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I don't know if any of you had the Russian Archives sets from Brilliant, but I had a number of them, including Rostropovich, Oistrakh: Violin Concertos, Viktor Tretiakov and Daniel Shafran. For the price, the sound was fine and the performances were generally great. Anyway, there is some set that gathers up 13 of the original sets for a total of 100 CDs of performances by Soviet/Russian performers: 100 CD set. Now I ordered one of the sets (supposedly on its way as we speak), and the seller claims to have more at $50. Caveat emptor and all that.

Finally got Venture Bros. Season 4 (part 1) on DVD. Crazy, crazy shit. Next thing in my queue is The Day the Universe Changed, which is another series by James Burke (the guy that did Connections) -- this time focusing more on paradigm shifts. I'll see if it interests my son, but I think he is a bit too young to get the idea. And this maybe could go into a WTF thread, though I can't find it now. Very sad story, but as soon as I read it, I thought - life imitating "Six Feet Under": http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/tortilla-factory-worker-killed-in-mixing-accident/?ref=nyregion

Well, this is more of a World Music radio announcement, but I was really excited to see Andy Kershaw seems to finally have straightened himself out and is back on BBC Radio 3. He's paired with Lucy Duran for an 8 part program called Music Planet. Roughly one more day to listen to the first program: Music Planet I do hope that he succeeds through this trial phase and maybe he will get to be one of the rotating DJs for World on 3. Since Charlie Gillett passed away, the remaining two DJs rotate through much faster and I end up hearing far more Irish music than I care to when Mary Ann Kennedy is in the booth. Just in general, I loved his show. I particularly remember when he did Desert Island Discs then did a follow up show where he pulled another 15 or 20 songs he couldn't get to on DID. Classic.

I would imagine minimum charge would be $50 -- and $100 or more is a lot more likely. Sad truth is that for most electronics, particularly computers, it isn't cost effective to repair them.

I folded and ordered this today. Good job! I have almost all of the SACDs and there are so many that I return to often. Sometimes I intend to play something that isn't a Living Stereo, get distracted and reach for one of these instead. They'll get played. The library has a fair number, so I'm somewhat familiar with the series. I was actually close to ordering the single disc of Spanish composers (just called Spain) conducted by Reiner. Then Amazon sneakily insisted I consider this instead, which does include that particular CD. On my system, I'll never be able to hear the difference between SACD and CD. Finding time to listen will be the hard part. I've gone through the massive Gould set one and a half times. I have been a bit better about going through some of the Sony Original Jacket boxes, particularly the Bernstein box and Szell's Beethoven cycle.

I folded and ordered this today.

Wrapped up Shamsie's Kartography. Quite interesting in the way somewhat muted-fairy tale elements are used throughout. Anya Ulinich's Petropolis. It starts off seeming it will be A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian written from the perspective of the mail-order bride (though she ends up in the US not the UK in this novel). But it has more layers than that and was overall a fairly fun romp. Just starting Narayan's Mr. Sampath: The Printer of Malgudi. Looks very promising. I've put my name in the library queue for some of Tony Judt's later essay collections, so I might be reading some non-fiction come Feb. That's probably about the same time I will be tackling Mahfouz's The Cairo Trilogy.

Anyone near Chicago, the Cultural Center just opened a retrospective -- I guess 80-90 prints (out of 100,000+). Should run through early April. I haven't gone (the first week has just been mobbed), but I'll run by very soon, maybe as early as Tuesday. Very excited. I'll almost certainly get the book too.

The opposite can also be true. I'm no art expert (my interest does not go much beyond reacting to classical LP covers and the links with the history of the time the paintings come from), but I recall seeing the Impressionist paintings in Paris in the very early 80s before they moved into the big railway station and being stunned by Van Gogh and Renoir. With the latter it was the way he portrayed the play of light on leaves so perfectly. Oh definitely. Even some of the abstract expressionists, particularly Pollack and Guston, have many paintings that are essentially three dimensional because of the heavy, heavy layering of paint. They come across considerably better in person. And don't forget Ad Reinhardt who started intentionally painting black on black so that it couldn't be reproduced well and one had to see it at a gallery. (This happens to be an idea that is perhaps more powerful than the actual work itself. For some reason -- perhaps as an in-joke -- the MoMA catalog actually has one of these black-on-black paintings, when they really should have given the page over to something else.)

It's interesting - the difference in seeing the work in the flesh. The artist that surprised me most was Dali I think, due to the small scale... sometimes it can be disappointing - I know it sounds ridiculous, but even when I visited the Great Pyramid it was a bit of an anti-climax, I couldn't really grasp the scale or something - due to over-familiarity Actually much of Dali's later work, as well as Metamorphosis of Narcissus, look just fine in person. But after seeing it for most of one's college years on dorm room posters, Persistance of Memory is a let down. It is tiny and you can't see it particularly well in a museum setting as everyone else is crowding in.

I don't read too many mysteries, but I did enjoy Chester Himes. Somehow I came up with The Harlem Cycle in 3 volues. I must have special ordered it. Plan B is near-apocalpytic... Another detective series of interest is the Inspector Espinosa series by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza, which is set in Rio. It's defintely more of a police procedural than a mystery series per se. I've read The Silence of the Rain and December Heat. It looks like there are 3 others translated into English and 2 as yet untranslated.

