Issue 82

In 1706, at the age of 21, Handel made the best of all possible contacts: the Medici family, who had massive amounts of money that they loved to spend on the arts. So, Handel was off to Italy to really lay the groundwork for his opera-writing career, which would then flourish in his soon-to-be new home, London. And when Londoners eventually tired of his Italian-language operas, Handel adjusted, becoming arguably the greatest oratorio composer ever.

He created hundreds of arias for his 42 operas and 29 oratorios, plus various shorter vocal works. Many of these complete works are rarely or never performed. However, recording albums of Handel arias on their own (sometimes paired with a recitative) is a common rite of passage for singers who love the Baroque. Several new ones have come out recently.

I’ll start with the newest, which also happens to be the weakest. The singer is German soprano Simone Kermes, these days tending more toward the mezzo range. At age 53, that’s no surprise; it is surprising that Sony backed this project when Kermes simply isn’t up for the challenge. Mio caro Händel, it’s called. I’m not sure she did her dear Handel any favors.

The ensemble Amici Veneziani, under the direction of violinist Boris Begelman, does its best to help. Their playing is spritely and clear, with a nicer balance of strings, woodwinds, and brass than some Baroque bands manage. But even their support can’t make Kermes’ singing delicate enough in this famous, gorgeous aria from Rinaldo, “Lascia ch’io pianga.” Consistently, she swoops from below before landing on her intended pitch, à la Julia Andrews. Handel’s melodies, inspired by the figuration used by orchestral instruments, requires clarity and purity (of the pitch, not of the soul).

Mezzo-soprano Julie Boulianne has been good enough to provide a contrasting example with her recent album, Alma Oppressa: Vivaldi and Handel Arias, on the Analekta label. Luc Beauséjour conducts from the harpsichord, and the ensemble is the Montreal-based Clavecin en concert.

Compare Boulianne’s recording of that same aria, “Lascia ch’io pianga,” and notice the long lines sculpted with detailed choices in dynamics and breathing. This singer knows before she starts each phrase exactly where she’s going musically and where she plans to end up. And there’s no swooping.

Beauséjour gets a chance to show what his ensemble can do in this Act-I aria from the 1740 opera Imeneo. The orchestra’s rich, flexible sound emotionally mirrors Boulianne, who’s singing as the heartbroken, jilted lover Tirinto, a role meant for castrato.

My only quibble with Boulianne is that she uses more vibrato than is ideal for Baroque arias. Soprano Stefanie True’s singing on Handel in Italy: Cantatas, Arias, Serenata (Brilliant Classics) is more aligned with historical performance practice, employing a brighter sound and very little vibrato.

This collection is also a reminder that not every Handel aria comes from an aria or oratorio. Some were part of shorter secular works called serenatas and cantatas, usually meant to be sung in the homes of wealthy patrons. O lucenti, o sereni occhi is one such cantata, from which True sings the aria “In voi, pupille ardenti.” The ensemble Contrasto armónico accompanies.

Lest I give the impression that Handel wrote only for women and castrati, here’s proof to the contrary. Bass Marco Vitali shows off the profundo end of his range with astonishing leaps in this aria from the serenata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo. The leaps are typical of the Baroque musical affect representing stress or fear (the aria’s title translates as “Between the shadows and the horrors”).

This is an enormous collection of recits, arias, and some instrumental sonatas, with other singers and ensembles involved on the 315 tracks (!), but True and Vitali have done the bulk of the work.

Speaking of Handel’s writing for bass singers, Christopher Purves recently came out with Volume 2 of his series Handel’s Finest Arias for Base Voice. (Hyperion). Volume 1 was released in 2012. Although Hyperion has no full tracks available free on any service, including Spotify, you can listen to excerpts of every track here.

It’s nice to have some oratorios represented for a change, allowing us to hear how Handel dealt with English text. In a strident piece like “Ah, canst thou but prove me” (from Act 2 of the oratorio Athalia), Purves manages to be both emotionally forceful and vocally at ease. He’s just as comfortable in Italian and bathed in melancholy for “Langue, trema, e prigionero” from the opera Nell’africane selve.

While every opera and oratorio had a bass role, countertenor is the vocal range most associated with Handel’s operatic writing. That was true both in his own time and now, and with good reason. One word: Farinelli. He and other castrati of the 18^th century were revered as superstars. I doubt that epithet can be applied to Mathieu Salama, whose new self-published album Arias: Vivaldi & Handel is an earnest effort – maybe too earnest. It’s not a bad recording, but it isn’t one for posterity.

Take this aria from Handel’s opera Flavio, re de’Longobardi. While Salama’s singing is fervent, his voice goes from slightly to very pinched. The small ensemble of freelancers accompanying him has some issues with intonation, although violinist Solenne Turquet takes a nice solo turn.

Oh, but I’ve saved the best for last. True, Farinelli’s voice may never be equaled in its range and control, but how will we ever know? We have no way to hear him. Lucky for us, we live in the age of recorded sound. So we get to bask in the vocal glory of talents like Franco Fagioli.

