-Cuban, and that thing, that direct line to Africa is there. So yeah, I guess that's the background of everything I've written and that's where my inspiration comes from.

FD: That leads right into another question: you've obviously got serious Brazilian and jazz influences. How did the Brazilian thing become such an influence in your composing and playing?

BK: If you knew where I was from, that would be even more mysterious. I grew up in Northwest Illinois, three hours from Chicago. You wouldn't know any town near where I grew up, but it was on the Mississippi River. One thing we did have was a really good public radio station. I was cleaning out the barn or something one day, and they were playing this concert by this guy who I'd find out later was Carlos Barboza-Lima, a very famous Brazilian guitar player. I didn't know what I was hearing; what we would [hear] mostly back there was American music. But that just – I stopped everything and my life changed at that point. (laughs)

FD: I'm a guitar player also. I often think, why does someone want to get into jazz or classical guitar when the obvious thing is to play rock guitar? Everyone wants to be a rock star! So how did you wind up playing with such jazz and classical influences? Classical meaning nylon-string guitar.

BK: Exactly. Well, honestly, it was that same public radio station. It was broadcasting from Iowa, Cedar Falls. The railroad had some hub there with some area of activity, and a [sizeable] black community. There was a great DJ who, again, in middle of Iowa [at the time], where would you get this? But he was into the tenors, you know, [sax players like] Dexter Gordon that whole Texas tenors scene, and David Fathead Newman. He was just totally down with that kind of blues-based thing.

For a farm boy, it was like, OK, this is cool. (laughs) And then there were the guitar players that came out of that scene as well, like George Benson, that sort of burning bluesy guitar player. And from there, a friend of mine got me into Charlie Parker and John Coltrane.

I became friends with (guitarist) Mitchell Long; he was playing with Melody Gardot for quite a while, and he's plays with Rickie Lee Jones. He totally kicked my ass. I mean, we're the same age. And he was just ruthless. (laughs).

FD: You studied with him?

BK: Not, not formally at all. We would just get together and play. [I’d sit there and say] dude, dude, what are you doing? But man, he scooted me along really, really well.

That’s kind of how I got into jazz, I guess.

FD: I wouldn't feel too humble, because your playing is great. It has a lot of feeling. I'm impressed that you're adept at electric as well as nylon string guitar. What kind of guitars do you play?

BK: Well, I just got an Eastman Cabaret [nylon string], designed by [guitarist] John Buscarino. He makes [a similar guitar] for 10 grand and however long you have to wait. But Eastman commissioned him to do a knockoff of his own guitar. It’s really good.

FD: How about the seven string nylon string guitars you use? (The seventh string is lower in pitch than on a standard guitar.)

BK:  The seventh string thing is kind of a staple in Brazilian music. It's used a lot in samba, which they got from Russian folk musicians who immigrated into Brazil. It's a little uncertain what the real trajectory was there and how it ended up in the hands of samba musicians.

They generally tune it to a C. I tune it to a B. That thing is a major ordeal. (laughs) Any kind of solo arrangement [you’ve worked out], forget it. You're screwed. Comping on them is okay. I play that in what they call samba pagode, where there's generally no bass [instrument in the band]. There's a lot of percussion. It’s kind of the folk-pop music of Brazil.

FD: It’s hard for me to describe the songs on Ancient Rhythms. Calling them Latin or Brazilian or jazz is not accurate, though the influences are there. The music is its own thing. How did you write the songs?

BK: Actually, nothing on there took me longer than the length of the form to write it. So, maybe a couple minutes for each tune. (laughs) They tend to come out more or less fully formed. A melody will come to me and I'll record it and the chords will come to me and it just kind of happens. There is a certain amount of editing that I’ll do; you know, I do sweat over them after they're written. If I were to sit down and [try to] put one note after the other on a piece of music, I'd never finish it.

FD: A lot of musicians say they're just a conduit to what's coming through them.

BK: Yeah. I hear this a lot in jazz. I think if it filters too much into our conceptual mind, then it's going to lose that air, that kind of magic.

FD: Do you write out arrangements for the band after you write the songs?

BK: Oh yeah. I write it all out.

I'll generally have a rhythm that I'll be feeling as the melody comes out. The palette for that is mostly informed by Brazilian music. The drummer and percussionist on this record, Paa Kow, is from Ghana, and he knows all these Brazilian rhythms [from their origins] in Africa. He's like, oh yeah, we've heard that for 10,000 years here. (laughs) So he's not gonna play it like a samba, like a Brazilian would, he’ll play it like what it's from in Africa. So [a song] doesn't necessarily sound like a Brazilian jazz thing after that. They mostly deal with everything in the context of some sort of clave [rhythm], 3 against 2 or 2 against 3. They’re just conversant in anything that has that clave vibe.

The bass player on this album, Bijoux Barbosa, is from Brazil. I've known him forever. The pianist on Ancient Rhythms is Erik Deutsch, who I've also known a long time. I don't even know what to call him, he’s so good. He plays with the Black Crowes now, and was playing with the Chicks and Charlie Hunter. He can play anything, but he's not necessarily informed by anything. So, it's his own thing in the end. He's something else.

FD: What guitar players have influenced you or who do you admire?

BK: It's really gotten to be Jim Hall. [And] Bill Frisell’s kind of minimalism kind of changed my life. I had always liked him, but – I was in New York once and he was at the Vanguard and I was like, OK, he wasn't my first choice but I’ll go see him. Hearing him play live, I was like, holy crap! I know this guy’s got chops, but he certainly doesn't use 'em and sometimes doesn't even solo. And just his minimal [kind of playing] just gave me permission to be who I was.

And of course, Wes [Montgomery], I've listened to Wes every day. He’s just like a magician.

FD: Like the way Bill Evans plays piano. It just sounds so simple and perfect and gorgeous. And then you look at a transcription, and it takes a month to figure out the first four bars.

BK: I was talking to someone about Bill, maybe [Evans’s bassist] Eddie Gomez, he comes to Colorado quite a bit. Eddie said he never heard Bill make a harmonic mistake. And imagine the amount of times they’d played together.

More guitar players? A guy by the name of Peter Sprague, a San Diego guy. And then the Brazilian guys, uh, Carlos Bar-Lima, definitely. Raphael Rabello, who was short-lived, but he was huge. Man, I am leaving out so many.

FD: Is there anything you want to say about any of the songs on Ancient Rhythms in particular? “Elegia” is just gorgeous, and it sounds like it was written for someone.

BK: It absolutely was. There’s a friend of mine and he's not doing well. He's in his early 80s now. This friend of mine got to know Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Thomas Pynchon, and we became really tight and he's a great teller of stories. During the pandemic he made a mad flight down to Brazil because his girlfriend, who lived there, was kind of on her way out. And he didn't make it in time to see her. He was four hours short.

FD: “Modern Art” starts out slowly and then gets into that – I don't even know if you'd call it 3/4-time fast part; I don’t even know how to count it – why does it evolve in that way?

BK: I'm not even sure – I can't say exactly what I was stealing (laughs) when it came out, but it just arrived that way, fully formed again. I'd recorded it quickly, so I wouldn't forget it, as I do with all these [songs]. I [feel like I’m] pretty much I'm taking dictation.

FD: On “Casa De Carmen” – is that referring to Octave Records’ own Carmen Sandim by any chance?

BK: Yeah! We're best friends and every day we're talking or goofing on something.

FD: I ask this question of every Octave artist: what’s it like to hear your music played back with such an exceptional level of recording quality?

BK: I've gone through several phases with that. The first was – holy sh*t, is that what we really want to hear? Like breathing and belching and whatever, the scraping of the strings. My first impression was, we don't want to hear more, we want to hear less! But then I heard it [again] and I was like, good god, this could cure disease.

I guess we all had an [opposite kind] of experience of when we first heard CD [in the early 1980s], that utter disappointment. I walked into this classical music store and heard Ravel's Piano Concerto in G Major, and it sounded like tinfoil, awful. I don't know about you, but listening has always been different [for me] since then. The kind of mania that we had [with] listening to analog, I don't think has ever gotten there with conventional digital, but then this DSD thing is like, oh my god. It's like the analog thing with a perfection of digital.

We recorded Ancient Rhythms mostly live in the studio. There was only really one isolation room, and that was for the drums. The tracks were mostly first takes. Probably [some] second or third takes, but [all were] live takes.

FD: So you really had to have the music down and yet it doesn't sound stiff, like you were afraid to make a mistake. You recorded some of it at Animal Lane Studios.

BK: Yeah. It was really unassuming and there just wasn't any stress vibe at all. Just a totally relaxed feeling.

There’s an interesting side note to the recording of “Elegia.” Paa Kow did not bring his brushes and he is like, oh sh*t. So, he goes outside to the woods and gets an assortment of sticks and branches and stuff, and he plays with those. Wow. He just pulled that together without even thinking about it. It sounds like something we would've planned [to do for the song], but no.

FD: He just had to explain why you had to clean tree sap off of the drum heads! (laughs)

BK: Oh yeah, it was kind of a mess. I mean, if he has any pollen allergies…

FD: He's kicking up a cloud of green dust?

BK: Exactly!

Record collectors around the world will typically part with a much greater share of their hard-earned for a first pressing of an album, than for a subsequent re-pressing. But what does this actually mean, and is a first pressing any better in real manufacturing terms?

As previously discussed In Issues 92, 93, and -94, the vinyl record manufacturing process consists of three main stages: mastering, plating, and pressing. In the mastering stage, the recording is transferred from the medium it had been stored on (the master tape in the good old days and a variety of digital formats thereafter), to grooves on a blank master disk.

To ensure that the program material is compatible with how it would be represented on record grooves, signal processing may be applied, altering the original recording, with one of two aims. If the goal is the ultimate in sound quality and cost is no object (a very rare set of circumstances, both then and now), the usually very minimal changes that are applied during the disk mastering stage are intended to highlight the strengths of the particular mastering system with the given material and ensure that it sounds as good as possible when reproduced from the grooves of the final product. When the budget is low, signal processing often serves the purpose to merely to protect the sensitive cutter head from damage, with no regard to how this may impact the sound quality.

When an album is later remastered, the recording goes to the mastering stage anew, to create a new set of master disks. The new masters may be produced from a different source, using different equipment, by a different engineer, at a different facility. More often than not, remastering is necessitated because the original stampers (or mothers; see below) have been discarded, lost, damaged, or have deteriorated and a new set of masters is needed to create new sets of stampers for a repress. While all remastered records are also re-pressings, not all re-pressings are remastered. In purely technical terms, the remastering process does not in itself guarantee better results. It simply denotes that the final product may sound different from the original masters.

The author inspecting a freshly-cut lacquer master disk on a disk mastering lathe, using a microscope. Courtesy of Agnew Analog Reference Instruments.

Once the master disks are cut, whether these are original masters or the product of remastering, they are sent off for plating. In the plating stage, the stampers are created, which will then be used to press the multiple copies of the record.

A set of stampers can be used to press a few thousand records at most. This creates an interesting situation. An internationally renowned artist back in the 1970s could easily have a "first pressing" run of several hundred thousand copies, in anticipation of the expected volume of sales. That "first pressing" would not be possible with a single set of stampers and would most probably also require multiple sets of master disks, multiple sets of mothers and multiple sets of stampers, fitted to multiple presses. Depending on the standards of quality control, there could be minor or not-so-minor differences between records from within that first pressing. A "second pressing," done a few months later to satisfy the demand, would not necessarily have bigger differences that those found between samples from the first pressing.

Conversely, an artist at the onset of their career nowadays could order a first pressing of a mere 300 copies just to test the waters. If they sell, a repress of, say, another 300 copies would be made, using the same set of stampers used for the first pressing. In theory, sonic differences in this case would be extremely minor, if any at all. However, I have personally experienced two opposite extremes of unforeseen circumstances. In one case, the stampers were inadvertently damaged in between the first and second pressing. This created noise and distortion on the entire second pressing run. However, the opposite is also possible. In another instance, during the first pressing, some debris became lodged onto the stamper, creating a small click at a certain point in the music, during a quiet passage where it was quite noticeable, on approximately half of the records of the first pressing. For the repress, the stampers were carefully cleaned, so the repress actually sounds better than the first pressing, using the same set of stampers.

During the plating stage, multiple stampers can be generated from a metal mother. Replacing a worn or damaged stamper with a fresh one will usually result in a substantial improvement is sound quality. However, due to the nature of the plating process, the original "center" of the lathe is lost, requiring each stamper to be individually re-centered manually, using optical measurement instruments and a punch. This establishes the location of the center hole of the record, which would ideally be perfectly concentric with the groove spiral. In practice, however, there are manufacturing tolerances for that. As the stampers need to be securely mounted onto the molds of a hydraulic press, the hole punched on the stamper is larger in diameter than the center hole of the record, allowing a bush to be used to clamp the stamper down from the center. This leaves the characteristic mark around the center hole, under the paper label. A pin running in the bushing establishes the center hole on the final product.

As such, the centering of the stamper is only indirectly establishing a center. The accumulative errors of centering the stamper, mounting it on the mold, and the geometric errors of the pin, determine the overall concentricity of the final product. As a result, while a fresh stamper may improve some aspects of sound quality, it can introduce eccentricity, creating a different problem. Conversely, it could also happen that the fresh stamper is more accurately centered than the original, in which case the re-press would sound considerably better than the first pressing.

Scribing on a metal mother. Courtesy of Agnew Analog Reference Instruments.

The scribing on a metal mother. Courtesy of Agnew Analog Reference Instruments. 

Last, but not least, comes the pressing stage itself. A re-press is often done years later, at a different pressing plant, sometimes in a different country. Different presses, in different states of wear and tear, using different steam, water and hydraulic installations, in different climate conditions, using different virgin or recycled vinyl compounds, with an enormous diversity in operator skill and in-house manufacturing standards, all have a huge effect upon the sound of the final product. Even just using a different PVC compound will make a difference, using the same stampers. It is extremely difficult to guess whether the original pressing or a subsequent re-press would offer the best sound quality, unless more information is known about where and how it was done.

