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CTI Records Part 4: Sax (and Violins)
Like any jazz record label, CTI Records was no stranger to saxophone players. The label had its share of talent, from established names such as Stanley Turrentine and Paul Desmond...
Ulrike Schwarz, Jim Anderson, and Their New Par...
Soprano saxophonist/composer Jane Ira Bloom’s Picturing the Invisible: Focus 1 recently garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Immersive Audio Album. Produced and engineered by multiple Grammy winners/nominees Ulrike Schwarz and...
Clickbait Articles Belie Reality: The Vinyl Man...
New trade advocacy group, the Vinyl Record Manufacturers Association, is establishing best practices and standards Two recent online articles ushered in the new year with headlines that the vinyl boom...
Lounging with In-Ear Monitors, Part Three
In our previous two articles (Issue 180 and Issue 181) we have briefly considered some of the factors which may affect the sound quality of in-ear monitors, aka IEMs, in-ear...
Lounging with in Ear Monitors, Part Two
There are so many in-ear monitors (otherwise known as IEMs, earbuds, earphones, or in-ear headphones) in the marketplace, how can one navigate the minefield of IEMs which are out there?...
My Favorite Yes Album: Drama
When I bought Drama (1980), my first Yes record, I wasn’t aware that it marked an end of era as Jon Anderson, the iconic voice of Yes, and Rick Wakeman...
Home Entertainment Formats Over the Past 50 Yea...
Technological advances in the 1970s brought unprecedented conveniences for consumer home entertainment that continues a half century later in the digital age. Further examination of the machinations that ultimately gave...
Dig This: Philadelphia’s Vibrant Vinyl Scene
I spent a lot of time in Philadelphia when I was a graduate student at Rutgers University. It was an easy trip from New Brunswick, New Jersey to central Philly...
Exploring CTI Records, Part 2: The Subsidiaries
CTI Records had been an independent label for only a year when Creed Taylor began creating subsidiary labels. While a couple of these subsidiaries were very limited, the Kudu label...
Tim Riley’s Best Albums of 2022
Country-pop surges, even as Shania Twain and Margo Price stare January down. And as beleaguered as culture feels for the Next Great Consensus, the variety feathering so many different year-end...
The Life and Times of a Sony Audio Engineer: Ta...
I first had the pleasure of becoming recently acquainted with Aston Sharman, when I stumbled upon his intriguing boutique, Vintage Technology Workshop, tucked away in the UK’s historic Barbican area...
Nearly $400 Poorer, Here Are My 2022 Black Frid...
File under, “inside the head of a Record Store Day consumer.” Since 2014, it’s been like clockwork. Twice a year I download the Record Store Day (RSD) upcoming titles list...
Exploring CTI Records, Part One: 1969 – 1971
At the end of the A&M 60th anniversary series in Copper (in Issue 176)I featured recordings released as a collaboration between A&M Records and Creed Taylor’s CTI imprint. This CTI...
Some Holiday Music Favorites
I might be a bit of an outlier. I typically don’t play Christmas music all that often during the holidays, since we are bombarded with it daily from November 1...
Stuffy Shmitt: Portrait of an Artist
In the 1990s I worked at the North Star Pub in Manhattan’s South Street Seaport, a stone’s throw from the East River and in view of the old Fulton Fish...
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Is Not Rock and Roll
The full telecast of the November 5, 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (RRHoF) induction ceremony is now available on HBO – all four hours of it. Although I...
London’s Klooks Kleek: A Sixties Music Breeding...
1960s British music aficionados are likely familiar with many of the era’s historic music venues, including London’s Marquee Club and Saville Theater. Devout Beatles’ fans are likely to include in...
A Look At Ravel’s Works for Orchestra
One of the popular mantras in audiophilia is “garbage in, garbage out.” This is meant to say a piece of equipment is only as good as what comes before it....
A Most Dedicated Record Collector
If someone offered you $30,000 for just one out of the 20,000-plus records in your collection, would you sell it? Not Joe Bussard. If you aren’t familiar with the name,...
The A&M Records Story, Part Nine: CTI Records
This is a special installment in our A&M 60th Anniversary series. While it is out of chronological order with the rest, its unique circumstances allow us to hand off the...
A Visit to The University of Rhode Island Guita...
I first heard about the University of Rhode Island Guitar Festival during our annual fall trip to Narragansett in 2021. My wife and I like to make one final visit...
A Trip to Eindhoven’s Philips Museum: Like a Ki...
Ever since my grandmother Edna gave me a transistor radio for my birthday in 1964 just in time for Beatlemania, I was mesmerized by gadgets that emanated sound. By the...
There’s No Flop in MoPOP
On a long-ago eighth grade school trip to New York City, my classmates and I watched a beautifully restored 35-millimeter print of Citizen Kane on the big screen. The 1941...
New Classical Recordings: Igor Levit's Tristan,...
Igor Levit – Tristan (Sony, 2022) Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos, Yo-Yo Ma – Beethoven for Three, Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5 (Sony, 2022) 19439940142 Igor Levit, Tristan, album cover. Even...