Fagioli’s new Deutsche Grammophon release, Handel Arias, is simply exquisite. That’s thanks both to Fagioli’s singing and the nuanced support by the ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro, directed by violinist Zefira Valova. The whole spectrum of styles and emotions present in Handel’s dramatic arias is treated with sensitivity and grace.

Grab a tissue and listen to this aria from Rinaldo. I love the breathiness in the strings during the opening ritornello, preparing us for the pain and longing Fagioli brings to his part.

And, holy smokes! Check out this aria from the opera Oreste. You don’t even need to be told that “Agitato da fiere tempeste” means “Agitated by fierce storms.” Fagioli becomes a human firebrand, and Il Pomo d’Oro smolders and sparks right along with him.

Al Green loved Elvis Presley as much as he loved Mahalia Jackson. His vocal showmanship paired with the faith that grounds his singing is all the evidence you need. He started from nothing, the son of sharecroppers in Arkansas. As of this writing, he has 29 studio albums and 11 Grammy awards.

Still using the original spelling of his name, Greene, he got some boyhood friends to put out his first album on their Hot Line label. Back Up Train (1967) might not have been made under the most professional circumstances, and the arrangements might lack polish, but this young talent is unmistakable. The vocals on the title track are somehow laid back and urgent at the same time. That combination of features has become the standard for great soul singing, largely thanks to Green.

In 1969 Green had his first opportunity to work with Memphis-based producer Willie Mitchell at his Hi Records studios. The resulting album was Green Is Blues. Artists lucky enough to make albums with Mitchell got a double treat: Mitchell’s own genius at the controls, plus his “house band,” a five-man team of top-notch session musicians calling themselves the Hi Rhythm Section.

Mitchell shared co-writing credit with Green for the track “Tomorrow’s Dream.” The brass arrangement, stretching long tones under Green’s conversational, scrappy vocal rhythms, is the kind of contrast you get when arrangers really know their craft. The modulation in the middle of each verse is also a fun twist.

Once he was in with Mitchell, Green blossomed. And the arrangements just kept getting better in support of Green’s vocals. The 1971 record Al Green Gets Next to You yielded “You Say It,” a funky delight written by Green. Some reviewers have rightly described the album’s sound as “gritty” (a compliment), and this song really embodies that adjective. It’s not just the purposeful scratching of Green’s voice, but that controlled distortion of the funk riff supplied by the Hi Records session musicians.

When Livin’ for You came out in 1973, it was Green’s seventh album in as many years. The hard work continued to pay off: This record went to No. 1 on the soul charts and No. 24 on the pop charts, plus had two hit singles.

Worth exploring is “Free at Last,” Green’s unique take on the spiritual quoted by Dr. Martin Luther King in his “I Have a Dream” speech, intertwining it with a new romantic lyric. The swooping violins might sound dated now, but the song wonderfully exhibits how, in his prime, Green could be simultaneously a vocal acrobat and a sensitive soul.

The Willie Mitchell gang was still on board for Al Green Is Love (1975), and their gifts merge perfectly with Green’s in “I Gotta Be More (Take Me Higher).” The first half of this strolling-tempo tune is a model of dramatic restraint. Green sticks to his lower register and lets the rhythmic details drive the motion: extra syncopations and delays and phrase-shaping so subtle you could never notate them.

By 2:00, he’s an octave higher, and the strings backing him are now themselves backed by the house brass chorus. Layer upon layer. It’s a thing to behold.

But the Hi Records days couldn’t go on forever. Musicians often respond artistically to changes (good or bad) in their personal lives; the more profound the life change, the more the art reflects it. The big switch in Green’s creative output happened when he became an ordained pastor in 1976, in part a reaction to a traumatic event: a girlfriend attacked him and then committed suicide.

By the end of the decade, he’d lost interest in singing soul for a secular pop audience, and he dedicated himself instead to gospel. As it turned out, critics at least were ready to follow him in that direction. The title song of the 1980 album The Lord Will Make a Way won him his first Grammy.

His next eight albums were also gospel, generating singles that garnered another half dozen Grammy Awards. The singing pastor had found a new musical identity. By no means did this diminish his artistry or style. It’s eye-opening to hear the first track of Trust in God (1984), a wistful cover of a frankly square white gospel number, “Don’t It Make You Want to Go Home,” written and recorded by Joe South in 1969. The song becomes a completely different creature in Green’s hands.

A sign of great gospel singing is the performer’s ability to move the listener with his or her faith, whether or not it’s a faith the listener shares. No matter what your creed, I defy you to listen to the title song from I Get Joy (1989) and not feel a little better about existence. Besides the infectious vocals of Green and his backup singers, much of the energy comes from Archie Mitchell’s drumming and Jimmy Kinnard’s funky bass.

Your Heart’s in Good Hands (1995) marks Green’s return to secular music after devoting most of the ʼ80s to pure gospel. (A notable exception is his 1988 duet cover of “Put a Little Love in Your Heart” with Annie Lennox for the movie Scrooged.)

