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Jazz Composers Collective at 20
Photo: Lourdes Delgado
All this week, the Jazz Standard in New York will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Jazz Composers Collective, the brainchild of five musicians who formed five distinct bands: the personnel would remain the same, but each player would lead his own band and compose all of its music.
Both concepts were unusual at the time: the continuity of players and the insistence on original compositions. Back then, jazz musicians rotated in and out of bands, not the other way around; and the emphasis was on covering standards or blowing improvisations.
And the players, then in their late-20s to mid-30s, were top-notch (from L–R in photo): Michael Blake; Ron Horton, trumpet; Ted Nash, reeds; Ben Allison, bass; and Frank Kimbrough, piano. All are now staples of the city's jazz scene; Allison, Kimbrough and Nash (the de facto leaders even then) are renowned leaders on their own. They still play together now and then, though with steadily less frequency–which is why this week's festival at the Standard is such a treat: 11 bands featuring at least some of the original members, a few of them all back together again.
In its instrumentation, the original ensemble was a conventional jazz quintet; but its music was anything but. The composers combined rhythms and colors from all over the jazz bandwidth, sprinkled occasionally with a third-world spice (an oud, a kora, odd time-signatures). This eclecticism too is now the norm, but, again, it wasn't in the early 1990s.
After a while, they branched out, most notably into the Herbie Nichols Project, a passionate quest of Kimbrough and Allison, in particular, doing yeoman's research into the archives of Herbie Nichols, an unjustly neglected great pianist and composer of the early 1950s (a peer of Monk who, like him, made a few albums for Blue Note in the early '50s but never climbed into the mainstream), and arranging his pieces for the JCC.
All three of the Herbie Nichols Project albums are worth getting: Love Is Proximity (1997), Dr. Cyclops' Dream (2000), and Strange City (2001).
Most of the Collectives' CDs were released under Ben Allison's name, They're all spirited, inventive, with heady harmonies and a strange but infectious sort of swing: Medicine Wheel (1998), Third Eye (1999), Riding the Nuclear Tiger (2001), and Peace Piece (2002). The sound quality is quite good on all of them as well.
Kimbrough, perhaps the most underrated of today's top-flight jazz pianists, has put out several good albums under his own name, most notably Chant (with Allison and Jeff Ballard), Play (a trio date that includes Paul Motian on drums), and especially Air, a stellar solo work. He's also the longstanding pianist in Maria Schneider's Jazz Orchestra.
Nash, who now plays in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra headed by Wynton Marsalis, is best heard as a leader on Sidewalk Meeting and Still Evolved.
If you can't make it to some of the Jazz Standard sets (the calendar is here, buy some of these albums.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Richard Vandersteen at Advanced Audio Systems
Photo by chrissy from the Stereophile Galleries.
Saturday, November 3, 12pm: Advanced Audio Systems (6450 Tacoma Mall Boulevard, Tacoma, WA) will host a seminar with iconic loudspeaker designer Richard Vandersteen. The event will consist of product demonstrations and a question and answer session with Vandersteen. To register for the event, follow this link.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Meet the Innovators: Dan D'Agostino at Innovative Audio
The D'Agostino Master Systems Analog Preamplifier, first seen at the 2011 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. Photo: John Atkinson
Wednesday, September 19, 6–9pm: Innovative Audio Video (150 East 58th Street, New York) will hold a “Meet the Innovators” event, featuring Dan D’Agostino, who will introduce and demonstrate the new D'Agostino Master Audio Systems Momentum Analog preamplifier. Refreshments will be served. Space is limited. RSVP: (212) 634-4444 or info@iavny.com.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Magico S5 at David Michael Audio
Photo: Magico LLC
Saturday, September 29, 11am–6pm: David Michael Audio (4341 Delemere Court, Royal Oak, MI) will host a demonstration of the Magico S5 loudspeaker ($28,600/pair), which had impressed John Atkinson at the 2012 Newport Beach Show. Irv Gross, Magico’s director of sales, will be on hand to present the speaker and answer any questions. Refreshments will be served. Seating is limited. For more info, call (586) 244-8479. RSVP: info@davidmichaelaudio.com.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Lamps and Stuff
My latest addiction is “Stuff I’ve Been Reading,” Nick Hornby’s column for The Believer. I know: It's very hipster/nerdy of me to be reading this stuff; you might even think I live in nerdy Brooklyn. But, I swear, I live in Jersey City, and I have completely sincere and profound reasons for reading The Believer and "Stuff."