Daughter and I did the opposite thing - saw the Gorky, but not the Doesburg. The late Gorkys are superb - too much to take in on one visit. (You'll gather from my choices that I'm a big fan of the American abstract expressionists - the visual equivalent of the jazz of that period which is tops for me.) Then you would love the current exhibit at MoMA (and the catalog isn't too shabby either but it is certainly incomplete http://www.amazon.com/Abstract-Expressionism-Museum-Modern-Art/dp/0870707930/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1294847003&sr=8-3). Perhaps the single most surprising exhibit was one on Suitcase Paintings at the Loyola Museum of Art in 2008: http://www.luc.edu/luma/Exhibition_page/Exhibitions_-_Suitca.html. These were all small scale abstract expressionist pieces that could fit into a dealer's oversized suitcase, hence the name. While the catalog is out of print and ridiculously expensive, it was such a fabulous surprise to come across this at such a small museum. I made sure to go back a second time. Biggest disappointment is that apparently I was actually at the Met while their Philip Guston exhibit was winding down and I missed it (was it tucked away somewhere?). I have to say I find this hard to believe I wouldn't have noticed at least one sign for it, and I certainly would have gone had I seen a sign.

Good luck. In addition to the box set I knew the seller wasn't going to produce, I had a book sent from India. I got a yellow slip to sign for it, and left it for the postman for 3 days. Finally, I forgot about it (I thought it was a certified letter about some nearby construction project). When I asked the Indian bookseller where was my book, I finally put two and two together and went to the package retrieval center in Lakeview. I only had another few days before they were going to ship it back, but I certainly never got my second and final notices. Fortunately, that was a fairly rare lapse for the carrier on my route.

I remembered this thread after someone asked if we needed a more general art thread. Anyway, there was a quite good (and focused) Matisse exhibit at Art Institute of Chicago in the first part of 2010. This past weekend, I made it to NYC. I liked this small exhibit at the Met on Miro and his "Dutch" paintings inspired by postcards he bought at the Rijksmuseum. Also, the Abstract Expressionist exhibit at the MoMA is really something else. The catalog is nice, but leaves out some really key works. I was trying to look at the paintings and not be a total tourist who in fact only sees the paintings through a camera lens. But that meant that I didn't take pictures of a few real stunners. I'm going to try to make it back before late April when it closes, though that's a bit unlikely. (Anyone heading over to see it, feel free to PM me...)

I have mixed feelings about this, because it seems the LoC will put incredible resources into preserving and digitizing this collection -- and that's great -- but then Universal can still sit on it and refuse to release it. And for that matter, they may well lobby to have copyright extended over and over. I personally think it is appropriate that they transition it into the public domain, but that'll happen when pigs fly. I don't think it is a particularly good "business model" from the public's perspective.

I'm really struggling to remember what I saw, particularly at the Chicago Jazz Fest (which I personally didn't find all that memorable). Probably the single best was Regina Carter at Chicago's Symphony Center (though unfortunately paired with Esperanza Spalding). Carter was playing off her new CD Reverse Thread, which is pretty interesting. 2. Portico Quartet playing at this real dive in Chicago 3. Dave Holland - Jazz Showcase 4. Rudresh Mahanthappa - Jazz Showcase 5. Either/Orchestra - Chicago Jazz Fest 6. Tatsu Aoki's East-West Orchestra (this probably isn't the official name). Very cool blend of jazz and taiko drumming! Saw some absolutely amazing African groups, including Tinariwen (twice!), Toumani Diabete (also twice in very different settings), and Bassekou Kouyate & his group Ngoni Ba. The classical events were no joke either. We're 2/5 of the way through the Pacifica Quartet's performances of the complete Shostakovich String Quartets. For me personally, the African and classical events were stronger than the live jazz performances, though I enjoyed those as well. Edit: I knew I was forgetting something. J.H.'s awesome list reminded me that I had also seen Konono #1 in Millennium Park. Great show!

I was getting kind of antsy about deliveries around the holidays, though they all came through. There was one which I didn't expect to get -- the seller had grossly underpriced a box set. Of course, it never arrived. They claim they sent it (without tracking). Sure... They gave me the refund without any hassle. It would have been cool to get the set, but I went into that transaction quite sure they weren't going to deliver. Guess it's all about expectations.

I was given a CD player and a few CDs in 1987 as a graduation present. I think there was a Columbia jazz sampler as well. I bought a few CDs over the summer, including some Beatles. But I didn't have the CD player with me on a regular basis, so I actually bought a fair number of cassette tapes from 1987-89. It wasn't until 1989-90 that I started buying CDs on a fairly regular basis. As far as the (jazz) collecting mania, that seems to have started around 2000.

I finally tracked down a copy at JazzLoft (not for $12, it is true). It looks like he still has a copy or two: http://www.jazzloft.com/m-30206-aldo-romano.aspx Carnet de Routes and African Flashback are very much in the same vein (and both have killer booklets of photos), so you might want to consider them as well.

Thanks! I really had planned on going Sat. evening, but the temperature just dropped too much for it to be worth it (always far too much standing around on El platforms when I travel to the Green Mill).

Ironically, Northwestern put up the best fight, but still came up short. Well, maybe next year.

Yeah, I saw For Sure at Dusty Groove, but I am pretty sure I already have this session.

There is a thread about best art exhibits you've seen, but it's a bit buried...

If I could find it cheap enough, I would get this. I don't think anything/anyone would convince or compel me to get the Benedetti set. Just not my cup of tea.

I really enjoyed this one. I wasn't that taken with Number9Dream. Haven't read his latest two, but will probably get to them one day. On a bit of a tangent, I am wondering when Murakami's 1Q84 comes out in English. I was somewhere where I actually saw it in Japanese (probably just the first volume), but it would have been pointless and pretentious to have bought it.