Collectible items, with records being no exception, are not necessarily valued for their usability. Rarity and bragging rights may often be valued much more than the sound quality. I personally value sound quality above all else. A remaster or a re-press may be better or worse than the original, depending on a huge number of factors. As a general rule, if detailed information is offered regarding how the process was done and specific people are named for doing it, this is usually a sign that quality did matter. If no information is offered, more often than not, there is nothing exciting to say. Would you buy a record advertised as "Remastered using automated settings by whoever worked the night shift and then pressed at the cheapest place we could find with no quality control whatsoever? " If the re-issue just states "Remastered," it probably looks better in terms of marketing cachet, but may imply the above. However, an original pressing does not necessarily mean that it wasn't mastered by the new trainee working the graveyard shift. Information is key to being able to estimate how high your expectations should be set. The availability of information adds value to a product, for me. Marketing is all nice, but it is the real substance behind it that makes a record sound good or not.

An SMT record press at United Record Pressing. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/David McClister.

Header image:  J.I. Agnew reflected on a metal mother, played back on a turntable with a Shure V15III cartridge on an SME tonearm. Courtesy of Agnew Analog Reference Instruments.

Here's a rarity for you: A McIntosh car stereo made for Subaru. As an online forum notes, these are difficult to identify, so we don't feel too bad about being stumped on the model number for this one.

 It plays CDs and cassette tapes, as well as radio stations.

We guess no one cared what the back looked like, since it was hidden away. Courtesy of The Audio Classics Collection, photos by Howard Kneller.

For 99 bucks you got 49 solid-state devices! The optional "Mini" automatic record changer would cost you an extra $34.95. From the 1969 Lafayette Radio catalog, courtesy of reader John Goodman.

Talk about clean: here's a circa 1965 Sherwood S-5500 II integrated amplifier in jaw-dropping condition. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Joe Haupt.

Here's the rear view of the S-5500 II and what has to be one of the coolest tube cages ever. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Joe Haupt.

Dig that crazy test fixture on her right. And does that switch on her left turn the whole rig on and off? Radio and Television News, October 1950. 

Howard Kneller’s audiophile adventures are documented on his YouTube channel (The Listening Chair with Howard Kneller) and on Instagram (@howardkneller). His art and photography can also be found on Instagram (@howardkneller.photog). Finally, he posts a bit of everything on Facebook (@howardkneller).

How does one capture the life of David Johansen, front man for the New York Dolls and later a solo artist? It's a massive feat best left to master storyteller Martin Scorsese, who finally turned his camera on the legendary downtown artist, adding him to the roster of other Scorsese subjects: The Band, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones. At first glance, Johansen might seem unlikely to be included in that company, but he is an essential cultural and musical link to a long-gone time in New York City. 

In the documentary Personality Crisis: One Night Only (2022), co-directed by David Tedeschi and now streaming on Showtime, Johansen receives the star treatment with exquisite film and sound quality to record his January 2020 residency at the Café Carlyle, marking Johansen's 70th birthday and his 50th year in show business. The last surviving New York Doll appeared as alter ego Buster Poindexter, sporting his trademark pompadour but singing the songs of David Johansen. Don't worry, "Hot Hot Hot" (1982) is not included in the set.

Scorsese weaves through live performances, anecdotes, archival footage, and interview segments by Johansen's stepdaughter, Leah Hennessey. The film traces Johansen's journey full circle, from growing up in an opera-loving household on Staten Island and playing in teen bands, to his early experiences in Manhattan’s East Village, to reuniting the remaining members of the New York Dolls at the behest of Morrissey for the 2004 Meltdown Festival in London, and back to playing small rooms as a man in his spiritual and intellectual prime gained from a lifetime of experiences. 

Whereas tourists might have seen drugs, crime, and danger in the East Village of the late 1960s, young Johansen emerged during one of the most fertile periods in downtown New York: he worked in avant-garde theatre at the Mercer Arts Center, hung out at the Chelsea Hotel, gleaning knowledge from the older residents, knew activist Abbie Hoffman, and participated in Play-House of the Ridiculous. Those credits would give anyone eternal bragging rights, but at age 21 Johansen joined the New York Dolls in 1971 to push cultural, visual, and musical boundaries far beyond their solemnly artsy counterparts in the Velvet Underground.

When the New York Dolls hit the scene, their sound was the antithesis of Beatlemania, the singer-songwriters of Laurel Canyon, psychedelic San Francisco, and British art rock. The Dolls were a glam street gang more like the MC5, the Stooges, and Alice Cooper than Roxy Music, Marc Bolan, and David Bowie. And they had the influence of Andy Warhol's Factory across Union Square Park from Max's Kansas City, where the Dolls hobnobbed with artists and scene makers. Johansen was at the center of everything with Factory starlets Holly Woodlawn, Ingrid Superstar, and Penny Arcade.

Unfortunately, all of this is relegated to 1970s musical lore. Few of us have had the opportunity to see the original New York Dolls perform except on television programs such as The Midnight Special, Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, Germany's Der Musikladen, and the UK's The Old Grey Whistle Test. Their radical fashion, moves, and music must have been like seeing rock and roll for the first time. The Dolls' daring fabulousness was evident on the cover of their debut self-titled 1973 album produced by Todd Rundgren, featuring the band resplendent in make-up, coiffed hair, and women's clothes – which reminds us that gender-fluid imagery is common in the 21st century, but men wearing women's clothing in public back then might have been grounds for arrest. Furthermore, mainstream hard rock fans might have hesitated to admit liking the Dolls, let alone buy their records.

The follow-up album was Too Much Too Soon (1974), produced by Shadow Morton of the Shangri-Las fame. Their sophomore offering was a unique collection of covers and demos, but neither record was a smash hit. The band was already coming apart at the seams because of drugs and alcohol well before the band played their last gig at Max's Kansas City in 1977. However, the Dolls’ and Johansen’s legacies were set in stone. Often credited with being among the proto-punks who inspired countless fledgling musicians from punk to metal in the US and UK, the Dolls’ music, attitude, and stagecraft continue to make an impact on anyone hearing and seeing them for the first time. 

Johnny Thunders (1952 – 1991) and Jerry Nolan (1946 – 1992) went on to form The Heartbreakers with Richard Hell of Television (among others), Sylvain Sylvain (1951 – 2021) had a lifetime collaborative relationship with Johansen, and Arthur Kane (1949 – 2004) moved to Los Angeles and eventually ended up pawning his guitars as he collected a meager salary working for the Church of Latter-day Saints. Johansen formed another band and took side steps as Buster Poindexter, a jazzy/bluesy lounge lizard working clubs such as Tramps, the Bottom Line, The Cutting Room, and even Kutcher's, the famous 1980s Borscht Belt resort in the Catskills.

Throughout his career, Johansen recorded six solo albums, four as his alter ego Buster Poindexter, and two as David Johansen and the Harry Smiths, an ode to Harry Everett Smith, a musicologist living at the Chelsea Hotel who compiled the Anthology of American Folk Music from old 78RPM records. 50 years after the release of the Dolls' first album, Johansen is the last remaining member.  

He is also one of the last remnants of the Warhol-era and of places that only exist in downtown mythology like Gem Spa, a newspaper stand on St. Marks Place known for its egg creams; the notorious Hell's Angels' clubhouse on Third Street; Matchless Gifts on Second Avenue, a curio shop which eventually became the Hare Krishna headquarters; and naturally Max's Kansas City, a Mecca for artists that far surpassed the musical palate of CBGB.

Scorsese's film is thoroughly engaging because of its non-sensational honesty, as Johansen is an apt raconteur, and his group, the Boys in the Band gives his road-worn robust voice ample space to express the sentiments of an older man finding new meaning in his work. But that doesn’t mean Johansen is an old codger. He still delivers the Dolls’ signature hit, “Personality Crisis” with all the robust energy and panache of his youth. The film’s theme is perfectly encapsulated by none other than Penny Arcade, seated at a table with Debbie Harry: "We have fulfilled the premise of becoming." A poignant observation that it takes a long time to grow into yourself – that's if you survive.   

There are no scheduled dates for the next residency at the Café Carlyle. Still, you can catch David Johansen on his Mansion Of Fun show on SiriusXM where he shares his profound musical knowledge. If you can't get enough New York Dolls documentaries, check your streaming services for New York Dolls – All Dolled Up (2005) by famed rock photographer Bob Gruen, Looking For Johnny: The Legend Of Johnny Thunders (2014) by Danny Garcia, and in-depth film about Arthur Kane entitled New York Doll (2005) by Greg Whiteley.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Montecruz Foto.

There’s a lot of competition in the $300 to $400 price range when it comes to audiophile, noise-cancelling, wireless headphones. However, when I received Technics’ EAH-A800 ($349, now available on sale for $299), I knew better than to dismiss it as a “me too” product that exists merely to beef up a company’s product list. I say this since I recently reviewed its somewhat late-to-the-game SA-C600 Network CD Receiver ($999) for Sound & Vision magazine and was blown away at the technology, features, and performance that were packed inside for its very modest asking price. 

Other considerations aside, the EAH-A800 is an enticing photography subject. It has a high-tech silver finish (black is also available) and memory foam headband and earpads that are covered in an upscale, leatherette material. It also features striking plastic and brushed aluminum earcups, each of which sports a large engraved Technics wordmark logo. 

I will leave a full review of the EAH-A800 to others and instead do most of my talking through my photographs. I will say though that these cans bring the bass and then some. In fact, there was often way too much of it when using the headphones’ default audio setting. Fortunately, the Technics Audio Connect app contains, among other things, a five-band equalizer that allows the bass to be dialed back. Other highlights of these very able, luxurious, and modernistic-looking headphones include excellent noise cancellation functionality, impressive battery life, and the ability to simultaneously connect two wireless devices so that you can hear calls and other notifications from your phone while listening to your favorite AC/DC song from your laptop.

Pretty in silver: the EAH-A800 (also available in black) has an elegant, modern design.

Unlike some headphones, you'll have no trouble telling which earpiece is for which ear.

Easy-to-reach buttons allow control of volume and other functions.

The headphones can be used with the Technics Audio Connect app for adjustment of EQ, noise cancellation and other features.

Because the EAH-A800 is a true wireless design, no cables are needed for listening, and the headphones can also be used in wired mode.

Howard Kneller’s audiophile adventures are documented on his YouTube channel (The Listening Chair with Howard Kneller) and on Instagram (@howardkneller). His art and photography can also be found on Instagram (@howardkneller.photog). Finally, he posts a bit of everything on Facebook (@howardkneller).

The National Association of Music Merchants or NAMM Show takes place annually in Anaheim, California at the Anaheim Convention Center, and is one of the largest music trade shows in the world. The event attracts numerous musicians, engineers, and manufacturers.

It is a trade-only show catering to domestic and international dealers and distributors. The product exhibits are an integral part of the show, allowing the dealers and distributors to see what's new, negotiate deals, and plan their purchasing for the next six to 12 months. Exhibitors are allowed to bring a specific number of attendees based on the size of their booth. Retail members are allowed a certain number of attendees based on their full-time employee count.

The NAMM Show took place from Thursday, April 13, through Saturday, April 15, 2023. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the MIDI standard (the Musical Instrument Digital Interface, which enables digital instruments and other devices to communicate with each other), lifetime achievement awards were presented to or posthumously awarded to Don Buchla, Ikutaro Kakehashi, Tsutomu Katoh, Roger Linn, Bob Moog, Tom Oberheim, Alan R. Pearlman, Dave Rossum, and Dave Smith.

But this show is more than just a technology, instrument, and equipment show; it’s also an exposition of craftsmanship and artistry. The most creative expressions came in the form of electric guitars. Here are some examples: 

There were many conventional stringed instruments at the NAMM Show as well.

And a booth exhibiting the materials from which they’re made.

Pianos are both stringed and percussive instruments. I thought this Chinese model was the most beautiful one at the show.

This Italian manufacturer built the most convincing facsimile of a piano in its natural environment.

There were many opportunities to try out various instruments.

Including loud ones. This is not a show for those prone to headaches.

This manufacturer made sure to include his name prominently in the display. Most didn’t.

This guy had all his accompaniment at hand.

Some musicians had a whole orchestra at hand, very impressive.

There were many countries represented at this show, both in terms of attendees and exhibitors.

But most of the exhibits (by far) came from the Far East: China, Taiwan, or Japan.

Amazing how much sound can come from two musicians with modern equipment. These guys put on a show worthy of a 10-piece band, very energetic, dynamic, and well-received.

The electronic equipment at the show was mind boggling.

There were many demonstrations of how it worked, along with a big screen for those in the back.

I didn’t feel warmly received at the Cerwin Vega booth. Maybe the exhibitor on the left thought I was trying to steal trade secrets, whereas the guy on the right was probably the real industrial spy.

However, it’s nice to see Cerwin Vega is still in business. Gene Czerwinski, the founder of this company, made a big splash at the 1972 Toronto Audio Show (held at the Airport Hilton) by going out into the field and taping the sound of the jets taking off. During the show, he’d demonstrate his system by playing that tape – frequently. It rocked the whole floor. The attendees were convinced there was a jet taking off every 30 seconds.

Maybe these two were the real industrial spies. They were certainly more friendly.

These guys from Dayton Audio (the house brand of Parts Express) were also very friendly. I’ve used a lot of Dayton drivers over the years and they were all excellent products with high value. The technicians at Parts Express have been very helpful in designing and building my systems (some of them are still used in local university sound studios).

No club would be complete without a light show, and there were lots of them at NAMM. This is the best photograph I could get.

I’m not sure what this booth was about, but it pretty well summed up how many felt by the end of the show. Seemed like I’d experienced 25,000 songs, walked 25,000 miles, and talked to 25,000 people.

But I had a great time, and anyone in the music business ought to make a serious effort to attend. It’s the perfect event to learn from the masters, experience cutting-edge products, make business connections, and enjoy exciting music.

Editor’s Note: You might have noticed that some of our show reports happen some time after the shows occur. This is because of a variety of factors – it takes time to collate all the notes and photos, our writers are busy and don’t do this full-time – and your undemanding editor doesn’t ask that they stay up all night to work on their show reports. Also, the shows have become too big for any one person to cover, so it can be informative to get different perspectives even after the fact.

After a hiatus caused by the pandemic (including a last-minute cancellation in 2021) AXPONA returned to great fanfare in 2022. The show was a hit with the industry and audiophiles alike, undoubtedly driven by pent-up demand from the cancellations in 2020 and 2021, the lack of audio shows in general, and high-end audio’s now-nearly-complete exit from the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. I was not at AXPONA 2022, but with the great energy coming out of last year’s show and a bit of prodding from my colleagues I made arrangements to attend this year. I headed into Chicago with a lot of anticipation, and realized how much I had come to miss the high-end exhibits at CES. Here’s a selection of the products I saw, with more to come in a future issue.