While the single “Keep on Pushing Love” was lauded for its classic sound, that’s the exception and not the rule on this album. It’s a big clue that high tech is involved when the liner notes credit four separate people for “programming.” An example of their digitized input is “What Does it Take.” For a second your ear might be fooled that this is classic funk-tinged soul. But listen harder, and you’ll realize that the drumming isn’t quite supple enough to be live, and what seems like a guitar riff soon splays into impossible synthesizer pitches.

With Lay It Down (2008), the aging soul man showed the world that he’s not afraid of the younger generation and the changes in R&B. Anthony Hamilton and John Legend are guest artists on this album, as is Corinne Bailey Rae, who is featured on “Take Your Time.” The organ and delicate brass that open the song tell you this will be something special. Bailey Rae’s rich, bluesy voice makes a bittersweet blend with Green’s falsetto in the chorus.

Although he hasn’t released a record since Lay It Down, Green is still with us, working as a preacher in Memphis. I’m betting he sings from that pulpit every chance he gets.

Here’s what I wrote back in Copper 72:

“Many people can’t stand opera, and to be fair, you can see where they’re coming from. Hour after hour of tedious recitative, all in Italian, interspersed with the occasional aria, and all sung by strangled and warbling voices seemingly intent on shattering glass. But oh, those arias!”

If opera arias are all so wonderful, and if the recitative is so deadly dull, why does a typical opera apparently comprise something like 20% arias and 80% recitative, rather than the other way around? And what’s with those “strangled and warbling voices”. These would be very good questions, and I’ll try to address them for you. And even if you’re not an opera fan, please bear with me, because I might not be heading quite in the direction you think I am.

First, the voices.

Opera, of course is musical theater. It is basically a stage play where the dialog is sung rather than spoken. Anyone who has ever performed in a stage play – whether it was just the school’s Christmas production your poor devoted parents were obliged to sit through every year – will know that the most important skill you need to learn is vocal projection. You want to deliver your lines in such a way that everyone in the audience can hear them, but without losing control over the critical attributes of expression, inflection, and tone. You don’t want to be sounding like a coach at a football match, screaming instructions with apoplectic fury from the sidelines. So you learn to develop a declamatory style of address – a “chest voice” – together with precise diction. [And as a bonus, you later get to learn that the same tone of voice can be used to great effect to gain control of a meeting.]

It may come as a surprise to learn that, contrary to stage actors, movie actors deliver their lines in a totally different manner. They generally whisper their delivery at the lowest possible volume that the microphone can pick up. Don’t for a moment think that I’m exaggerating here (I must apologize for this, because “muttervision” is something you can never “un-know”, and no movie or TV drama will ever look the same to you again. Sorry.). But, in summary, movie actors whisper, and stage actors project. The two techniques are quite different, even though both have ostensibly the same purpose of delivering theatrical lines to an audience.

It is the same with opera. An opera singer has to project – all the way to the back of the hall – while still maintaining control over tune, tone, and vocal inflection. And there’s also the problem of a pretty large orchestra which they have to sing over at the same time. And as if that wasn’t enough, they need to be able to do this night after night, week after week, month after month, throughout the course of a (hopefully) long career, without wrecking their vocal cords in the process. This is why opera singers develop such exaggerated and singular vocal styles. It is a necessity in order to accomplish all of those core requirements.

In many ways it is like comparing a Major League Baseball pitcher to a couple of kids tossing a ball about in the back garden. The kids often have a lazy, natural athleticism to their throwing technique, where the MLB pitcher has an ungainly, but highly stylized mechanical action. The kid can (and eventually will) throw a baseball through your kitchen window, but the pitcher can throw it through the window, all the way through the house, and out again through the front room window. Still, if your kid can do that, he may have a future in the Big Leagues.

Surprisingly enough, a similar situation exists with modern genres of music. Take for example AC/DC, one of the most successful rock bands of all time, known for Brian Johnson’s lung-busting primordial vocals. His leather-lunged vocal stylings sound as though they’d be loud enough to curdle yogurt. But they’re not. He actually sings at an extremely low volume, tensing his vocal cords to deliver a screech-like tone incredibly quietly, and letting the microphone and its preamp do all the grunt work. Chances are you might have at some point done the exact same thing when you’ve been singing along – except you don’t have a microphone. Have you never wondered why, when you see your favorite power-vocal pop or rock performer on stage, he has the microphone pressed hard to his lips? Who knew?

So an opera singer is like a stage actor, where a rock singer is like a movie star.

Back to opera, then, and the apparent dearth of arias. Opera is just musical theater…in fact many of the world’s greatest operas are adaptations of previously successful stage plays. And a play is all about the exposition of a plot, which typically unfolds through dialog between the play’s cast members, sometimes with an assist from a narrator. The dialog tends to set out a serial narrative, by which I mean that if you change the order of the lines you can very quickly lose the plot. It also tends to mean that a lot of lines are needed in order to convey a detailed plot. These sorts of characteristics simply don’t tend to lend themselves to arias. All the best arias have very simple words, and relatively few of them. They also tend to involve a lot of repetition. Arias are best suited to the expression of a character’s emotional state, a discussion of his or her conflicts, their desires and ambitions.

