Claude

The auction has been canceled (by Ebay it seems)

Has someone heard the new RVG of Sonny Rollins "Newk's time"? I received it today and thought there was something wrong with my ears or my hifi set, because the stereo balance was leaning heavily to the left channel. A brief switch to a mono CD and I was reassured that both were ok and that the fault was with the new remastering. The saxophone, piano and bass come out of the middle and the drums are spread between the middle and the left channel. There is nothing on the right channel to balance this, so the whole sound is coming from the left half of the speaker basis. The old McMaster version was balanced normally in this respect. Apart from that, the new remastering is much more dynamic, especially on the drums, but is also a bit on the bright side (cymbals).

Yes. That must have been very shortly before his death. Blue Note - A Story of Modern Jazz (1997)

The Sonny Clark sounds very good indeed. Steve Hoffman always gets the best out of the master tapes. Despite the great line-up, I passed on the Turrentine disc because I found the music to be too uniform and mainstream. Good playing, but nothing memorable really. The stereo mix is said to be rather extreme, with instruments panned hard to both channels and nothing in the middle. I've only heard a mono CD of that session.

They are very hard to find in Europe. I would order them in the US, where they cost $14-16. However many shops currently list them as being out of stock. CD Universe has the Turrentine disc, Amazon.com the Sonny Clark. The Dorham SACD has not yet been released as far as I know. Here is a list of all the Audio Fidelity SACD titles (mostly pop): http://www.sa-cd.net/alltitles/52

Yes, you are right. Picture link removed.

Impressive pictures from Tchernobyl, 18 years after the nuclear disaster: http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/ Reminds me of Tarkovsky's movie "Stalker"

I don't have any recommendations for a specific printer, just some general advice. 15 pages a day is already enough to be aware of the cost of replacement catridges. Many companies offer very cheap (even subsidized) printers which cost less than $80, but charge a lot on cartridges ($30). You should at least get an inkjet printer which has separate B/W and color cartridges, so you can replace them seperately. Check the websites of PC magazines for buying guides and reviews.

Brownie surely knows this better, as I'm not a native french speaker. In classical music, the french word "création" means first public interpretation of a composition. So the "lieu de création" is the city or hall where the first concert took place. I don't know what "diffusion" exactly means in this context, but broadcast could indeed be it. But more generally, those terms could also mean places where music is created and played publicly.

There's got to be a better name for those strips. What are they called in Japan?

I'm off to a classical concert in my city right now. Schuman's piano concerto and Mahler's 5th symphony. I've seen Gary Burton and Makoto Ozone in the same concert hall five days ago.

No, it is a live session from "Europe 1957/58" (booklet), recorded in stereo. From the applause, it seems to have been recorded at a large concert hall.

I have this LRC disc (a japan import CD from 1986, manufactured by Denon). The sound is very good. The total time is 55 min, split equally between the Monk and Roach sessions. I can trade or sell it ($10) if you are interested.

Thanks for the information. This is a good complement to the recent MPS reissues by Koller, Pauer, Dauner etc. German/austrian jazz at it's best. Detailed information and soundclips (2 minutes for every track) are available here: http://www.sonarkollektiv.de/releases/SK019CD/ The same label also released "Forum 60", a compilation of jazz recordings from the east german Amiga label, and a Polish jazz sampler.

http://www.truebluemusic.com/store/ship.html Mosaic charges $12 (surface mail, "6-10 weeks") or $23 (airmail, "3-5 weeks") for international shipments. $23 is twice what other US stores like CD Universe charge for airmailing a few CDs. I remember that when I ordered Mosaic sets through surface mail two years ago they arrived in Europe within 3 weeks. Is that still the case? The shipping duration True Blue indicates seems much to long also for airmail. My orders from other stores usually arrive within 2-3 weeks.