Focal Bathys Headphones

My AXPONA audio experience started before I even got on the airplane, because I now have a great high-end traveling companion in the new Focal Bathys headphones. Focal is well-known for their wired headphones, specifically their open-back models, and the Bathys is their foray into noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones. They are designed with audiophiles in mind, with high-quality DACs and amplification built-in, and my favorite feature is the USB-C connector that functions as both a digital input and charging port. This is perfect for my iPad Pro’s USB-C port, providing a clean digital signal for the Bathys to work its magic. The only weak link is if you want to use the 3.5mm connection, which converts the incoming analog signal to digital and is the lowest quality of the three available connections (the others being the USB-C port and Bluetooth). This is less than ideal if, for example, you want to listen to an in-flight entertainment system, but they still sound fine in this mode. This is an audiophile’s digital headphone, and at $799 they are relatively affordable for a Focal product. If you travel with a digital device and take your sound quality seriously, these headphones are a great option.

The Focal Bathys headphones offer high-end sound.

NAD C 3050 LE Integrated Amplifier and PSB Passif 50

When you attend an audio show you see a lot of signs and banners. One of the first ones I saw was for the new NAD C 3050 LE integrated amplifier, a throwback design celebrating the company’s 50^th anniversary. The external design brings back memories of the earliest NAD products such as the classic 3020 amplifier, products that have been seared into the collective consciousness of audiophiles for decades. Though it features power meters and the “New Acoustic Dimension” logo in the company’s old font, the internals are decidedly different from the high-headroom Class AB NAD integrated amplifiers of years past.

The C 3050 LE features what NAD calls its HybridDigital UcD (Class D) amplifier technology, Dirac Live room correction, aptX HD Bluetooth, a separate subwoofer output, and an HDMI input among many other features. I heard it powering PSB Passif 50 speakers ($2,499 per pair), another heritage-inspired product celebrating PSB’s 50 years. The sound from the combo was very good and provides modern functionality with vintage style. At $1,899 the C 3050 LE is priced a bit on the high side, but when you consider the internals it is completely different from the simple, great sounding, affordable audiophile products that put NAD on the map. I can’t help but wonder if I am not the only one among audiophiles who would have preferred a re-release of the classic 3030 or 3020 amplifiers at a price under $500 as an anniversary celebration, rather than another digital product. The market is already saturated with them and the old, simple ways often sound best and are the most satisfying to work with.

The NAD C 3050 LE: old logo, new design.

The PSB Passif 50 celebrates the company's 50th anniversary.

Saturday Audio Exchange and Bluesound

The C 3050LE and Passif 50 were on display in a room shared with Chicago retailer Saturday Audio Exchange, which displayed a variety of Bluesound audio streamers and other products. They were also doing a lively business selling accessories and used records.

The Bluesound Powernode Edge wireless streaming amplifier. A sign of the times: note the QR code on the fact card; these codes were prevalent throughout the show for providing product information.

McIntosh

McIntosh had an extremely impressive display out in the open on the first floor, with a system priced well into six figures. They demonstrated orchestral music to the crowd and the system did a convincing job recreating it. Given the size and the power of the speakers it understandably could recreate such power and impact, but it also reproduced subtle details extremely well. If you have the room, money and a penchant for classical music, this could well be worth it. I only heard classical music reproduced through the McIntosh system so I cannot comment on how it performs with smaller groups, solo vocalists or popular music.

You want big meters? McIntosh has 'em!

Audio Research

Not far from the McIntosh display were tables holding Audio Research I/50 integrated amplifiers in a variety of appealing colors. Starting at $5,500, the I/50 features slots for two plug-in modules: a DAC and a phono preamp. I have not heard this amplifier, but reviews have been very positive and it provides a reasonably-priced entry into the world of high-end tube amplification, handmade in the USA by a storied manufacturer with a great deal of vacuum tube experience. More Audio Research gear could be heard in one of Chicagoland dealer Quintessence Audio’s rooms, along with Clearaudio turntables, Sonus Faber speakers, and other gear. These products need no introduction and like much of what I saw at the show, are meant for the well-heeled, although the highly-rated Clearaudio Concept AiR turntable/arm combination is reasonably priced at $2,500.

It comes in colors: the Audio Research I/50 integrated amplifier. 

T+A

T+A had a very impressive demo room loaded with beautiful gear built to the highest standards. T+A is a German manufacturer, with T+A standing for Theory and Application. The room was too busy and the equipment too diverse to do a deep dive into what was there. If you would like to learn more I suggest checking out the T+A website, https://www.ta-hifi.de/en/.

T+A's exhibit featured a wide range of their strikingly-designed product line, all built to impeccable standards.

Soul to Sole Audio

Found in the same room and also extremely enticing were the Soul to Sole record browsers and storage racks. I saw these beautiful racks in many demo rooms throughout the show and soon may be buying one for myself. The company also makes speaker stands.

The Soul to Sole record browsers are enough to make even the most hardened digiphile want to start an LP collection.

Pangea Audio

Also ubiquitous through the show was the Pangea Audio Vulcan audio rack. I use these racks for my own systems because they are sturdy, simple, functional, look great and sell for under $200. Someone did an excellent job of product placement in getting these in so many demo rooms.

Keith Monks

AXPONA’S Expo Hall was on the main floor of the show and featured an array of companies displaying their products, with some offering on-site specials. Among the many exhibitors was Keith Monks. Their compact record cleaning machine uses a vacuum wand to clean the grooves as the wand passes over it. It resembles the iconic Keith Monks machine in its operation, though no string is involved (other models use a thread between the cleaning nozzle and the record being cleaned).

The Keith Monks Prodigy record cleaning machine in action.

Emotiva

There’s always an element of fun at AXPONA, whether it’s the ability to experience the vast range of gear on display, the live music concerts, the wide selection of new and used vinyl, or the chance to win some great gear. Emotiva had a large corner room for displaying their electronics and speakers, and their giveaway raffle held Saturday afternoon was a huge hit as always. Greeting a large and enthusiastic crowd, Emotiva president Dan Laufman called out numbers to award Emotiva headphones, audio components, speakers, and gift certificates to those with the winning numbers. You had to be present to win and several ticket holders missed their chance, including the holder of the first number drawn for the grand prize, a $1,999 Emotiva MR-1 11.2-channel home theater receiver. It definitely pays to be there!

Kind of blue: Emotiva shows off some of their floorstanding tower speakers.

Header image: one of the Quintessence Audio rooms. All images courtesy of the author.

How many jazz fans have we got out there? I've always felt jazz is best served in the fall and winter. But in this instance, spring works, too.

There's something about the tranquility of specific pieces of music that pair with somber gray skies and gentle breezy winds. Picture this; you're nestled on your couch, maybe with a book. Or, perhaps you're just relaxing, eyes closed, breathing deeply, letting go of the stress while masterful, improvisational, mind-opening art pours into your ears. Sounds kinda nice, right? Of course, there are many of us who give total concentration to the music, which can be especially rewarding when listening to jazz.

Over the last several years, I've gotten pretty heavily into jazz. For a long time, I was circling the wagons and dipping my toe in the proverbial pool, which at the time, mainly consisted of Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, and a taste of Dizzy Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts." These days, I am all over the map. I've developed a taste for hard bop and fusion, but I love free and soul jazz the most.

To that end, bassist Mitchell Coleman Jr. has touched on it all. Coleman is the type of musician who can take his bass, and with a few idiosyncratic plucks, blow your head wide open, then bend your brain in ways you could have never imagined. Once I heard his style of bass playing, which I'd call a blissful combination of gritty funk, freewheeling jazz, and deeply soulful bluesy goodness, there was no going back for me. I love traditional jazz music – which Coleman covers – but I also like my music a little weird and off-the-beaten-path. Maybe you will, too.

Busy at work on a new album of tracks inspired by the memory of his late mother, Mitchell Coleman Jr. dialed in with me to discuss his history with the bass, his approach to songwriting, the skinny on his latest music, and a whole lot more.

Andrew Daly: What first inspired you to pick up the bass?

Mitchell Coleman: I was always very drawn to the sound and feel of bass in the music I was listening to. It was the one link in music that made me interested or not. If there was a strong bass presence or bass solo, It got my attention. Well, one day, while at a friend's house in Connecticut who played bass very well. I got the bug to play, and it never left me. I was drawn in when my ear heard the sound that moved my funky heart and the source of it (bass guitar). I was sold.

AD: Who were your primary influences, and who influences you most today?

MC: In the beginning, I was inspired by my friends Greg Carrington and Kevin Weaverbey, who inspired and taught [me as] a willing student. Later as I developed and matured, my inspiration came a lot from the exceptional musician and producer Marcus Miller and his collaborations with Miles Davis. This showed me the fusion of funk and jazz combined, which drives me to this day.

Jaco Pastorius inspired me to seek the possibilities of where the bass as an instrument can go, and the creative breakout of [the bass from] the traditional box. I am greatly inspired by Victor Wooten (of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones), his freedom of expression, and his outlook on music theory as a language. Stanley Clarke for writing music around the bass guitar and being an ambassador for bass players everywhere. When his album School Days came out, I wore out the cassette trying to learn that stuff.

And, of course, Larry Graham, father of the thump! He is the genesis of thump funk, and [also being able to] sing while being this funky (in Sly and the Family Stone, Graham Central Station and with others) is insane, but what an inspiration. Lastly, the great Lewis Johnson brought the funk mainstream with collaborations with the dude, Quincy Jones, and many more.

Mitchell Coleman Jr. Courtesy of Olivia Long PR.

AD: Describe the evolution of your bass approach.

MC: I work daily to increase my knowledge and understanding of my craft. Whether learning more theory or just working out techniques, this helps me develop confidence. I seek to be able to perform when required. I plan to take this as far as my abilities will allow. And hopefully, it will translate to the audience.

AD: What songs do you like playing most live?

MC: I enjoy funk and jazz fusion; I can move an audience with the funk and take them on a journey with the jazz all aboard! No specific songs come to mind; I don't have a favorite song, but I enjoyed playing "Glide" because of the funk drive and the message to keep on. No matter what the world throws at you, let it "Glide" on by.

AD: Are you working on new music?

MC: I am presently working on an album [dedicated to] my mother, who passed away from breast cancer. She was a great inspiration and light of my life that I would never allow to be extinguished. This is the inspiration and drive for this latest project. And through this project, I hope to inspire others as she has and continues to. She encouraged me to show up in life and make sure I die empty. In other words, do all you were meant to do.

AD: How would you describe your signature sound?

MC: As a child, I often listened to Mark Adams from the funk group Slave. I have always been drawn to very strong bass lines. As I developed, I always incorporated that dominant bass presence in everything. Later I learned to calm down and work with studio engineers to listen to everyone, which allowed me to have more of a conversation musically. But I have a powerful presence while playing and make sure you, as an audience, leave with funk residue that will last for days.

AD: Which basses are you using now? Do you prefer vintage or new?

MC: I am playing a Sadowsky bass because of the feel, sound, and dedication of Roger Sadowsky to create a very playable instrument with a neck that fits my hand perfectly and has the sound I seek. But I also play the Fender Jazz Bass; the sound is unmistakable and preferred by most studios. I also play the Jaco Pastorius Fender Jazz Bass, a fretless 4-string bass.

Depending on the song, the vintage instrument sounds a bit warmer, while the newer instruments are much brighter due to their active electronics. But as I use [a particular] instrument more and more, I can make it do what's required through hand techniques and manipulation of controls. My desire is for one bass to do everything I need, pretty much.

AD: Do current trends alter your style and technique at all?

MC: Current trends do play a part in what's played due to the fact you have to sell to an audience. But it can be done without compromise if you stay true to the message you are trying to deliver. Only the package may change; the message remains the same. I am funky; wrap it any way you want.

AD: Is creating new music for a world with such a short attention span challenging?

MC: Music for me comes from within; I don't worry about others' attention spans. If I can deliver the music from my heart, my part is done, and the discovery becomes their treasure. But the challenges don't come from outside for me. Only within there is the true battle. I believe social media and promotions play an incredible role in keeping the audience's attention, and my PR team at The Sound of L.A., has been incredibly helpful.

AD: What's next for you?

MC: Well, now I am working on the Dedication album for my mother and continuing to develop my skills as a musician and business owner. I plan to continue to be inspired and be an inspiration to others. To be a light in dark times and to encourage all to leave here empty.

Header image courtesy of Olivia Long PR.

Even though I have been meaning to attend HIGH END, the Munich high-end audio show, for a number of years, this is the first year I have managed to make it there. The show was canceled for two years during the pandemic, and this was the first time things were completely back to normal. There were 550 exhibitors showcasing 800 brands, with 20,000 visitors over four days (May 9 – 12), making it the largest show of its kind in the world. Manufacturers often announce new products during the show, and resellers, distributors and manufacturers come together to talk business. The first two days were for trade only, with the last two days open to the public. My cousin and her husband run a high-end audio distribution business in Germany, and they were able to secure a trade ticket for me. 

I passed by Paris on my way to Munich. I called up my friend, noted audio designer Jean Hiraga before my trip, and we arranged to meet up at his listening room in Lille, a one-hour ride on the TGV train from Paris. The last time I visited Jean in France was during his last year as the chief editor of La Nouvelle Revue du Son magazine. At the time, he had a pair of Altec A5 Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers at the magazine’s headquarters, enhanced with a crossover of his own design, to serve as his reference. After he retired, he visited my home in Hong Kong and gave me some very valuable advice on setting up my system.

For those who are not familiar with him, Jean Hiraga cut his teeth as a writer for L'Audiophile magazine starting in 1977. He belonged to a fringe group of audiophiles in France who discovered the virtues of old horn speakers and tube amplifiers, mainly Western Electric and Altec. L'Audiophile became the bible of this crowd, and as Jean also speaks fluent Japanese, he acted as a bridge between the communities in France and Japan. The craze eventually spread to the English-speaking world more than a decade later, with people such as Joe Roberts writing about it in the now sadly defunct Sound Practices magazine. Jean was doing experiments on how distortion and non-linearity in frequency, phase and dynamic response affect sound perception in the late 1970s, when English-language audio writers were still claiming that amplifiers with sufficiently low total harmonic distortion all sounded the same.