Here we have the aria “Recondita armonia” from Puccini’s famous opera Tosca, sung quite magnificently by one of the world’s current pre-eminent tenors, Jonas Kaufman. In the aria he tells us that although he is painting a portrait of a blue-eyed blonde, he is only thinking of his love, the brunette Floria Tosca. That’s about all there is to it, and it takes him a good three minutes. But what wonderful minutes they are:

Still, they aren’t moving the plot along, and we have a lot of plot that needs to be moved along. That is the purpose of the recitative, and the challenge of the composer is to make it sufficiently interesting. He can do that using a number of techniques including the use of themes and musical motifs that convey ideas, people, or places that the audience can identify with, or at least feel familiar or comfortable with. At least, that’s the idea. For the most part, though, the recitative is very rarely something an audience member would hum to himself on the way home from the theater. Which is troublesome for an opera composer.

Wagner turned opera upside-down with his solution to this conundrum. He considered an opera as a grand theatrical symphony. And if opera had to be mostly recitative, why not embrace that as a core attribute and instead make the opera 100% recitative. He could then write it as a grand symphonic structure where the voices would contribute as though they were members of the orchestra. And there would be no need for arias at all!

Was he successful? You can be the judge of that. Here is the closing scene from “Das Rheingold”, – it’s from the Patrice Chéreau production at Bayreuth from the 1980’s [and Heinz Zednik absolutely nails it as Loge]. It’s about 8 minutes long, but give it a chance. At the end, as the Gods join hands and march into Valhalla, Richard Wagner invents the Riff. Trust me, Wagner would have totally got The Who.

https://youtu.be/3ZP-yXsNV2E?t=8040

But that doesn’t really get us anywhere. Far, far fewer people enjoy Wagner than enjoy a good old concert recital of opera arias. Can we not somehow cobble together the opposite – a true opera comprising 100% arias and no recitative? That would be extremely difficult. How would we deliver the exposition? Can we develop an aria style that is able to deliver a measure of exposition, while still staying true to the core attributes of an aria? These present very significant technical challenges for a composer to overcome.

There may be only one composer who has accomplished this feat, and his magnum opus is a truly magnificent achievement. Actually, it is quite likely that you may have even heard of him…and it. His name is Pete Townshend, and his all-aria opera is called Quadrophenia.

I know what you’re saying – “Cheat! That’s not an opera!” – but greater and more qualified authorities than I would beg to differ. It is one of the two so-called “Rock Operas” (the other being “Tommy”) released by The Who. [Actually, Townshend worked on a third, informally titled the “Lifehouse Project”, but he was never able to complete it.] For various reasons, Tommy gets all the recognition as the first Rock Opera, but in truth it is a flawed work and Quadrophenia far better fits the bill as a true opera, and remains the superior work (and by a large margin, in this writer’s opinion).

But is it actually an all-aria opera? I would say yes. Each stand-alone track – even, arguably, the overture (“I Am The Sea”) – has all the characteristics of an aria. They are tuneful, melody driven, song structures. They are introspective and/or reflective in nature. They function perfectly well as stand-alone recital pieces. Even those without words (“Quadrophenia” and “The Rock”) have essentially all the core characteristics of arias.

Quadrophenia manages the task of delivering exposition in an all-aria opera by the ingenious technique of leaving it mostly unsaid (although, to be fair, one or two of the arias do include a fair bit of overt exposition, such as “Sea and Sand” and “Bell Boy”). It is not a particularly challenging exercise to extract the entirety of what is a reasonably complex plot from the arias themselves, but the plot itself is never explicitly stated; even the denouement is largely left to the audience’s imagination. Here is a clip from the movie version of Quadrophenia, featuring an excerpt from the aria “I’ve Had Enough”.

Unlike the aforementioned Tosca, Pete Townshend did not write Quadrophenia in the form of a performing score which can be picked up and performed by opera companies worldwide. Quadrophenia is, after all, uncompromisingly a rock album. It is one of the heaviest, hardest, purest hard rock albums ever made. It defiantly resists being viewed as a non-rock musical material arranged for rock band. Simply put, Quadrophenia lives in our consciousness as an Album by The Who, rather than as a Work by Pete Townshend. This leaves a big unanswered question as to what its operatic legacy is to be. For example, if the New York Met wanted to put on a production of Quadrophenia how exactly would they set about doing that?

In the wider “modern music” world, playing another artist’s song is referred to as a “cover version”. Furthermore, a good cover version of a modern music piece tends to be evaluated in terms of the distinctive arrangement that the covering artist creates for it. A straight note-for-note re-hash is rarely received positively outside of the somewhat sad confines of the ‘tribute band’. This is not the situation in opera, where an opera company will strive to put on a note-for-note production of Tosca or La Boheme. In rock, a good cover version is usually one where the covering artist has put his or her own original stamp on the song, but such ideas are rarely well received in the world of classical opera.

How to conclude, then?