Violinists' fury at 'pay fiddle' Violinists in a German orchestra are suing for a pay rise on the grounds that they play many more notes per concert than their colleagues. BBC Online - March 24, 2004 - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3564071.stm The 16 violinists at the Beethoven Orchestra in Bonn say they work much harder than their fellow musicians. But orchestra director Laurentius Bonitz said it was unreasonable to compare playing a musical instrument to other jobs. Mr Bonitz said the claim, which goes to court in May, was "ridiculous". The violinists say they should receive an extra £60 per rehearsal or performance from their employer, the city of Bonn, to reflect the "extra notes" they have to read and play. They also claim that a collective bargaining agreement that gives bonuses to soloists is unjust. Leading roles German musicians earn basic monthly wages of up to £4,100, about twice as much as their British counterparts, according to the Daily Telegraph newspaper. The musicians deny being pedantic. "We could have calculated the surcharge per semi-quaver, but we chose to take an easier course," one violinist said. But Mr Bonitz argued that it was soloists and musicians in other leading roles, such as the orchestra's two oboe players, who should receive a pay rise. "Maybe it's an interesting legal question but musically, it's very clear to everyone," he said.

"Crucifixion lasts hours! It's a slow, horrible death!" "Well, at least it gets you out in the open air." http://www.intriguing.com/mp/_sounds/lb/crux.wav

Python film to challenge Passion Monty Python's film The Life of Brian is to return to US cinemas next month following the success of The Passion of the Christ. The Biblical satire will be re-released in Los Angeles, New York and other US cities to mark its 25th anniversary. Adverts will challenge Mel Gibson's blockbuster with the lines "Mel or Monty?", "The Passion or the Python?" Complete BBC article Life of Brian - Pictures, Sounds and Scripts

Do you know if RVG mastered these tapes specifically for the LP reissues or if they simply took the JRVG CD masteres to make these pressings?

Wynton is not only a clown, he's also a clone!

Does this have something to do with the AMG SonicGuide? I wouldn't bet that AMG is becoming entirely a pay-site, because the risk of failure is rather high. It is difficult today to sell content that mainly consists in databases of freely available information (discographies, trackslists). The real selling argument would be the revews, but they are too sketchy right now.

Thanks for this interesting article, LAL. I think the lifetime expectancy figures above refer to optimal quality discs. With the cheapest no-name CD-Rs they may be much lower. I've had some discs become unreadable within a few years, despite optimal storage. So for data that are supposed to be stored a long time, such as digital photos or music, it is important to use good quality CD-Rs.

Some of the later Concord sessions are also very good. There is a cheap 2CD compilation available, or if you prefer original albums get Keystone 3, with the Marsalis brothers ... and Chris Albertson as "author" !!! If AMG is correct, I'd be interested in reading what Chris had to say on Wynton

I bought the european copyprotected CD for a friend (I had warned him ). This is the first copyprotected CD I was able to test. I played on my Sony SACD player (SCD-XA777ES). The recording quality is not great (very studio-processed), but I didn't notice any anomaly related to errors on the disc. But in my Philips DVD/SACD player DVD963SA it produced clicking noises throughout every track and was unlistenable. (BTW, I found the music to be dead boring and completely free of any jazz element). I know people who only have this popular player for their CDs. They would have been screwed with this copyprotected disc. I then put the CD into one of my PC drives, an older ACER CD-RW 12x burner, and installed the software player from the CD. The compressed files are 128kbs Windows Media files. It's the Macrovision CDS200 protection scheme. Now comes the odd part: I started my CD grabbing software Easy CD-DA Extractor 6.5 (not a piracy tool) and was able to see all the audio tracks on the CD, as well as a data track. The audio tracks could all be grabbed normally, and sounded fine. No clicking noises. So the copy protection was completely non functional on this CD drive. If my friend for who I bought the CD has problems playing it I will be able to burn him a clean copy. This would be an illegal act But on my Pioneer DVD drive, only the first track showed as an audio track within the grabber interface, the other as data tracks. When I grabbed the first track everything went normal until 99% of the process, then the drive locked completely up and I couldn't get the CD out. I had to reboot my PC. So it seems that the copy protection works well on DVD drives, but can easily be defeated by some CD-R burner drives. Because of the playability problems of CDS200 disc on my DVD player I will not buy any european EMI CDs.

My favourites are "Miles Away" and "Trio+One", both on Owl. It seems they are both OOP, but I had to mention them.