His article, Appréciation de la qualité subjective des bons amplificateurs, published in L'Audiophile Issue 15 in April 1980, is a must-read for all audiophiles. In the article, he explained the technical reasons for certain subjective qualities of sound that we hear from amplifiers, which remain highly relevant today. He also published a number of his own amplifier designs, both tube and transistor, over the years. Some of these were commercialized under the brand name Lectron, which is now manufactured in Switzerland by Jean Maurer. His most popular design for DIY enthusiasts remains the 8-watt class A transistor power amplifier called "Le Monstre." Kits are still available on eBay and elsewhere.

After his retirement, he remains as passionate as ever and receives visitors to his listening room frequently. During my visit, a group of audiophiles arrived from Paris and joined in the listening. His most recent development is a pair of speakers using Western Electric 15A horns with 555 compression drivers.

Part of Jean Hiraga's system.

The WE15A first appeared in 1928 in theatre systems. At the time, it was run full-range with the field coil (alnico magnets were not introduced until 1933) WE555. About 50,000 of these drivers were produced over the years. The WE597 tweeter was added to some systems a few years later, but this tweeter is much rarer because it was only in production for two years, and now fetches extremely high prices. These systems were rented to movie theaters, as WE did not sell their equipment. Jean uses a pair of 15-inch ElectroVoice drivers in an open baffle for the bass. The drivers are encased in a roll of lead sheet to damp resonance, and fixed to the floor with a scaffold. The driver is decoupled from the baffle with a compliant material to avoid transmitting unwanted vibrations. The back wave is absorbed by thick acoustic foam without creating back pressure on the drivers such as a closed enclosure would. For the tweeters, he designed a pair of compression tweeters, each with an aluminum diaphragm, solid brass “bullet” phase plug and field coil magnet, which he powers with batteries.

The tweeters in Hiraga's system.

For the crossover, he uses graphite resistors with silver terminations, and huge custom silver mica capacitors.

Jean still has his original Altec A5, but he has since built another pair using better materials. The "improved" A5 has thicker and denser material for the enclosure, a 15-cell midrange horn manufactured by Philips that is better-damped than the Altec version, a Westrex 2090B midrange driver, a bass driver from University, and a pair of JBL 075 bullet tweeters in a front and back cross-firing arrangement.

Here are the improved Altec A5 speakers.

The Westrex 2090B midrange driver.

The large Western Electric speakers were auditioned first. They were driven by his Le Monstre amplifier. The source was a CD transport connected to a DAC of his own design with a passive volume control. The sound of the speakers was huge, as expected. The dynamics were awesome, with highly realistic portrayal of voices and string instruments, a quality revered by Japanese vintage audio aficionados. There was a relaxed, natural flow of the music that I have only ever heard from large horns. The speakers could do with more space, and given the relatively short distance between the speakers and listeners, the sound was very up-close.

Hiraga's Le Monstre amplifier and other electronics.

We then moved on to the "improved A5," driven by a pair of VAC (Valve Amplification Company) 300B push-pull amps. Here, the presentation was different, with more precise imaging and a more realistic soundstage. The sound was also incredibly dynamic, and the bass was very tuneful and more extended than I expected. There is a lot of merit to horn-loading the bass in a loudspeaker design, but this is difficult to do right. Horns act like microscopes, magnifying the tiniest dynamic nuances, rendering the musical expression more intelligible. They are simply superior in transmitting the emotions of a performance. Once you get used to the sound of good horns, other types of speakers often sound flat and uninteresting. I always learn a lot from Jean whenever we meet, and I have taken with me a lot of valuable knowledge this time. 

On the following Sunday, I attended a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic with the young conductor Jakub Hrůša. The venue was the Théâtre des Champs-Elyseés. This is an old venue (inaugurated in 1903) with a space that is small by modern standards (1900 seats), shoe box-shaped with plaster on the walls. In other words, the most propitious combination for good sound. And I was not disappointed. The program consisted of Janáček’s Zárlivost, Prokofiev’s Roméo et Juliette and the Shostakovich Symphony No. 5. The performances were out of this world. The conducting was energetic, precise and emotionally charged. The string tone was silky smooth, and other than a couple of slightly sour entries by a horn at the beginning, the performance was flawless. Some passages during Roméo et Juliette were played at breakneck, even reckless speeds with nary a hair out of place. I doubt many orchestras can pull off such a stunt, and it brings to mind a recording of Mravinsky conducting the Leningrad Philharmonic. 

The sound was clear, present and well-balanced.  The hall has a long reverberation time, but background noise was very low and I could not hear any echo. In my estimation, this hall ranks right up there with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Grosser Saal of the Musikverein and Boston Symphony Hall. It is nearly impossible to score tickets to the Vienna Phil at the Musikverein, so this is a very good alternative.

During the performance, I paid close attention to the sound, trying to evaluate it in audiophile terms. Sometimes, when I audition an audio system, I am immediately struck by certain qualities, such as the deep and wide soundstage, the transient attacks, the extended high and low frequencies, the powerful bass, etc. Here, nothing grabbed my attention. The imaging was not particularly pinpoint in “hi-fi” terms, except for the instruments with a lot of high-frequency energy such as the triangles. Soundstage depth is not particularly outstanding; I could of course tell that the brass and woodwinds were behind the strings, but it did not have the cavernous depth perception displayed by some audio systems. The frequency extremes did not bring attention to themselves. What was most striking, however, was how the music commanded my attention from beginning to end.

There was a recent article in The New York Times about how a lady in the audience let out a loud "moan" that attracted everyone's attention during a performance of the Tchaikovsky 5th Symphony at the Lincoln Center in early April. Great music should elicit an emotional response from listeners, and the ultimate goal of an audio system is to enable listeners to "feel" the music. In order to do so, it must be able to accurately capture all the nuances present on the recording, such as the dynamic shadings, the tone colors, and the spatial cues, as well as re-creating the full dynamic range. A system that distracts the listeners' attention due to certain aspects of its sound will immediately fail this test.

I arrived in Munich on the day before HIGH END 2023 opened, armed with the recent memory of the sound of the concert to serve as a point of reference. The next morning, I arrived at the exhibition center promptly at 10 a.m. Going early on the first day has its pros and cons. The venue tends to be less-crowded; one of my pet peeves is how some people insist on conversing in the listening area. On the other hand, some exhibitors might not have optimized their systems, as they continue to tweak them right up to the end of the show. I went straight up to the Living Voice room to meet Kevin and Lynn Scott. Living Voice has been occupying the same room for many years, and Kevin pretty much had the acoustics optimized years ago. Since it has consistently been considered one of the best-sounding rooms of the show in years past, it is a great starting point.

At the opening of HIGH END 2023.

Even though they had exhibited their VOX horn systems in the past, this time they brought a production prototype of a new design for their Auditorium range, which will become their top horn-less speaker. Called the R80, the speakers keep the two-way, midrange-tweeter-midrange arrangement of the rest of the range, with improved cabinet, drivers and external crossover.

Above: the Living Voice R80 loudspeakers.

LPs were played on the Kuzma XL Air turntable, amplified by tube phono, pre- and 300B power amplifiers by SJS Electroacoustics. A wide range of music was played, which is important, since some exhibitors limit the range of music played to avoid exposing the shortcomings of their systems. The music sounded correct right away, as nothing stood out and everything was well-balanced and natural. String instruments and voices sounded gorgeous, and I found it very easy to concentrate on the music. I could easily hear the family resemblance with the VOX Olympian, one of the best horn systems on the market. The list price is £52,000 (US$64,000), a price point with stiff competition, but for people looking for that elusive emotional connection with music and not just sound effects, these speakers will give you more than a taste of their vastly more expensive horn offerings.

Kuzma's XL Air turntable.

Across the hallway from Living Voice was the largest room of the show. In fact, it served as a meeting hall in years past. This year, the hall was rented to ESD Acoustic, a Chinese company that specializes in horn speakers. This is the largest system I have ever come across, with two tweeters, two upper midranges, a midrange, a mid-bass and a lower-bass driver on each channel. All are front-horn loaded compression units with field coil magnets, beryllium diaphragms in the midrange and tweeters, and titanium diaphragms in the bass drivers. All the drivers have very high sensitivity; the midrange for example is rated at 116dB/1W/1m! These share a lot of similarities with the Classic Audio Loudspeakers drivers I use, having the combination of field coil and beryllium diaphragm. The system uses an active crossover with individual amplification for each driver. The low bass is augmented by a stack of subwoofers, three on each channel.

ESD Acoustic showed a no-holds-barred system.

Here's a close up of the horns in the ESD system.

I came back to the hall time and again throughout my visit, and must have spent about two hours in total listening to this system. A wide variety of music was heard, from Peking opera to Italian opera, large symphonic works, chamber music, country music, classic rock, jazz and folk. This is one of a few systems I have heard that can convey the full power of an orchestra. It has that elusive quality where nothing stands out and the music just flows naturally and unimpeded. Simple music such as a singer with a guitar might sound too upfront and with a comically large image, but large-scale orchestral works give the illusion of being in a concert hall. Dynamics are completely unrestricted, and there is no sense of strain whatsoever during the loudest tuttis. I had already heard this system during the Hong Kong High End Audio-Visual Show, but it did not impress at the time because the room was too small. Given the space to breathe and enough distance for the drivers to integrate, it was spectacular this time.

Another popular room in years past is the Silbatone Acoustics room. The owner is one of the top collectors of vintage audio, and he is planning to open his own museum in Seoul this December. This time, he brought the Western Electric 12B horn speakers. Also on display was a pair of Lansing Iconic, the first studio monitor, and which most current studio monitors are still modeled after. The WE12B is the original theater loudspeaker, commissioned by Warner Brothers for the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer. At the time, audiences were amazed by how real the sound was, and I can understand why. The large rectangular horn is driven by a pair of 555 field coil compression drivers. The aluminum diaphragm of these drivers weighs only 1 gram, which was a tour de force in manufacturing in 1927, and still is today. It cuts off at 80 Hz, and there is still no other compression driver with such a wide bandwidth. It crosses over at 3,000 Hz to the 597A "loudspeaking telephone," which extends to 30 kHz, even though recordings at that time probably did not extend beyond 10 kHz.

The Western Electric 12B speakers in the Silbatone Acoustics room.

 More vintage vibe: the Lansing Iconic loudspeaker.

Here's one of the 555 field coil compression drivers of the Western Electric 12B."

More of Western Electric's handiwork: the 597A "loudspeaking telephone" driver.

Amplification was by Silbatone, with a single Western Electric VT2 directly-heated triode per channel, with an output of a mighty 2.5W. The owner was incredibly generous, since there must not be more than a handful of these tubes left in the world. This ancient horn speaker has no horn coloration, and the sound is eerily real. I was most impressed by its portrayal of voices and string instruments, but it can do equal justice to jazz and even rock music. Again, the emotional aspect of the music was present in spades, characterized by the natural flow and tone color, as well as the ease of presenting dynamic contrasts.

Also on display was a pair of modern speakers from G.I.P. Laboratories. This Japanese manufacturer specializes in the reproduction of classic Western Electric components, at astonishingly high prices. I did not hear these speakers, and would love to know how close they get to the original WE sound. Anyone interested in vintage sound should visit the museum in Seoul after December. 

Part Two of this show report will appear in Issue 191.

Header image: the Kondo Audio Note system at HIGH END 2023. All images courtesy of the author.

The Cassette is Back – Or is It? – An Investigation, Part Two

It’s taking all I can muster not to be smug about the absurdity of the return of the cassette, and how it is championed primarily by those driven by nostalgia. As mentioned in Copper 189, Emma Powell, the Deputy Showbiz News Editor of the UK’s Daily Mail, with readership of two million in a country of 60 million, declared a comeback for that second-most miserable of formats. She cited numbers such as sales of 195,000 cassettes (in the UK) in 2022, up 5.2 percent – an increase for the 10^th year in a row.

What surprises me most me is that there are still any surviving tape duplicators to serve this new demand, given that the format was even worse off than the LP post-2000. Another interesting number – again, I am reporting from the UK – is that cassettes accounted for more than 10 percent of the chart sales of No. 1 albums in 2022. But it was the usual suspects, and most of them survive via streaming, not physical media sales.

This tells you what is driving the format’s rebirth: the artists involved, with detectable cassette sales, are all on-trend performers such as Harry Styles, Florence and the Machine, the Arctic Monkeys and others with a demographic which learned about cassettes by watching Guardians of the Galaxy, its hero’s only memento of his mother being her Sony Walkman and a mix tape. (Life mirrors art: the film’s mix tape was released as a best-selling soundtrack.) To be fair, Styles et. al. are joined by certain indie bands and other artists longer in the tooth such as Muse and Robbie Williams.

Powell’s report reminded us that (again, for the UK), cassettes dominated the market from 1985 – 1992, with sales eventually dropping below 4,000 per annum thanks to CD. Then came the kicker re: 2023. As I suspected, Powell reveals that, “On TikTok the hashtag ‘cassette’ now has over 343 million views.” This is attributed to the Gen Z audience, but the math doesn't quite support a revival. For example, Taylor Swift’s album, Midnights, alone sold 80,000 vinyl copies. Those alone are unit sales equal to more than 40 percent of total cassette sales of all titles. Which kinda makes a mockery of declaring 195,000 tapes as something of real market worthiness.

Patrick West in Spectator Life, the classy online lifestyle magazine which accompanies the heavyweight print weekly The Spectator, was even more effusive and choked with nostalgia, delivering the sensational opening line, “Move over vinyl: the cassette tape is back.” You wish.

His numbers were the same as those in the Daily Mail, sourced from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), and thus as official as they get. He added that HMV, the music megastore recently saved from extinction by a Canadian investor, “plans to bring out cassettes for ‘specific new releases’ and has credited its return to profit with a growing interest in ‘collectable’ music from an analogue era.” [Read: vinyl sales, which really powered HMV’s recovery.]

West describes himself as “a child of the 1980s and teenager of the 1990s,” admitting to “fond memories of the cassette tape,” and therefore he’s of a demographic with more disposable income than Gen Z customers, if less than us hated Boomers. He suggests that his generation will “welcome it [the cassette] back,” acknowledging that this owes much to the Walkman. Naturally, little in his article spoke of sound quality, dealing only with the cassette’s convenience, which rather sums up everything that has happened to music playback this century.

The original portable consumer media format. Courtesy of Pixabay.com/VIctoria_Regen.