In the genteel, very English game of cricket, the field on which the game is played is generically referred to as a “wicket”. The qualities of this playing surface impact the course of a cricket match in a way, and to an extent, that is not encountered in any other sport. The best cricket wickets in the world are legendary, and probably the most revered is that of Arundel, in Sussex. A (probably apocryphal) story goes like this: Someone asked the groundsman at Arundel what the secret was to producing a wicket as good as his. The groundsman responds that there is no secret to it. “You prepare a flat field, with good soil and good drainage, sow it with good quality grass seed, and when it sprouts you mow it, water it, and roll it every day. That’s the key. Mow it, water it, and roll it every day. After about 100 years or so, you should be good to go.”

That’s how it will be with Quadrophenia. In about 100 years time we should have converged upon a consensus as to where its true legacy lies. But for the time being, I would advance the positions that Tosca is a great opera, and Giacomo Puccini was a great composer…and that Quadrophenia is an equally great opera, and Pete Townshend is an equally great composer.

Thank you for reading.

Welcome to Copper #82!

I've never been good with ambivalence. The song quoted in the title above: does it mean that it's not spring, but just kinda sorta looks like it? I don't like false hope, and here in Colorado, winter is an evil, deceptive and persistent thing, prone to lingering well beyond its sell-by date....

Let's assume it's Spring, by God, and sit out in der Biergarten mit der Hunden und Kindern, and enjoy life.

We've got an amazing issue for you, if I say so myself. And I do.

Prof. Larry Schenbeck brings us more Deutsch---not der Biergarten, but Eine kleine zuviele Nachtmusik; Dan Schwartz finds religion---in his own way; Richard Murison writes about Great Opera---and while some may find one of his mentions controversial, I agree wholeheartedly; Jay Jay French ---well, just read it. He's shaking things up yet again; Roy Hall tells stories that could only occur in New York; Anne E. Johnson's Off the Charts brings us lesser-known cuts from one of my favorites, Rev. Al Green; Anne's Something Old/Something New brings us recent recordings of Handel Arias; and I get serious with Cynic and explore a fascinating sidebar to Fairchild history in Vintage Whine.

The Copper Interview brings us Part 1 of John Seetoo’s talk with Leslie Ann Jones, well-known recordist and daughter of...?

Richard Murison visited the Montréal Audio Fest, and was only able to produce a Gallic shrug for many exhibits; and new contributor Peter Braverman brings us details of the fascinating Sofar concert program. Live music! GO!!

Copper #82 wraps up with an '80s look at turntables from Charles Rodrigues, and a Close Encounters-esque Parting Shot from Paul McGowan.

Poor Woody Woodward and Christian James Hand have both been under the weather, and will return as soon as they're able.

I hope to see you at Axpona---thanks for reading, and we'll be back with #83 on April 22nd---Earth Day!

Cheers, Leebs.

The 2019 edition of the Montréal Audio Fest took place over the weekend of March 22-25^th, and, since I reported on last year’s event, I thought I might trot out another show report this time around.

As with last year, the dreaded turntable remained in ubiquitous evidence. And, to repeat the position I took last year, I say dreaded not because I have anything against turntables. I most assuredly do not. But when a turntable is the source of choice at an audio demonstration it tends to put a cramp on the selection of music that is available to be played. Last time BitPerfect exhibited at that show we brought our NAS along, with over 4,000 albums to choose from, all instantly accessible from our fingertips. And anybody who brought a CD along, or even a USB memory stick, could be reasonably easily accommodated. But when you wander into a room and there is some noodling acoustic jazz, or girl-with-a-guitar music being played on a turntable, your heart does sink a bit, and you have to resign yourself to having to listen to something that isn’t necessarily telling you what you want to know about the system.

This year was interesting in a way because we didn’t have any of the major über-systems on offer, I think for the first time ever. I’m not entirely sure why that was, although I am pretty sure it must at least reflect the fact that not enough people are buying über-systems in Montreal any more. And before you scoff, I need to point out that Quebec in general has been a fertile hunting ground for high-end audio in the past. So it is disappointing that folks like MBL, whose rooms have been among the most popular in shows gone by, with line-ups to get in, are no longer in evidence. And the systems on display in the bigger, better-sounding, and most-expensive-to-rent rooms, were generally not among the most inspiring from the perspective of sound quality.

Once again, I have confined my show report to exhibitors whose systems (i) motivated me enough to want to write about them, and (ii) which got at least one manageable photograph. Since we were using an iPhone this year, the photos are not up to the quality of last year’s, but even so, some of them were just not good enough to be included here. There were also a few rooms that featured a staggeringly expensive array of equipment, which nonetheless failed to deliver a sound that even began to approach a level of quality that would be commensurate with the price. Although I have some nice pictures of them, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything positive about them. So they’re not in my show report, but I’m still left shaking my head, wondering what they thought they were trying to accomplish. Finally, (iii) I also excluded anybody whose offering was not significantly different to what I reported on last year. Altogether, this meant that only a small number of rooms actually survived the cut.