In Memory of Ramsey Lewis
Three Grammy Awards. 80 albums. Five gold records. A National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. Artistic director for the Ravinia Jazz Festival. Mentor for up-and-coming musicians through the Ravinia’s...
Retail Therapy
I never trained as a psychologist. Instead, in my retail career I maintained an open mind, had probably more patience then than I do now, (but not that much less),...
Classical Music for a Desert Island, Part Three
Part One and Part Two of this series on desert island classical music albums appeared in Issue 172 and Issue 173. To recap: this list reflects my taste. Yours may be entirely different....
The History of A&M Records, Part Eight: Hor...
In 1975, A&M Records established a subsidiary jazz label called Horizon Records. John Snyder (who had previously worked with producer Creed Taylor) was the label’s creative director, and left in...
The Golden Decade for Popular Music…The 1950s?
I belong to a music-listening group consisting of five people who get together once a month. Everyone gets a turn to be the host who provides the playlist, wine, and...
Long Live Rock
For a while now, I have been thinking about how classic rock will look in its last stages. Artists are quickly aging, and surviving members of the great old bands...
The Best of CES Awards
On the top floors of 30 Rockefeller Center sits the Rainbow Room. It’s a lovely restaurant and sometimes event space that offers a breathtaking view of Manhattan. It even has...
Classical Music for a Desert Island, Part Two
Part One of this series on desert island classical music albums appeared in Issue 172. To recap: this list reflects my taste. Yours may be entirely different. In fact, it’s very...
The History of A&M Records, Part Eight: Jaz...
Like almost every well-known record label, A&M Records also made some forays into the jazz world. Some would be more of a relaxed style of pop-jazz, while others would come...
Classical Music for a Desert Island, Part One
Over the past few months, our esteemed editor Frank Doris has been sharing with us his personal choices for a desert island collection of rock albums (as per his list...
Take a Walk in Wonderland: Revisiting the Music...
In previous Copper articles (Issue 168 and Issue 169), I have discussed the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix, Arizona and some of my favorite exhibits. Here I would like...
What’s in a Name? MIRTAS – The Music Instrument...
From December 2013 and for several years afterward I worked as a project manager in the UK for the Academy of Music and Sound, managing MIRTAS: the Music Instrument Retail...
Long Live Excellent Customer Service
In my humble experience, I think it’s true to say that people like to buy from, yes, you guessed it…people. Particularly if the commodity is something that is as inspirational...
The Beacon Theatre’s Sphere Immersive Sound in ...
The last show I had seen at the Beacon Theatre was either Lita Ford or Joe Jackson back in the 1980s, likely viewed from the only seat I could afford...
Jazz Producer Creed Taylor: In Memoriam
August 22, 2022 marked the passing of legendary jazz producer Creed Taylor. Active in the music industry for decades, he left a lasting impression on the world of jazz. He...
Lemons Rally: Rust Belt Ramble, Part Three
Day Three: “Steel City, Oil City, Silo City” Good morning! It’s the last day of the Rust Belt Ramble. This is the day of mixed emotions. On one hand, you’re...
The Colors of Music: Synesthetic Artist Sees an...
In Issue 170, Melissa McCracken shared with our readership the fascinating experience of creating her artwork as a synesthetic. Here’s an excerpt from Part One of our interview: Melissa McCracken: Synesthesia is a...
Diagnosing Audiophilia
Patient: Dr. Krebs, I think I have acute audiophilia. Dr. Krebs: Sounds serious. What are your symptoms? Patient: A lack of sound clarity with some distortion. Both my audio system...
Confessions of a CD Addict, Circa 1986
File under “what comes around, goes around.” I wrote the following unpublished piece in 1986, found unexpectedly after going through old computer files. The deja vu of my music consumption...
My Retail Customers: Of Chalk and Cheese
Working in retail perhaps may better be thought of as a portal to another world, another dimension of possibilities and unexpected outcomes. I thought it would be fun to share...
Lemons Rally: Rust Belt Ramble, Part Two
Day Two: “Big Bucket, Big Bridges, Big Tree, Big Day” A big day indeed, as we would travel through parts of three states today. As it turned out, the bulk...
Musical Roots: A Trip Around the World
The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM), located in Phoenix, Arizona, is the foremost musical instrument museum in the world with 350 exhibits, 200 of which are country-specific. I described it in a previous Copper article (Issue 168),...
Thieves, Golden Boys, and Trust in the Retail S...
Some of you may have read in my previous articles that part of my background originates in musical instrument retailing. As a result of my experience, one of my catchphrases...
Back on the Lemons Rally, Part One
“Lemons Rally is not a race!” Rallymaster Jeff barked out our rally instructions at the driver’s meeting around 8:00 am on the Friday that marked the beginning of the Rust Belt...
Stepping Out of the Limelight
Many stories have been written about sidemen who became stars once they got their chance in the spotlight: Glen Campbell (the Wrecking Crew and the Beach Boys), Sheryl Crow (Michael...
The Musical Instrument Museum: A National Treasure
Jeff Weiner has been a volunteer museum guide/docent at Phoenix, Arizona’s Musical Instrument Museum for the last five years. Some of the content of this article has been adapted from...