He also emphasizes the importance of mix tapes, which he eloquently describes as “an adolescent rite of passage, of announcing or internally processing your individuality outside the herd, a ritual of affirmation,” as well as its role in [satisfying] “the desire to woo others, or to signify one’s commitment to one’s sweetheart.” Mea culpa: I made more than a few in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Not long after reading West’s article, I heard from my good friend Mark Cohen of Audeze, post-the Munich High-End Show. As he is at the cutting edge of the headphone market, dealing as much with Millennials-through-the-various-Gens as he does hard-core audiophiles, he has a much better appreciation of that audience, and therefore cassette buyers, than I do from my high-end, open-reel-and-LP ivory tower.

Mark alerted me to a couple of aspects of the revival, some of which support it and many of West’s points, but other observations confirmed my negativity. The latter was made real by the horrific realization that the British are getting schtupped again, sans lubricant: here in the UK, pre-recorded cassette prices are pegged with the less-costly of new LPs, at £12 – £18 ($15.00 – $22.50). (Vinyl albums from major artists are usually 50 to 100 percent higher.) So, prices won’t be part of the draw for those moving to cassette, especially as many CDs are now under £10/$12.50 over here.

He pointed out, too, that recordable CDs don't figure in the modern world as a means of copying streams or for assembling compilations, e.g., mix-tapes for the target of one’s ardor, at least not for horny Millennials nor the alphabet Generations which followed them. As computer-savvy and digital-minded as they are, and despite well-recorded CD-Rs sounding better than most cassettes, they don’t figure at all for under-40s. Or maybe even under-50s.

Whatever the promised cassette market may or may not become, history lessons are being ignored for a frisson of sensationalism in lifestyle articles. Lost in the mists of time to these champions of cassettes are the efforts that were needed to make them sound good, that is: better than merely acceptable. Admittedly, in some cases, cassettes could attain performance nearly of high-end quality. What it took, though, were hugely expensive decks, new tape formulae (also expensive) and the application of noise reduction, including so many flavors of Dolby that I stopped counting. These combined to make home recording viable if quality mattered as much as in-car, personal hi-fi or mix tape usage, while limited numbers of audiophile cassettes also appeared from the various specialist labels.

Cassettes’ unreliability is glossed over completely or treated as mildly humorous, all but ignored by the pundits aside from, say, cartoons about old farts recalling the use of pencils for spooling miscreant tapes. Some dare to cite vinyl LP vulnerability versus tape, exaggerating the fragility of the former while disregarding the latter’s susceptibility to heat, magnetism, dirty tape heads and pinch rollers, and other forms of mistreatment, and the need for regular tape deck maintenance.

Anyone of a certain age will remember something like this happening. Courtesy of Pexels.com/Bru-nO.

Sure, LPs suffered, but only if poorly handled or stored. Even so, they were hardly more self-destructive than cassettes. I don’t recall LPs as having any innately hateful talents as the unspooling of a cassette in one’s car player. Repeatedly. The only – I repeat ONLY – advantage of cassettes over LP was their portability, whether one was interested solely in playback, or in recording as well, in which case they made open-reel seem like a form of medieval torture.

But here’s the crux of the matter. As was mentioned in Copper 189, at no point post-1983 was there a time without new turntables, arms, cartridges, phono stages or, most importantly, LPs. As for cassettes, they all but disappeared, with limited blank tapes available, an insignificant number of pre-recorded tapes and, as far as I can ascertain, for some years now there was only one domestic [i.e., non-portable, full-sized] cassette deck on the market, a twin-tape machine from TASCAM. What’s left? Nasty personal tape players craving tapes to chew up and spit out.

Time to peer into the future, and all that portends: for me, where the cassette revival differs most from the return of vinyl LPs and why it probably will not attain the same traction will be the lack of support from the major hardware companies. No, make that any hardware manufacturers, large or small.

While manufacturers like Pro-Ject, VPI, Rega, Thorens and dozens of others kept turntables in production, the giant brands were happy to ignore LPs, dumping them for CD and now streamers, ad nauseam, until vinyl hit critical mass. Now these multinationals have jumped on the vinyl bandwagon, with only a few earning a pass for not completely abandoning vinyl, such as Technics with its DJ decks, and Denon for its cartridges.

[Brief, tetchy aside: I know one specialist turntable manufacturer who despises the major consumer brands for their carpetbagger behavior, after the specialist hardware manufacturers did all the hard work for some decades. The same goes for the major record labels, which are now making life difficult for the audiophile labels which licensed their music when they couldn’t be bothered to press records. They now want the sales of those $50-plus 180-gram pressings, and to hell with the specialists. But while I understand this manufacturer’s fury, I also accept one thing: ethics will always take a distant second place – no, make that 10^th – after profits. And I say that as a fire-breathing capitalist.]

It is unlikely the original cassette deck makers will do the same for cassettes. As for the top tier, do you see Revox, Nakamichi, or Tandberg returning with high-end cassette tape decks, let alone Sony, Technics, Denon, TEAC, Luxman and the rest? I do not because it begs a second question, which explains why the cassette’s return will remain low-fi: the demographic embracing cassettes circa 2023 couldn’t give a sh*t about sound quality, let alone indoor playback. They will revel in their $29 plastic USB personal players and/or recorders.

The fabled Nakamichi Dragon, one of the finest cassette decks ever created. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/JPRoche.

So back to Mr. West, for the best sum-up of what is driving the cassette’s return: “This revival of cassette tapes could be connected to a retrospective vogue for all things 1990s, which apparently is in fashion among the youth…The revival in the cassette tape no doubt also owes something to the nostalgia of we fortysomethings, to those of my generation undergoing a benign mid-life crisis. This is entirely fitting. The cassette tape itself is intimately connected with memory and remembering.”

Mazel tov, Mr. West, you nailed it, so thanks for the wander down Memory Lane. But please recall, too, another trenchant quote, which I cite far too often and should have made into a business card or T-shirt as I, too, continue to wallow in yesteryear’s warmth, lately through aged hardware and therapy. Once more, I turn to L.P. Hartley, who wrote in his 1953 novel, The Go-Between, “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”

Header image courtesy of Pexels.com/ - NFT CAR GIRL - .

Copper has an exchange program with FIDELITY magazine (and others), where we share articles, including this one, between publications.

A good hi-fi system reproduces an incredible amount of detail: a ringing here, a deep impulse there. But sometimes, what's missing is even more decisive for our perception of tonality and imaging.

Sometimes our senses need a jump start in the form of a rich contrast. A counterweight that helps us to correctly classify all impressions. A pinch of sugar that makes the pasta sauce taste even richer, the movie theater whose formerly inconspicuous escape route lighting mutates into floodlights once the main lighting goes dark, or the bold hammer stroke hitting the thumb rather than the nail that makes us realize how beautiful the world was just five seconds ago … In isolation, many things lose their intensity, and this results in an intriguing inconvenience: Often, without comparison to a “reference value,” we don’t even notice that something is wrong. We can encounter the same phenomenon when listening to a loudspeaker.

At least in high-fidelity matters, the FIDELITY team is in a luxurious bubble of exception. In the listening room, several CD players, turntables, streamers, amplifiers and loudspeakers are available at all times. Cable sets are also plentiful. So it’s no problem to find out by a quick A/B comparison what sounds more right or (should that be the case) where exactly the shoe pinches. Nevertheless, we also fall into the trap now and then. A few weeks ago, a colleague rejoiced about the breathtaking imaging of a freshly unpacked loudspeaker. And indeed, the proud floorstanding speaker played so large and spherical that its music literally embraced and enclosed us. After a brief moment with our jaws dropped, initial skepticism set in. Somehow the playback lacked the usual power and dynamics. A walk around the speakers revealed the mystery – one of the speakers was reversed in polarity. The plus and minus plugs of the loudspeaker cable sat in the wrong sockets of its terminal. Of course, the problem could be solved in two easy steps. And yet, this hardly noteworthy incident brought up an interesting question: Why does a pair of speakers with reversed polarity sound so much more spatious than a correctly wired pair?

Phase, I Can Hear You Flounder

The electrotechnically educated elite among the FIDELITY readers have long known the answer, of course: The incorrectly connected loudspeaker duo does not play remotely larger, deeper, wider or broader than a correctly wired one. The contrast is simply greater because something quite decisive is missing in the middle. Therefore, the now completely isolated fanning out of the right/left components seems more extreme to us and at times even more interesting.

In order to fathom the background of this phenomenon, we should mentally take a seat at the mixing desk of a recording studio. When mixing, an experienced sound engineer will always try to distribute the instruments of the band or ensemble homogeneously in the mix. In the case of a large orchestra, he will use the seating arrangement of the musicians as a guide. With pop, rock and electronics, more creativity is allowed: He will keep adjusting the panorama controls on his mixing console until the individual elements no longer get in each other’s way and the stage has the desired width. He usually leaves high-energy elements like bass and kick drum in the middle. First, their low frequencies can hardly be located anyway. Second, they are reproduced equally by both amplifier channels and speakers – the energy-hungry low frequencies are shouldered by several powerhouses. Often, vocals (or at least the most important vocal track) also remain in the center – giving voices more presence and focus.

And now to the acoustic component of the phenomenon: the membranes of a loudspeaker convert the electrical energy of the amplifier into sound. They accomplish this by making a forward movement in the event of a positive excursion of the driving current or by retracting into their speaker chassis in the event of a negative excursion. The electrical waveforms are thus converted into rapid air pressure fluctuations, which we – a flourish please! – perceive as sound. The propagation of these sound waves in space follows a fixed set of rules. Low frequencies spread out spherically around the loudspeakers and thus cover the entire room. Towards the mids, the speaker’s radiation becomes more and more directional. Finally, the highs are radiated by the tweeter directly to the listening position without any significant scattering. The analogy with a laser pointer is exaggerated and at this point overused to the point of yawning, but it points in the correct direction.

This leads to the following consequential conclusions: Bass and fundamental energy of both speakers has large overlaps in space. The sound waves overlap in complex patterns, and whenever two pressure highs or lows meet, they reinforce each other. This is true to a limited extent for the midrange. Here, there is simply less overlapping. The highs are completely out of the picture, although I should emphasize that we deliberately exclude aspects such as wall reflections, diffusion and reverberation for the sake of “de-complication”.

If you reverse the polarity of one of the speakers, the following happens: Bass components and fundamental, which are quasi-mono in the center of the imaging, no longer amplify, but are almost or completely cancelled out by the opposing phases. This fate also befalls the voice(s) and all instruments that were placed exactly in the center during mixing. What remains in the image are only those frequency components that are supposed to provide the stereo impression on both speakers, are different and thus cannot be cancelled out. These are – due to the mixing logic described above – especially the upper midrange and the treble. Or extreme stereo effects like the reverb trail of vocals, whose spherical depth impression reinforces the imaging size. The large (bass) hole in the center of the stage enormously enhances our perception of depth and width. All quite logical, isn’t it?

So This Means…What, Exactly?

Well, first of all, you should connect your speakers correctly! This can be a bit of a challenge at times due to the color coding of cables and connectors (white/red, black/red, black/white) not always being very clear. Furthermore, if you’ve ever wondered how reverb effects or DSP processors manage to tickle room-filling 3D sound out of two stereo speakers, you now have an answer: such systems work – albeit noticeably more homeopathically – with exactly the same mechanics. The most extreme example here is probably the Auro-3D concept, which creates reasonably vivid 360-degree images from mono signals through lively phase rotations.

And as surprising as it may seem, there are some quite interesting and helpful lessons to be learned from our wiring error. For one, it reinforces my personal credo when commissioning speakers: For years, I’ve used the same song when starting my tests. It’s conditioning. If I had done it again this time, I would have noticed the mistake immediately. On the other hand, the deliberate reversal of polarity can of course be used to bring in fresh speakers and test their “matching qualities.” If you place a pair of speakers with a phase-reversed loudspeaker close to each other and play them with a broadband mono signal (noise, sine sweeps etc.), almost no sound should leak out. This way you can burn in the speakers for days without disturbing anyone. If you still hear a noticeable amount of the signals, either the pair matching of the speakers is not good (in plain terms: the speakers differ), or you didn’t put enough effort into matching them as exactly as possible.

And finally, you can take advantage of the phase cancellations of a reversed loudspeaker duo to achieve a near-perfect setup. In theory, a stereo system is supposed to do just that: the mono signals, i.e. those impulses and frequencies reproduced by both speakers, are supposed to be rock-solid in the center, while the stereo differences (also known as “sides”) are supposed to be further out and define the stage width. In practice, this works only to a limited extent, since wall, floor and ceiling reflections as well as room modes interfere with the imaging. Apply a mono signal (preferably “pink noise”) and observe how well bass and lower mids are cancelled with the speakers in reverse polarity. If you are unsure about evaluating frequencies, you can consult a frequency analyzer, such as those available as free apps for any smartphone platform. You will probably find that something still comes through here and there. Now comes the Sisyphean task: by moving and angling the speakers, you can try to see if you can find a positioning variant on which the speakers illuminate the listening room more symmetrically, and the cancellations are correspondingly more “gap-free.” This will also have a reverse effect on “in-phase” listening: The imaging becomes more precise and sharper, the stage seems wider – as we said, the contrast makes the music.

Images courtesy of FIDELITY magazine.

The first time I walked into the Fillmore East (located in the heart of the seemingly dangerous newly-named neighborhood the East Village on Second Ave. and Sixth street) was on Saturday, November 23, 1968.

I went to see Iron Butterfly because I loved their huge hit album In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida (actually named after a very stoned way of saying “In the Garden Of Eden”).

The album was an FM radio staple. The song “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” comprised the entire second side of the album and lasted 17:05!

The song (and album) was groundbreaking and set all kinds of sales records. It was the first actual Gold album certified by the RIAA as reaching sales of 500,000 copies. Up until then, a “gold record” meant $500,000 in sales (about 175,000 actual album sales). 500,000 actual album sales was much larger in dollar value to a record label, as list prices for albums were $2.99, meaning that 500,000 records sold was about $1.5 million dollars billed to the record label.

There were two other acts on the bill that night: the Youngbloods and Canned Heat.

I was a fan of the Youngbloods as they already had an FM radio hit called “Get Together” released the year before. Their style was very much a sound of the times folk-rock with a chimey Byrds-like guitar sound. As the opening act, their laid-back style kind of eased me into my first Fillmore East experience. I remember buying a ticket to the show at the New Yorker book shop on 89th Street off Broadway. It was $3.00!