By the way, all prices shown here were quoted to me in Canadian Dollars…which is why they might at first glance cause you to gasp! At the time of writing the exchange rates are:

Cdn $1.00  =  US $0.74 = GBP £0.56 = EUR €0.66

Hegel

We start with a budget offering in the Hegel room, where they showcased their H90 entry-level integrated amplifier with DAC and headphone amplifier. All yours for $2,200. The amplifier is rated at 50W/channel but paired with Totem’s dainty Tribe Tower loudspeakers – always a popular go-to choice at an appealing price point – they delivered most of what you would ever want. The sound was really very, very good indeed. You can spend an awful lot more, and get an awful lot less – as some of the other exhibitors I haven’t mentioned seemed only too happy to demonstrate. Wholeheartedly recommended, even based on a trade show demo.

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Audiophile Experts

JBL, the American manufacturer of yore, now owned by Harman International (itself a division of Samsung), have released a modern update of their classic L-100 Century speakers from the early 1970’s. Typically of Harman, though, you can go to the JBL website and you won’t find any mention of them whatsoever. Does their left hand know what their right hand is doing? These new models sell for $5,599/pr, which is not chump change. So how did they sound?

They were playing in one of the larger rooms, easier to set up and get to deliver good sound. They were matched by some top-end electronics from NAD: the M12 Preamp/DAC ($3,999), the M22V2 Power Amp ($3,499), and the M50.2 streamer ($4,599). I sat through a few tracks which sounded pretty good, but these are L-100’s man! – I need some Floyd. Back in the day, I used to trek across London every time I got the chance, to the Lasky’s flagship store on Tottenham Court Road to hear Dark Side Of The Moon played on the L-100’s bigger, badder brothers, the L-300. Driven by Marantz amplification. That, more than anything else, was my first ever system-to-die-for.

So how did the L-100 classic re-imagined fare in 2019? The answer – disappointing. Floyd fans need not apply. But to be fair, dyed-in-the-wool audiophile anoraks are not the target audience here. This system is for those who drool after that classic 1970’s style, which the big JBLs with their my-woofer-is-bigger-than-your-woofer attitude, and their chunky foam grills, deliver in spades like nothing else on offer. And for that audience, the sound will be more than acceptable.

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Joseph Audio

The Joseph Audio room delivered what it pretty much can be relied upon to deliver year in, and year out – seriously high quality sound. This year they were showcasing their Pulsar 2 speakers, in their latest “Graphene” incarnation. In this case the graphene is impregnated into the surface of the magnesium driver. Price is a cool $12,500/pr, plus stands. A lot you might think, for a pair of bookshelf speakers. But you would be sadly mistaken. Driven by an $11,500 Alluxity Int One integrated amplifier from Denmark, using Cardas cabling, and with a Brinkman Nyquist DAC, the Pulsar combo delivered a degree of weight, solidity, and total control that could easily pass for a pair of behemoth floorstanders powered by muscular monoblocks. I have never heard the Pulsars sound so good, and I suspect that Alluxity amp is a major part of that. Without doubt, and by a hefty margin, the best sound of the show.

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ELAC

ELAC were demonstrating their active loudspeaker system, the Navis ARF-51, comprising a pair of floor-standing towers with their Alchemy DDP2 streamer/DAC. The Alchemy directly streams to the speakers over WiFi, making installation and set-up a total breeze. All you need is to make sure each of the speakers is located close enough to a wall socket to be able to plug it in. For many people, there is great value in not having a bunch of ugly (and exceedingly expensive) speaker cables strewn across the floor. The whole system is yours for under $10,000. And what a system it is too. The sound is superbly well-integrated and balanced, with a good sense of spaciousness – even located as they were, close to the back wall. And, perhaps the most important quality for a mid-priced system, its flaws are those of omission, rather than of commission. In other words, they don’t draw attention to themselves. Sure, it’s not a patch on the Joseph Audio system above, but that will set you back a good three times as much.

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Artist Cloner

This will come as a surprise. Not many will have heard of this Montreal-area company which has been around for about 5 years now. And what about that name…weird or what? Even their room was a bit weird. Sort of like the deep interior of Tom Hanks’ cave on “Cast Away”. The lighting was deeply subdued (which my photo doesn’t do justice to) and the décor…out there. But let me tell you, there’s nothing weird about the sound they were able to generate. Artist Cloner makes everything themselves – the speakers, the electronics, the streamer…even the cables. We were listening to their bookshelf 2-way speakers Rebel Reference ($15,500), powered by the integrated amplifier Scorpi ($12,700), driven by an as-yet unnamed streamer which was hidden from view in what looked like a washed-up packing crate. Maybe they’ll call the streamer Wilson?….

These are not insignificant prices we are talking about here, but neither was the sound. Very, very easy on the ear, with a wide soundstage, and benefitting from a well-judged room set-up, but without (I thought) the weight, heft, and precision of the Joseph Audio system which plays in the same price band. It would be very interesting to run a shootout between those two systems.

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Lemay Audio

We sat and listened to the system curated by local dealer Lemay Audio for quite a while, but still we couldn’t get a word in with the representative who was in deep discussion with a client. So I have no further details about the system beyond what I observe here. Speakers were the ubiquitous KEF Blade (price of a car), amplification was the Tenor 350M HP (price of a house), and I’m not sure what the other equipment was. Given those prices, I have to say that the sound, while pleasant enough, did not blow me away.