I had had two previous live concert experiences: August 5, 1966 seeing the Animals at the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park, and seven months later, attending an Easter Sunday afternoon concert at the RKO Theatre in Manhattan. It was a 10-band bill with Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels and Wilson Pickett as headliners. The opening acts were “The Cream” (that's how they were listed), and the Who. Both bands were unknown at the time. Every artist played for about 15 minutes. The Young Rascals had the number one record in the country that week with “Groovin’” so they played five songs. These kinds of multi-act revues were common in those days. Remember that the Beatles only played seven songs – a 29-minute set! at Shea Stadium.

What the Fillmore East did was finally give artists a wide berth in performing. Most headliners played about an hour and most undercard acts played 30 to 40 minutes each. This way, Bill Graham could “turn” a stage around for two full shows – at an 8:00 p.m. and an 11:30 p.m. start time.

This was all new and exciting at the time.

The upstairs balcony at the Fillmore was a drug supermarket with the smell of weed and hash absolutely saturating the air and wafting into the balconies.

I came with lots of weed but that was like bringing a hooker to Las Vegas. Completely unnecessary!

I settled into my seat at the 8 p.m. show and heard the Youngbloods, who were promoting their upcoming album, Elephant Mountain.

To me, it was excellent. Just being there was a thrill, like I was emancipated from my boring existence. The thought of being critical of the experience never entered my mind. I had given myself over to the dark forces of rock and roll and was prepared to go wherever they took me.

Two years before, I was seriously turned on by the blues. First through the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and then by John Mayall’s Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton album. Cream then followed, and through reading interviews with Clapton and Mike Bloomfield, I got turned on to Albert King.

Canned Heat, the second band on the bill at the Fillmore, was a boogie-style blues band. If you know John Lee Hooker's style you will know what that means. Yes, they played songs, but they also jammed to a shuffle that sounds like a drone but actually leaves all sorts of room for the players to stretch out and…play.

Canned Heat had a lead singer named Bob “the Bear” Hite, a good vocalist, an accomplished guitar/harp (harmonica) player named Al “Blind Owl” Wilson and a guitar player named Henry Vestine.

Canned Heat, 1970: Larry Taylor, Henry Vestine, Bob Hite, Alan Wilson, Fito de la Parra. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

As this was the new music of the day, performers were expected to jam and improvise. That was part of the late ’60s music scene. Everyone in the audience was expected to be stoned and the bands were the pied pipers (and probably even more stoned).

That’s exactly how I remembered it.

Why write about this now?

Because, as I was going through my record collection recently, I found a couple of Canned Heat albums which I haven't listened to since I bought them in 1968 and 1969: Boogie with Canned Heat and Hallelujah.

Listening to these albums immediately took me back to that first Fillmore East experience.

Many of you probably know the most famous of all the Canned Heat songs, “On the Road Again.” This song has stood the test of time (It is on the Boogie with Canned Heat album) and has been in dozens of movies and commercials. It is their one lasting legacy.

Canned Heat was the quintessential “biker band” before that was ever a description. Just a greasy. hippie blues band. There were others, like Mother Earth, but the idea of a “boogie band” began with them. Much less sophisticated than the Allman Brothers. England has their own version of this kind of rock: Status Quo.

Here’s the thing – I was just learning how to play the blues at that point and trying to figure out Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, and Albert King. It was hard learning their styles. These players were extremely gifted and accomplished. Way more than I could fathom. I needed another “mentor” player. Someone better than me but accessible enough to understand the construction of a blues solo.

Then I saw Henry Vestine and Canned Heat.

Here was a guy who had an approachable style I could copy (almost) and further my development.  He also had a guitar tone I could copy. Clapton had his Les Paul guitar and Marshall stack, Albert had his Flying V guitar and his Acoustic amplifiers, and Bloomfield had his Fender Telecaster guitar and Fender amps.

At that time, I had a Gibson SG and an Ampeg V4. For whatever reason, when I came home after the show, I could get close to Henry’s guitar tone. Enough so to emulate his playing.

This was the real value of going to the Fillmore every week. You saw your heroes, came home, strapped on the guitar and I could fantasize that one day it could be me.

Henry Vestine gave me that lifeline.

His playing was just a couple of levels above me. No, he wasn’t the technician like Clapton, or have the speed of Bloomfield or the mind blowing idiosyncratic phrasing of Albert King.

Henry was just a lunch bucket, blue collar blues player.

I don't refer to him much, but re-listening to these Canned Heat albums has been a revelation. A throwback to a simpler time of quality, earnest performances, steeped in the rich tradition of the blues at a time when white musicians not only became enamored with an original American musical idiom but did everything they could to bring the actual originators to the predominantly white rock audience. Experiences like these opened the whole world of the blues to me and to thousands of American teenagers at the time.

This is not about political correctness. This is about giving credit where it is due to my evolution as a player.

Twisted Sister is not a blues band, although most early heavy metal bands evolved from a blues format.

Pink Floyd (certainly not a blues band) was named for two blues musicians (Pink Anderson and Floyd Council) That’s how much the blues was injected into the rock music landscape of the late 1960s.

Canned Heat was the kind of band that Pigpen of the Grateful Dead could have put together as a solo project.

Henry Vestine of Canned Heat got me closer to my understanding of blues guitar, and that opened the door for me.

Thank you Henry…and Canned Heat.

Dr. Sean Olive is a Senior Fellow, Acoustic Research, at Harman International. He has extensive expertise in the areas of perception and measurement of sound quality, particularly in headphones. Part One of our interview appeared in Issue 189. Here, he shares his perspective on the qualities of modern upmixers for immersive audio, the benefits of headtracking technology, some wisdom for audiophiles, and more.

Russell Welton: Dolby mixing for surround sound and immersive audio has now progressed to object-based mixing and Dolby ATMOS, what do you see as the next biggest advancement in headphone playback of differently mixed and recorded music? [Object-based mixing involves keeping every sound as an independent “object” and assigning them a position that is mixed during the reproduction process, rather than the typical means of creating a mix in the recording studio. – Ed.]

Dr Sean Olive: Most music is heard over headphones today, so immersive formats like Sony 360 Reality Audio, Dolby ATMOS Music, and other types of spatial audio have the potential to reach a large audience through headphones. So far, I have been underwhelmed by the quality of the binaural rendering for headphones, especially when you compare the experience of the same music played over a 7.1.4 speaker system [using seven main audio channels, a subwoofer and four height channels]. So, I think there are opportunities to greatly improve the binaural renderers and accommodate head tracking and personalized head-related transfer functions (HRTFs).

I’ve also been disappointed by the inconsistency in production/mixing quality of the immersive music recordings. Much of the releases are old stereo recordings remixed and repurposed for immersive with the aim to make it sound as close to the original recordings, including warts and all. The vast material I’ve heard uses [a] stereo phantom center, which means you only hear the main artist in the center if you sit exactly in the sweet spot. If you don’t sit in the sweet spot, you will hear the artist in the left or right speaker on home and car systems Don’t get me wrong: there are many excellent immersive albums, but right now we are still in the early days of immersive music.

A Dolby Atmos mixing system showing object-based mixing (note the graphic in the lower right of the console). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Nichollas Harrison.

RW: Could you tell us more about head tracking technology, what it is and what its benefits are?

SO: When we listen to a sound source, we localize [it] based on the interaural and time and intensity cues at our ears. A sound source to our left arrives at the left ear slightly before the right ear and it is slightly louder. As we move our head, these localization cues change while the location of the sound source remains stationary. However, while listening to the sound source over headphones, when we move our heads, the localization cues are not updated. As a result, the entire band [or orchestra or performer] shifts [along] with our head. The realism and naturalness of the headphone experience breaks down and we tend to hear the band close to or inside our head. Head tracking can avoid this situation by tracking the position of our heads and updating localization cues used in the binaural rendering so that the band remains stationary – just like in natural hearing.

RW: What is your personal favorite music medium to listen to and why?

SO: I grew up with vinyl in the 1970s but have been listening to digital recordings since the CD was introduced in the mid-1980s. Digital technology has greatly improved since those early days and for me at least, there is no compelling reason beside nostalgia to go back to vinyl. I would guess that 98 percent of my music comes from lossless streaming on Tidal and Qobuz because of its convenience and good sound, and it's a great way to discover new music. I love Roon because it organizes my music and provides great information about the artist and the music, and curates other music that I would otherwise not discover. Now that Apple Music stereo music is lossless and includes Dolby ATMOS Music, I may switch from Tidal to Apple Music. The only thing that stops me is that Apple Music is not supported by Roon.

RW: What advice would you give critical listeners to regain their pleasure in listening to music for music’s sake, rather than always listening from an analytical perspective?

SO: Music has the potential to transform our mood, [and] reduce anxiety, blood pressure, and pain as well as improve sleep quality, mood, mental alertness, and memory. But many people are not achieving the full emotional and intellectual experience because music has become a background activity.

My advice is to disengage from the distractions and give music your full attention. Turn off the phone, lower the lights and sit down and relax. Try listening to an entire album or a symphony rather than a playlist of disparate tracks. People don’t watch three-minute segments of 10 different Netflix movies, so why do we do this with music? When you listen to the complete work the musical journey is more satisfying and emotional for a sustained period.

RW: Do you have any words of wisdom for aspiring audio design engineers that want to get into your field of expertise?

SO: Apart from taking the right engineering, math, physics, and acoustics courses to gain knowledge about the field, I often recommend [that] college students talk to people in the field and apply for summer internships at an audio company. Join the Audio Engineering Society (AES), which is the only professional international society dedicated to audio engineering and includes 13,000 members worldwide, a great networking opportunity. Find a mentor: I met Dr. Floyd Toole 38 years ago on a random field trip to the National Research Council in Canada, and it changed my career path from sound recording to research in reproduced sound. We worked together until he retired from Harman in 2008 and remain friends today.

RW: On another note: could you share any insights which make for the advantageous pairings of preamps and power amps?

SO: I really don’t have much insight to offer other than making sure you have the right set of features for your needs. Does the preamp have subwoofer outputs, room correction, or tone controls to adjust the balance? The trend these days is [towards] powered loudspeakers with built-in streaming, which provides a smooth, easy-to-use, frictionless user experience. The new JBL 4329P [powered bookshelf speaker system] is such a product and I was so impressed with the sound quality and user experience I just ordered a pair. Just pair your tablet or smartphone and you’re up and running.

JBL 4329P Studio Monitor Powered Loudspeaker System.

RW: What are the main mistakes or oversights you encounter that audiophiles are guilty of?

SO: I think most audiophiles should pay more attention to things that matter most to achieving good sound quality in reproduced sound. The loudspeakers are the most critical component and their positioning and calibration in the room will determine the quality and quantity of bass. The best loudspeaker companies and audio review sites provide comprehensive anechoic measurements of their loudspeaker products that are highly predictive of how they sound. Use that information to guide you and if a manufacturer cannot provide it, you might ask them, what are they hiding? Finally, a loudspeaker only sounds a good as the recording played through it. Streaming services can help you find the best-sounding recordings, and you will quickly find that certain labels, artists, recording engineers and producers tend to consistently produce great records.

RW: What do you wish you were asked about in interviews, but never are?

SO: I seldom get asked how I got into audio in the first place. It was not something I originally planned. The best way to describe my career is a journey through audio’s entire circle of confusion: starting as a musician (creating art), becoming a Tonmeister (recording art), and ending up as a scientist in the reproduction of the art. Perhaps in retirement I will return to where I began, playing more music.

Header image courtesy of Dr. Sean Olive.

Great artists and thinkers are no stranger to controversy. Richard Wagner, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot and Roald Dahl were all rabid anti-Semites. Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Norman Mailer – among others – were noted misogynists. Phil Spector spent the last 12 years of his life serving time in a federal prison for murder. And many of the founding fathers of America were slave owners.

Among conductors we have the example of Willem Mengelberg, who worshiped Mussolini and congratulated Hitler on his invasion of the Netherlands. Then there’s Herbert von Karajan, who joined the Nazi party not once, but twice. Even Wilhelm Furtwängler, conflicted though he was, nevertheless remained in Nazi Germany and regularly conducted in front of Hitler and other Nazi leaders. Toscanini, though a dedicated anti-Fascist, was well known to be verbally (and occasionally physically) abusive as well as being a serial philanderer. There are numerous other examples.

Which brings us to the case of the late James Lawrence Levine. The great English jurist, Sir William Blackstone famously stated (in 1769) that “it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” I’ve always taken exception when I see someone convicted in the court of public opinion long before they face an actual courtroom. Nevertheless, while James Levine never had his day in court, I generally believe that where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire and there’s certainly a preponderance of evidence suggesting that the allegations of sexual misconduct are largely true.”

This raises a question that is beyond the scope of this article (and probably beyond the scope of my little brain): Why do we continue to worship artists who are so deeply flawed? 

I’m obviously not going to try answering that question, other than to say that sometimes we choose to admire a great artist or thinker, in spite of their deep personal flaws.

My first experience of James Levine was in the early 1970s. Karel Ancerl, the music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, had recently passed away and the TSO was in the process of auditioning a series of young conductors as possible replacements. Levine conducted a program consisting of Mozart and Mahler, and I recall an extraordinarily fine performance of Des Knaben Wunderhorn, featuring Jessye Norman and John Shirley-Quirk as soloists.

Around the same time, he commenced his duties at the Metropolitan Opera and I remember traveling to nearby Detroit to hear him conduct Wagner and Smetana when the Met still did a spring tour. In those days, he was a young, brash rising star on the international music scene and his music making was muscular, full of brilliance and infectious energy. I was smitten. Through the late 1970s to the early 1990s, I often listened to WFMT broadcasts from Ravinia, Illinois, and I saw him conduct live at the Met and in Salzburg. I still cherish an electric air-check performance of the Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony from 1983.

In that same year, Levine made the cover of Time magazine where he was lionized as “America’s Top Maestro.” He was interviewed by Charlie Rose on PBS numerous times from 1993 through 2014, and in 2011 he was profiled on American Masters, again on PBS.

But around 2010 my acquaintances in the musical world related to me the dark rumors about Levine’s private behavior that – apparently – had been circulating for some time. When those rumors became front page news in 2017, I was deeply saddened, but sadly not surprised. It caused me to reconsider my appreciation of his work.

This leads into the main body of the article. At this point, I think it’s a given that James Levine exhibited egregious behavior in his personal life and I respect anyone who has no wish, as a result, to listen to his recorded legacy. But I also believe that he was, at times, a deeply gifted artist who deserves a critical retrospective.

Prior to Levine’s very public downfall, the mainstream critical opinion seemed to be that he could do no wrong (or at least very little). Certainly, it is inarguable that he took the Met Orchestra and turned it into one of the finest ensembles in America, if not the world. He also raised the overall standards of that organization, turning it from an often-mediocre repertory house, back into one of the leading opera houses of the world. And he introduced a great deal of new repertoire. I can’t recall a single visit to the Met where he didn’t receive a standing ovation.

And that brings us to his recorded legacy. By my count, Levine recorded at least 12 of Verdi’s operas, all of Wagner’s mature operas (either on CD or video), along with operas by Beethoven, Bellini, Berg, Berlioz, Bizet, Cilea, Debussy, Donizetti, Giordano, Mascagni, Mozart, Puccini, Schonberg, Strauss, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky, and numerous symphonic recordings. In fact, discogs.com lists 347 recordings. If that doesn’t make him as prolific as Neville Marriner or Herbert von Karajan, it’s still no small accomplishment.

Now, two years after his death and six years after his forced retirement, how do those recordings hold up to critical appraisal? I’ll attempt to summarize at the end of this article. But, for starters, I thought it would be useful to identify a handful of what I believe are James Levine’s very finest recordings. Unfortunately, many of these are either no longer available or hard to find.

Beethoven – Piano Concertos, Alfred Brendel, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Philips): Recorded in the early 1980s during Levine’s tenure at Ravinia, these are wonderful, energetic performances; a near-perfect pairing of conductor, orchestra and soloist. Brendel was one of the finest, most thoughtful interpreters of Beethoven and that is clearly in evidence here. Levine provides a sympathetic accompaniment that is never bland. The orchestra contributes as much as the soloist, but never diminishes his role. Strangely, as I note below, Levine recorded very little Beethoven after this early effort.

Berlioz – La Damnation de Faust, Giordano, van Dam, Dalayman, Munich Philharmonic (available from ProStudio Masters in high-res audio): I would be remiss if I failed to mention Levine’s love for Berlioz. Listen, for example, to his rendering of “Queen Mab” from Romeo et Juliette (on DG). It’s a performance that Toscanini – who loved this music equally – would be proud of. Levine also led the very first performances of Benvenuto Cellini at the Met, as well Les Troyens. Technically not an opera, Berlioz called La Damnation de Faust a “dramatic legend.” That said, the Met mounted a highly effective Robert LePage production of the work in 2013, led by Levine. A recording of that performance is available on the Met’s streaming platform, as well as Apple Music. The performance referenced here is from a Munich Philharmonic concert at roughly the same time, with Marcello Giordano also in the role of Faust. I’ve listened to a number of performances of this work, and I even had the chance to sing it once (under Charles Dutoit). This is a superb exemplar.

Brahms Symphonies – Chicago Symphony Orchestra (RCA): In the middle of recording what turned out to be an incomplete Mahler symphony cycle (see below), Levine commenced the recording of a complete cycle of the Brahms symphonies, along with the Brahms Requiem. Starting with the first symphony in 1976, the critics of the day gave it ecstatic reviews. High Fidelity magazine referred to it as “once in a decade Brahms.” That judgment remains accurate to this day. While there are certainly other excellent Brahms cycles (for example, Ricardo Chailly with the Leipzig Gewandhaus or Istvan Kertesz with the London Symphony, both on Decca), this one remains a touchstone for me. Listen to the alternately propulsive and tender first symphony, with the gorgeous Chicago strings and brass, or the joyous schwung of the second symphony. You won’t be disappointed.

Dvořák – Cello Concerto, Lynn Harrell, London Symphony (RCA, no longer available): This is another early recording, dating from 1975. It’s a deeply emotional piece and both performers manage to deliver all of that emotion without making it sound maudlin. I’ve always wanted to play the cello (and no, I haven’t done it yet) but Harrell’s playing, the deep, throaty voice of his instrument, was probably the inspiration for that ambition. As with the Beethoven (above), Levine delivers a true partnership where neither the soloist nor the orchestra outclasses the other. A delight from beginning to end. If you can find an LP copy, snap it up.

Gershwin – Rhapsody in Blue, Porgy and Bess Suite, An American in Paris, Chicago Symphony (DG): Another product of Levine’s years at Ravinia, this was recorded late in that tenure in 1993, with Levine at the piano in the Rhapsody. There’s usually a certain amount of swagger in Gershwin’s music and Levine manages to bring out the best of it. Listen to the beautifully animated rhythms in An American in Paris and you can imagine Gene Kelly dancing by the banks of the Seine, or Fred Astaire strutting near the Eiffel Tower (in Funny Face). A gifted pianist as well as a conductor, Levine also delivers a virtuoso and idiomatic performance in the Rhapsody.

Holst – The Planets, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (DG): Recorded in 1989 with Margaret Hillis’ wonderful Chicago Symphony Chorus, this is one of the best-played recordings of this much-performed work. It’s not the most subtle of music, but Levine turns out a highly sympathetic performance. From the skittering strings of “Mercury, the Winged Messenger” through the pounding martial rhythms of “Mars, the Bringer of War” and the ethereal voices of “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age,” this performance leaves nothing to be desired. Highly recommended.

Mahler – Symphony Cycle, London Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra (RCA, NLA): Alas, James Levine never completed a full cycle of the Mahler symphonies. While there are live recordings of the Second Symphony (one from Salzburg with the Vienna Philharmonic and one with the Israel Philharmonic), there are no extant performances of Levine in the Mahler Eighth, the so-called “Symphony of a Thousand.” Perhaps, somewhere in the vaults of WFMT, there exists an air check from Ravinia but, given his current reputation, it seems unlikely that it will ever see the light of day.

Unfortunately, too, the complete set which was available just a few years ago is no longer being published, although some of the individual symphony recordings are still available online. And what a shame that is. I’m not the only critic who thinks that this would have been one of the finest complete cycles had it been finished. I honestly can’t point to a single performance that isn’t among the best I’ve heard, and I own 15 complete Mahler cycles along with many individual performances.

A few highlights: the powerful opening movement of the Third Symphony, played with incredible virtuosity by the Chicago Symphony – arguably the finest Mahler orchestra in the world during the Solti/Levine years. Or there’s a mournful, propulsive performance of the Sixth symphony with the London Symphony, or another remarkable performance of the Seventh symphony, again with the Chicago Symphony. Listen, for example, to the timpani in the second movement; no one else uses them so effectively. If you’ve never heard Levine’s Mahler, you owe it to yourself to find a recording and listen. Even if it doesn’t become your favorite, I think you’ll still be impressed.

Mendelssohn – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Blegen, Quivar, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Chorus (DG): A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Mendelssohn’s most charming and attractive works. It covers a multitude of moods ranging from the dancing overture to the famous wedding march and direct quotations from Shakespeare such as “Ye Spotted Snakes.” It was a favorite of Toscanini, who recorded it at least twice. Levine and his Chicago forces do it full justice with a luxury cast of singers and the usual beautiful playing of the Chicago Symphony.

Orff – Carmina Burana, Anderson, Creech, Weikl, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (DG): Another product of Levine’s Ravinia years, this was recorded in 1985. As a chorister, I have sung this ever-popular work numerous times, under numerous conductors. But I can honestly say that I’ve never experienced a performance as powerful or as well-played as this one. Listen to track 10, “Were Diu Werlt Alle Min,” and see if you’ve ever heard more brilliant orchestral playing or crisper choral singing. This is a performance that brings this much-hackneyed work to life.

Prokofiev – Symphonies 1 and 5, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (DG): While there are arguably finer performances of the Prokofiev “Classical” Symphony (for example, Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields on Argo – unfortunately no longer available), this one is still admirable and I have yet to hear a performance of the Fifth Symphony that has the motoric energy and drive of this performance, along with the fabulous playing of the CSO. I’ve listened to many performances of this symphony and this remains my favorite.

Schubert – Ninth Symphony “The Great,” Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (DG): This is part of a 2-CD set which also contains a performance of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4 with Evgeny Kissin, and other works. It’s also a rarity on this list as it comes from very late in Levine’s career, a live concert at Carnegie Hall in 2013. Levine’s earlier recording of this symphony, with the Chicago Symphony, is certainly carefully crafted but frankly also undistinguished. Not so with this effort. The great Symphony No. 1 in C Major is a mountain to climb; Robert Schumann wrote of its “heavenly lengths” and in the wrong hands it can feel long and tedious. Fortunately, that’s not the case here. Levine shows a real understanding for the structure of the work and draws gorgeous playing from his Met forces.

Schumann – Complete Symphonies, Philadelphia Orchestra (RCA): Recorded in 1981 during Levine’s Ravinia years, but not with the Chicago Symphony, this is the earlier of his two traversals of the Schumann symphonies (the later one is with the Berlin Philharmonic on DG). Schumann’s symphonic works are challenging. I remember that, when I first heard them as a teenager, I found them tedious. It takes a special conductor to bring them to life and Levine succeeds at this, quite brilliantly. My favorite of the cycle (although all the performances are good) is the Second symphony where Levine somehow manages to get the tempi, rhythm, dynamics, and phrasing just right, resulting in a performance of tremendous energy and elan. A pleasure to listen to and enjoy.

Smetana – Má Vlast, Vienna Philharmonic (DG): I own several recordings of this seminal work by arguably the second best-known Czech composer (after Dvořák). Those include a marvelous, albeit ancient recording by the late Karel Ancerl which, despite its age, shows a near-perfect understanding of the idiom. For a performance with more modern sound, this recording by the glorious Vienna Philharmonic does the trick. When you consider that Bratislava is less than an hour ride from Vienna, you realize that this music is also very much connected to the Viennese traditions. Early on in his career at the Met, James Levine led an English-language version of The Bartered Bride, an opera that was seldom heard at that institution. I saw that production on the Met spring tour and I fully understood why it received rave reviews at the time. Levine clearly has a deep connection with this composer and it shows in the above performances.

Tchaikovsky – Eugene Onegin, Lang, Freni, von Otter, Allen, Staatskapelle Dresden (DG): Perhaps you’ve noticed that, even though James Levine was best known as an opera conductor, I haven’t mentioned a single opera until now. There are several reasons for this. The first is technical: many of the operas that he recorded were by Verdi or Wagner and we haven’t got that far in the alphabet yet. But it’s also worth pointing out that many of the operas that James Levine performed were only recorded as DVD videos. And while the sound quality on those videos is not bad, it’s generally not up to the same standards as an audio-only recording. And finally, as I’ll discuss below, I’m not particularly impressed with his performances of Mozart.

In any case, this recording of Tchaikovsky’s best-known opera is superb. Strangely, for such a well-known opera, there are relatively few recordings in the catalog, apart from several recorded in Russia. Nevertheless, this performance, I think, captures all of the nuances of this highly emotional work. The dance sequences are played with great joy and the singing throughout is excellent. Since I don’t speak Russian, I can’t comment on the largely non-Russian cast’s diction, but from my limited knowledge, it sounds solid. The Staatskapelle Dresden, unsurprisingly, plays beautifully and DG’s recording, if a bit closely miked, is very fine.

 Tchaikovsky – Sixth Symphony, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (RCA): I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb and tell you that this is not my favorite performance of this symphony. However, that said, I think it is nevertheless an excellent performance, one which deserves a hearing. Once again, this was recorded during the Chicago Symphony’s Solti/Levine years and the power and precision of the orchestra is beyond reproach. Maybe you favor a more super-heated performance like that of Evgeny Mravinsky, or perhaps something a bit cooler like Lorin Maazel with the Vienna Philharmonic. But this performance seems to strike a balance between those extremes.

Verdi – Aida, Milo, Domingo, Morris, Ramey, Metropolitan Opera (Sony Classical): James Levine recorded at least a dozen of Giuseppe Verdi’s operas during his tenure at the Met. So why did I home in on this particular recording? The truth is that I’m not particularly moved by early or middle-period Verdi. That’s just my personal taste and it’s only when we get to Aida, Otello and Falstaff that I really understand his genius. Levine made a very fine recording of Otello, but this recording – I believe – is his finest achievement in Verdi. Boasting a luxury cast at or near the height of their powers, along with the Met Orchestra playing its heart out, this is a beautifully-recorded and played performance. There are many fine recordings of Aida, but to my ears this is one of the best. 

Wagner – Parsifal, Vickers, Ludwig, Weikl, Talvela, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra (available for Met subscribers or on Soundcloud): Parsifal was one of James Levine’s specialties. He conducted the centenary production at Bayreuth and recorded it twice: once with the Met, along with a recording of the Bayreuth performances. There are also several live performances preserved by the Met, and this is probably the earliest one. Someone once remarked that one of the musical mysteries of the 20^th century is the fact that performances of Bach became faster while performances of Wagner became slower. That can also be said of Levine’s performances of this opera, which became generally slower over the years. For an interesting comparison, listen to Pierre Boulez’ comparatively speedy traversal from the 1970 Bayreuth Festival.

In any case, the performance noted here may lean toward the slow side but it is a lovely reading, bolstered by a cast consisting of some of the leading Wagnerians of the latter half of the 20^th century. While Jon Vickers may have been approaching the end of his career, he is still in fine voice here and, in any case Parsifal is not Siegfried. It makes easier demands on its protagonists. And what protagonists they are! Christa Ludwig is a near-perfect Kundry and Bernd Weikl inhabits the role of Amfortas. While this was recorded relatively early in Levine’s tenure at the Met, he still manages to draw lustrous playing from the orchestra.

If there’s a common thread to all of the above, it is that the majority of these recordings were made relatively early in Levine’s career, during the period when he was active at Ravinia during the summer. You might note that I included none of his recordings with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and only one from his Munich Philharmonic years. This is not to say that any those recordings are bad. However, at least according to this listener, few of them stand out in a critical comparison, with the exception of the Berlioz, above, and the possible exception of his Mahler Sixth Symphony with the BSO.

You’ll also notice that the vast majority of these recordings are of music from the romantic period. Levine performed and recorded a lot of Mozart and I attended performances of Die Entführung aus dem Serail and La Clemenza di Tito. But, at least on record, I never found that those performances went much beyond competent.