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Filtronique

Another Montreal-area dealership which caters to the high end of the high end, Filtronique can usually be counted on to bring some serious equipment to the show, and set it up with skill and precision. This year they moved from a larger room in what you might call the “main square” and into one of the larger of the regular hotel-room suites. I’m thinking that they might have wished they hadn’t. It seems they may have underestimated what it would take to achieve a comparable sound in the smaller space.

Again, I found it hard to find a representative who wasn’t deep in conversation with a client, and the room was very, very busy. So I don’t have much information about the system. Speakers were the Wilson Sasha DAW. I have listened at length to the previous Sasha 2 and have never been quite a fan, even though I would be prepared to listen to Celine Dion every day as a condition of being given a pair of next-level-up Alexias (well, maybe I wouldn’t…but it would sure be a tempting proposition!). Amplification was the imposing-looking M900u/C900u “ultimate” combo from Luxman. This system should have overwhelmed, but it didn’t.

Real religious fervor: what do I mean by using that term, when I’m writing about music?

Nominally, I suppose one could take it to mean anything that I like. But I’m listening to Kate Bush at the moment, whom I absolutely LOVE, and don’t think it applies. Or Gentle Giant, or much other music.

This comes to mind because I had a friend over a couple weeks ago, and, well, we “imbibed”, as he was showing me his vape pens. We began talking about the Grateful Dead, who he has fairly recently gotten hep to, having first got turned onto the bizarrely associated Phish (don’t ask – I can’t account for that and don’t see any connection, but the kids do).

Very quickly I asked if he had ever heard Garcia, Jerry Garcia’s extraordinary solo album recorded in ’72, and featuring only him and drummer Bill Kreutzmann (about which Garcia said he found himself with more money than he knew what do with when it was released — so he set up a foundation to give some of it away). He hadn’t. I began with the 4^th track, “Loser”, just to set up the mood — this tune features a Robert Hunter lyric sort of about a card game. This put me in mind of a famous day when Hunter was in London, drunk of Greek retsina, and in one session wrote “Ripple”, “Brokedown Palace”, and “To Lay Me Down”.

In Hunter’s words: “‘To Lay me Down’ was written a while before the others [on the Garcia album], on the same day as the lyrics to ‘Brokedown Palace’ and ‘Ripple’—the second day of my first visit to England. I found myself left alone in Alan Trists’s flat on Devonshire Terrace in West Kensington, with a supply of very nice thick linen paper, sun shining brightly through the window, a bottle of Greek Retsina wine at my elbow. The songs flowed like molten gold onto the page and stand as written. The images for ‘To Lay Me Down’ were inspired at Hampstead Heath (the original title to the song) the day before—lying on the grass and clover on a day of swallow-tailed clouds, across from Jack Straw’s Castle [a pub, now closed], reunited with the girlfriend of my youth, after a long separation.”

How is this religious music? I don’t know — it just is, to me. (Understand, I’m not playing with terminology here. Not for me are such namby-pamby distinctions between “religious” and “spiritual”; nor between the natural and the supernatural. If it’s real, it’s ALL natural. But I understand people wanting to make the distinctions)

“To Lay Me Down” is followed, after a short break in “An Odd Little Place”, by the great statement of god/otherness in the Hunter/Garcia catalogue, “The Wheel”, all in a wash of piano, reverb, and recently learned pedal-steel guitar:

Small wheel turning by the fire and rod

Big wheel turning by the grace of God

Every time that wheel turn round

Bound to cover just a little more ground

Naturally, this led in my mind  — I mean, whose mind wouldn’t lead them to it? — The Harmonic Choir’s Hearing Solar Winds, an a capella, wordless recording of eight people documented in a 12th-century abbey in France. From the notes:

“Accept that music is not tied to passion, nor to piety, nor to feelings; accept that it can blossom in spaces so wide that your image cannot project itself within them, that it must make you melt within its unique light! And only then start listening to the voices of David Hykes’ Harmonic Choir.”

I love this idea — of separating our egos and sense of who we think we are from hearing music. (But — again, in my mind, it’s only a short stretch from Hearing Solar Winds to Emma Kirkby and Gothic Voices recording of the famously anti-Jewish Abbess Hildegard von Bingen’s extraordinary A Feather On the Breath of God. Music transcends, even while its composers frequently don’t.)

Does all this make sense? Think about what I wrote, some time ago, about my introduction to music. It was either classical music (long-hear music, a phrase which rapidly grew ironic) or it was like television, and not to be taken seriously: there were the Beatles cartoons, and the Monkees, and Herman’s Hermits — and then suddenly it sounded different: “Tomorrow Never Knows” and the mood and strings of “Eleanor Rigby”, and then the 1-2-3-4 punch of “Within You Without You”, and I was, and am, hooked.

Most Indian classical music takes me right to it, and if you separate the obvious differences between it and so-called western music, and pay any attention to what Ravi Shankar used to say about listening seriously (I think Copper’s readership is perfect for appreciating what I’m saying), it can apply almost anywhere. It’ll be personal — what works for me won’t necessarily work for anyone else — but there’s a state we all have in common, where it’s the music, and whatever your sense of religion or spirituality or god or God is.