So what about the rest of those 347 recordings – the ones I didn’t mention? I have a few observations about those. First: on several occasions, Levine re-recorded works that he had recorded earlier in his career. In every case that I can think of, the earlier performance is preferable. For example, I find the Schumann symphony cycle that he recorded with the Philadelphia forces has more rhythmic drive and inherent drama than his later cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic. And that’s important because, frankly, Schumann’s symphonies are not the most exciting works in the symphonic repertoire. I find the same thing is true with Levine’s recording of the Brahms symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic. To my ears, the Chicago Symphony performances, recorded nearly 20 years earlier, are less fussy and more kinetic.

Second observation: there are strange holes in Levine’s recorded legacy. He made a commercial recording of only one Beethoven Symphony – the Eroica, with the Met forces (although there is a live performance of the Seventh symphony on Oehms from his years at the Munich Philharmonic). As I mentioned earlier, he never made a commercial recording of the Mahler Second or Eighth symphonies and he recorded only a single Tchaikovsky symphony – the Pathétique, even though I know he performed the Fourth. He recorded many of Verdi’s operas but strangely, not Falstaff, even though he performed it frequently.

And finally, this: for all his brilliance when he was “on,” some of his recordings – to this listener, anyway – sound rather anonymous. I mentioned Mozart earlier. To my ears, his recordings of Le Nozze di Figaro and Cosi fan Tutte, are beautifully played and sung and, I suppose, if I heard those performances in the opera house, I would have been quite impressed. But upon repeated listening, I find them somewhat flat and uninteresting. Compare, for example, Rene Jacobs’ performances on period instruments, which have a sparkle that seems to be missing from the DG recordings with the Met.

That same criticism could also be leveled at a number of Levine’s other recordings. I will observe, for example, that his recordings of Wagner could be uneven. I listened to his DG Ring Cycle only once. While it had some lovely moments, there was nothing that caused me to return to it since that first experience. Funny enough, I recently came across his live performances of the Ring from his time at Bayreuth in the mid-1990s (on YouTube). Those performances, to my ears, were far more alive and dramatic.

The reality is that no conductor is ideally suited to every musical work (with the possible exception of the late, great Carlos Kleiber, who conducted an extremely limited repertoire). Even Furtwängler and Toscanini had their off days. And the art of music is, of course, a matter of taste. You may prefer von Karajan where I prefer Bernstein. That’s understandable. But in the case of James Levine, my conclusion is that while he was a flawed human being, he was also a musician with enormous gifts that were, nevertheless, not always on evidence. At his best, his performances and recordings were transcendent, and at his worst, merely competent. Ultimately, you – the listener – will have to decide where he stands in your listening canon.

Maurice Ravel (1875 – 1937) may be best known and loved for his nuanced understanding of orchestration, as demonstrated in the slow and thrilling buildup to the climax of Bolero. But he was just as gifted at writing for soloists and chamber groups, as several new recordings and one classic reissue demonstrate.

Over the past couple of years, Azerbaijani pianist Oleg Marshev has been adding Ravel to his approximately 50 recordings on the Danacord label. His five-volume set of Prokofiev solo works, rightfully lauded by critics, might imply that his playing is more focused on intricate technique and bald power than on the ethereal, impressionistic style needed for fin-de-siècle French pieces. But his Ravel: Complete Solo Piano Music, with two volumes out so far and another expected soon, belies that assumption.

The first volume is the early works, including some that are barely known and one never before recorded. The premiere is a fugue from Ravel’s conservatory days. A well-known fact of Ravel’s biography is how, as a student, he kept trying to win the Prix de Rome, the prominent composition award. After his fifth consecutive loss, in 1905, corruption was uncovered in the prize’s administration. Ravel had, in fact, been robbed! Good thing that didn’t stop him from composing.

One of his entries was a four-voice fugue in F major, based on a theme by Napoléon H. Reber. It was thought to have been lost, but Marshev got his hands on it and wrote a new arrangement, included in Volume 1. It’s good to be reminded of Ravel’s sophisticated understanding of 18th-century counterpoint.

That fated year of 1905 is represented by Ravel’s set of piano miniatures, Miroirs, M. 43 (the “M.” number refers to the index amassed by musicologist Marcel Marnat). But the material in the volumes is not chronological. Volume 2 jumps back to 1902 for a Fugue in B-flat and goes as far as 1909 for the Minuet on the Name of Haydn, M. 58.

While the scholastic exercises are fascinating, it’s the Miroirs that really illustrate Marshev’s mastery of the Ravel style (and his skill at “half-pedaling” for that important almost-sustained sound). His performance of Miroirs No. 1, “Noctuelles,” is like fine lace that occasionally transforms into shards of glass.

If you stream music, you now have access to another great recording of Miroirs, not to mentioned everything else Ravel wrote for keyboard. In 2011, Warner/Parlophone remastered Walter Gieseking’s 1956 recording of Ravel’s complete piano works. In 2022, they offered it on hi-res streaming services for the first time.

It’s instructive to compare Gieseking’s Miroirs to Marshev’s. While the former has a slightly heavier touch, he uses more sustain pedal and less distinct rhythmic articulation, creating an unending musical fabric. Maybe Marshev’s immersion in Prokofiev did affect his Ravel after all. Then again, Marshev’s more orderly presentation could simply be considered a more modern interpretation of Ravel, who in the past 25 years has come to be understood as a great proponent of structure and order.

But there’s a strong argument that the Franco-German Gieseking knew more about Ravel than anyone living today. After all, he was the composer’s younger contemporary (1895 – 1956). As the pianist did in his recordings of Debussy, he had an ability to hear the larger arcs and background colors of Ravel’s works.

There are also some examples of Ravel’s solo piano music included in Ravel: Complete Instrumental Chamber Works. That’s appropriate, since “chamber music” simply refers to pieces that can be performed in a small room (chamber); soloists count. The 3-disc recording from NoMad Music features the Ensemble Sésame in a variety of configurations.

Pianist Julien La Pape gives a fine rendering of Ravel’s Ma mère l'Oye, M. 60 (Mother Goose). This movement, “Garden of the Fairies,” has a methodical Mussorgsky-like rhythmic progression. This is not an idle comparison: Ravel was intimately familiar with the Russian’s output. His is the second-most played orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, after that of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

Ravel wrote chamber music for many combinations of instruments. His Introduction et Allegro, M. 46 includes clarinet, flute, and harp plus string quartet. In many cases, equating Ravel with Debussy is a facile shorthand, but a piece like this shows how Ravel often shared the ethereal, dreamlike aspects of Impressionism.

The chamber-music output of Ravel includes sonatas for violin and piano as well as violin and cello, and an examples of his love for Spanish music in the Rhapsodie Espagnole for two pianos. The Trio in A minor, M. 67, for piano, violin, and cello, has a Brahmsian richness. The Sésame members give a nuanced performance, celebrating the many contrasting textures Ravel provides. They are unabashed, almost feral, in the swirling fourth movement, yet always in perfect control. At the merest breath they switch from granite to gossamer.

Thanks in part to filmmaker Wes Anderson, who included it on the soundtrack for his movie The Royal Tenenbaums, Ravel’s mighty String Quartet in F Major, M. 35, is his best-known chamber work. It is one of the quartets on the latest Warner Classics release by Quatuor Via Nova, along with one each by Claude Debussy and Albert Roussel.

Via Nova takes a graceful, breathy approach to the Ravel’s first movement. The tense and intriguing pizzicato second movement (the one used by Anderson) has the right amount of frenetic energy.

Debussy’s G minor quartet has been recorded countless times, but it’s worth mentioning the less-familiar Quartet in D Major, Op. 45, by Roussel (1869-1937). Quite famous in his own day, Roussel was an Impressionist in his early career; by the time he wrote Op. 45, he had developed an interest in neoclassicism and modernism. This work, written at the end of his life, is more a predecessor to Shostakovich than it is a reflection of Ravel or Debussy.

Roussel’s work gives important context for the breadth of French music in the last decade of Ravel’s life. Ravel was fortunate to compose during one of the richest eras in all of classical music history, and one that would not have been the same without his contributions.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/public domain.

Instead of going to music school, singer Kurt Elling earned a history degree from a small liberal arts college and then went to the University of Chicago Divinity School. As he puts it on his website, if he hadn’t made that choice, “I doubt that I would be able to bring to bear the wider philosophical and literary awareness I have.” Everything about Elling’s artistry is wide-ranging, particularly his broad taste in genres and willingness to try absolutely anything, from swing to Bach to hip hop. He must be doing something right; almost all his albums have been nominated for at least one Grammy Award.

Elling, 55, was born and raised in Chicago, where he also got his jazz career off the ground. His father was the music director at a Lutheran church, and Elling sang in the school choir and learned several orchestral instruments as a kid. He also loved the swinging styles of Tony Bennett and Louis Armstrong.

While in college at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, his tastes expanded. Besides the singing of Joe Williams and Al Jarreau, he admired the instrumental work of Dexter Gordon and Dave Brubeck. But the musician he credits as “the door through which I found out about the broadest range of jazz singing possibilities” is singer Mark Murphy (1932 – 2015), who pioneered a vocal style ideal for modern jazz. At the center of Murphy’s style was his complex approach to a jazz songwriting technique called vocalese. Elling was fascinated by the connection Murphy made between bebop and beat writers, particularly Jack Kerouac.

According to an essay by Elling, jazz vocalese has a different function from jazz scat. Scat is a vocal but wordless improvisation, whereas vocalese takes an existing composed or improvised instrumental solo (which the singer has transcribed) and adds words. He considers the trio of Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks, and Annie Ross to be the “zenith” of vocalese from the 1960s. In the 21^st century, Elling has brought the art to a new height and widened its reach to include jazz-adjacent genres like funk and R&B.

Enjoy these eight great tracks by Kurt Elling. 

1. Track: “Those Clouds Are Heavy, You Dig?”
   Album: Close Your Eyes
   Label: Blue Note
   Year: 1995

In 1995, Elling signed with Blue Note. Close Your Eyes, his debut, secured him his first Grammy nomination. On this album, Elling also debuted his longtime association with pianist and arranger Laurence Hobgood.

“Those Clouds Are Heavy, You Dig?” is a vocalese based on improvised solos recorded by Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck. Elling’s beat-style poetry reflects his background in religious philosophy.

2. Track: “Prayer for Mr. Davis”
   Album: The Messenger
   Label: Blue Note
   Year: 1997

Laurence Hobgood is the primary producer of The Messenger. This is also the first album featuring the trio of Hobgood plus a drummer and bassist as Elling’s accompaniment, in this case Paul Wertico and Rob Amster, respectively.

“Prayer for Mr. Davis” is the last song in the three-part Suite, composed by Hobgood and Elling. Orbert Davis plays flugelhorn, while Elling seems to imitate that instrument in his vocal line.

3. Track: “My Foolish Heart”
   Album: This Time It’s Love
   Label: Blue Note
   Year: 1998

Elling’s third album, This Time It’s Love, brought him his third Grammy nomination. 

Although he’s best known for vocalese, Elling has made many recordings of more conventional songs. “My Foolish Heart,” the jazz standard by Victor Young and Ned Washington, shows what he can do with a well-known tune. The classic elements remain recognizable while Elling makes it entirely his own both rhythmically and melodically. His spare use of vibrato and the graininess of his voice bring to mind the work of Mel Tormé. 

4. Track: “Orange Blossoms in Summertime”
   Album: Flirting with Twilight
   Label: Blue Note
   Year: 2001

For Flirting with Twilight, Elling and Hobgood decided to bring in a horn section. The record was nominated for two Grammys; it won Best Jazz Vocal Album.

For “Orange Blossoms in Summertime,” Elling set original lyrics to a solo tune that bassist Curt Lundy composed for his 1983 album Beatitudes. Elling had been performing his version for almost 10 years but had never gotten around to recording it until Flirting with Twilight. On the jacket notes, he credits drummer Peter Erskine and bassist Marc Johnson for the track’s flavor.

5. Track: “A Secret I”
   Album: Man in the Air
   Label: Blue Note
   Year: 2003

Hobgood’s trio for Man in the Air uses Amster on bass. Wertico plays drums on only one track, with Frank Park Jr. handling the rest. The special guest for this album is vibraphonist Stefon Harris.

Elling dug up some particularly interesting instrumental source material to add lyrics to on this album, including John Coltrane and Pat Metheny. Herbie Hancock’s early composition “Alone and I” is the basis of the vocalese track “A Secret I.”

6. Track: “Autumn Serenade”
   Album: Dedicated to You
   Label: Concord
   Year: 2009

The subtitle of Dedicated to You, a live album from Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series, is Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman. The concert was a tribute to a classic jazz album from 1963, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman. Ernie Watts plays tenor saxophone. Although Elling had left Blue Note and signed with Concord, he brought Hobgood with him as producer and pianist.

Elling takes “Autumn Serenade” at a faster clip than Coltrane and Hartman’s recording, and Watts’ saxophone is the main feature, the opposite of the earlier version, which focuses on the voice. While Elling does not share Hartman’s silky bass, his earnest delivery of the lyrics makes them effective in a different way.

7. Track: “Come Fly with Me”
   Album: 1619 Broadway: The Brill Building Project
   Label: Concord
   Year: 2012

From the 1930s through the early 1970s, the Brill Building in Manhattan was home to dozens of music businesses and the center of American popular songwriting. Elling’s album 1619 Broadway celebrates the entire era, from Al Dubin and Harry Warren’s “I Only Have Eyes for You” (composed in 1934) to Paul Simon’s “An American Tune” (1973). Along the way are some hits from the 1950s (Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me”) and the 1960s (Carole King’s “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” made famous by the Monkees). This was Hopgood’s last producing project for Elling.

“Come Fly with Me,” from 1958, was written by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, who did quite a trade from their Brill Building office. Elling’s version of the melody is barely recognizable as he entwines it with contrapuntal lines from flugelhornist Kye Palmer and tenor saxophonist Tom Luer.

8. Track: “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”
   Album: The Questions
   Label: Okeh Records
   Year: 2018

The album The Questions shows Elling’s breadth. He alternates standards like Hoagy Carmichael’s “Skylark" with thoughtful rock songs like Peter Gabriel’s “Washing of the Water” and vocaleses using the poetry of Rumi and Wallace Stevens. Branford Marsalis, who also plays soprano saxophone on the album, co-produces with Elling.

One doesn’t expect to find Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” on a jazz album, yet here it is, in an arrangement by the record’s pianist and organist Stu Mindeman. Elling sings the first verse a cappella with significant reverb. Dissonant instrumental tones enter gradually. The effect is powerful.

Header image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Simon Bierwald, cropped to fit format.