To quote the late Dr. Bronner: ALL ONE!

Party.

New York in the late seventies was run-down, crime-ridden, and affordable. We lived in the village; as many businesses had failed, people could rent one of the abundant industrial lofts in the neighborhood for a really cheap price. A friend of ours, a photographer, rented this massive space on Broadway near Waverley Place, and after moving in decided to throw a party. The party was a jolly affair: large crowd, lots of food, and great drugs. At one point it was announced that there would be entertainment. A somewhat well-known dancer called Marilyn would perform. I had met Marilyn a few times through friends and liked her a lot. Before she began she pulled me aside and said the following:

“Roy, at some point in the dance I want to do a striptease.”

“Really?” I said with growing interest.

“Yes. And need your help.”

This increased my interest.

“Watch the dance and when I nod at you, I want you to yell, ‘TAKE IT OFF. TAKE IT OFF!’”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Will you do it?”

“No problem.”

The dance started and as the music got louder and faster, Marilyn twisted and danced in time. The crowd had gathered round in a large circle watching when Marilyn looked at me and nodded.

“TAKE IT OFF!” I yelled, “TAKE IT OFF!”

The next thing I remember was a blow to the gut and the feeling of flying through the air. After I landed two women started pummeling me.

“You sexist piece of shit!” exclaimed one while the other was twisting my arm.

“It’s men like you that make me sick.”

“But, but, but…” I gasped trying to catch my breath. But they were in no mood to listen. I just gave up and after a couple of kicks to my leg they walked away yelling that men are “PIGS!”

McSorley’s Ale House.

McSorley’s Ale House on East Seventh Street has been around for over 150 years. It was, in those days (1982), a somewhat run-down Irish bar, and perhaps still is. No frills, sawdust on the floor, simple food and beer. I had a factory on Bond Street, a few blocks away, and when a friend came to visit from Indianapolis, he asked me to take him for lunch to a “typical New York bar.” McSorley’s it had to be.

We sat down and the gruff waiter gave us a menu. He told us that the only drink available was McSorley’s ale. We ordered our food and I asked for an ale and Gary, my friend, ordered a diet Pepsi. The waiter left and returned shortly with 2 mugs of beer in each hand. He placed the 2 beers on the table in front of me and then moved over to Gary and dropped the 2 mugs from a height of about 10 inches. The beer splattered all over the table and, of course, Gary. The waiter walked away saying, “We only serve beer today!”

Union Square.

Union Square in New York, named for the union of Broadway and Bowery streets, has a storied history as a gathering place for rallies and protests. In the center of what is now a lovely park is a statue of George Washington. I never realized this when I lived there, as it was a park to be avoided. I would often pass on the periphery but never through it, as it was known in the late seventies to be a place for heavy drugs and crime. One day as I was crossing Sixteenth Street, a woman caught my eye. She was wearing a maid’s outfit and was half standing, half crouching in a puddle of water. She was apparently stoned, as she seemed to be defying gravity with her almost imperceptible sway. I had seen this stance before in other drug addicts, an all too common sight in these days. It was a slow gyration that would topple a normal person but it was as if her feet were solidly affixed to the ground making this impossible. What really drew my attention was what she was holding in her hand. It was a white silk dress in a dry cleaner’s bag, the bottom of which was sitting in the dirty puddle. I was fascinated as I watched this thick, black, viscous fluid, slowly wicking its way up the body of the dress.

Christopher St. Pier.

At the bottom of Christopher Street there was a very decrepit pier that jutted into the Hudson River. Before Mayor Bloomberg cleaned up the waterfront, the West Side Highway abutted a conglomeration of run-down warehouses and piers. This was during the Ed Koch mayoralty. He was a jovial buffoon who would often be seen walking through Greenwich Village asking people, “How am I doing?” I once yelled back, “Lousy,” but to no avail. The city was poor so little renovation was attempted.

Nevertheless, New Yorkers are intrepid and on hot summer days, people would flock to the riverfront to catch rays and sometimes a breeze.

Christopher Street Pier was packed the day we visited. Lots of couples, mostly gay, lounging around, talking, playing music, eating, and smoking weed. My wife and I found a spot at the edge of the dock and sat down. The atmosphere was relaxed and the conversation convivial. Suddenly someone yelled, “Look over there!”

We all turned and floating in the water, ten feet from us, was a body. It was bobbing gently near the side of the pier with its empty eye sockets gazing upward. Someone called the police and within a short time a police launch arrived. Adding to the surrealism of the moment, lying on the side of the police boat was a second body that had obviously been recently pulled from the water. We all watched aghast as the policeman fished our body out of the water. When he pulled it out we saw that it was only half a corpse. Its hind quarters and legs were missing and as it was rescued, small fish and crabs poured out of the torso. An overpowering stench wafted over the pier and we gagged. Body retrieved, the launch sped away.

Unfazed as New Yorkers often are, we soon returned to our sunbathing and snacks.