Not only does it remind me of how much I admire and enjoy Hornby’s writing—he’s clear, deep, funny, and extremely likable even when he’s being snarky and clever—but it also fuels my passion for reading. And when I read, I feel like a better person: stronger, smarter, healthier, whatever. Profound, see?
When I read, I at least feel like I have something to say. When I read, I’m happy.
You should check it out. In the preface to Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, the second of four published collections of “Stuff,” Hornby reminds us that reading addresses many of our needs, none more important than simple pleasure. Read the books you like, and don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn't enjoy Moby Dick or The Hunger Games or whatever.
There’s something to be learned here, even for you know-it-all audiophiles.
As these things go, I was prompted to search online for more of Hornby’s Believer work. And, at believermag.com, I found out about Love Songs for Lamps. Compiled by Calvin Johnson, founder of K Records and perhaps best known for his work in Dub Narcotic Sound System, Love Songs for Lamps is a mixtape. A real one—on a cassette, you know?
I’ve tried explaining my fondness for cassettes, in person and in print, at least 500 times now, but I've never said it as well as The Believer:
Cassettes—people love them. They want them. Cassettes are cuddly. They are Star Wars while CDs are Battlestar Galactica (MP3s, of course, are The Matrix.) They come in colors; you can collect them and trade them. Hang them on your wall. Use them as Valentines. You don’t have a cassette player? Go buy one at a thrift store for three dollars. Join the fun. Join the cassette party and tape over all of your roommate’s favorite music. Here is a selection of contemporary artists who have, for whatever wise reason, decided to release their work as cassette-only. No CD version, no LP. No 8-track. These bands don’t come with managers, publicists, booking agents, or publishing deals, so no one told them not to make cassettes. Nor are they concerned with their “draw” or “following,” and they won’t bore you with endless discussions about their “careers.” They’re just doing their thing, baby. Dig it.
Want to see the selection of contemporary artists who have, for whatever reason, decided to release their work as cassette-only? Click right here. I figured this would be fun for the cassette lovers (and haters) out there. If you don’t like it, don’t listen. Thank Nick Hornby and The Believer.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
Phil Muzio, Madrigal's CEO
Photo: Mercury Pictures: Chris Fitzgerald
Madrigal's chief executive officer is known for working well into the night, but that's been a goal of his since boyhood. For many years he dreamed of becoming a professional guitarist, and even dropped out of Yale to satisfy a ravenous musical appetite. "Enough of trying to be a Renaissance man," Phil Muzio recalls thinking at the time. His aim was to be out there on the bandstand making music.
Muzio was born in 1954 and grew up on his family's 47-acre vegetable farm in North Haven, Connecticut. (The land, which his Sicilian-born grandfather bought in 1902, is just a 35-minute drive from Madrigal's Middletown headquarters, where Mark Levinson and Proceed components are manufactured and where the marketing of Revel speakers is handled.) At age 16, while still in high school, he took a part-time job at a New Haven audio shop called David Dean Smith. The eponymous Mr. Smith was one of America's first hi-fi specialty dealers.
Phil subsequently entered Yale, but left after his freshman year to study music at the University of Hartford's Hartt School and at the University of Bridgeport, where his teachers included the jazz guitarists Neil Slater and Sal Salvador. He continued to work at David Dean Smith and, one Thursday evening in 1974, he recognized a young musician who strolled onto the sales floor—a bass player, whose picture had appeared on a Paul Bley album cover.
That chance meeting with Mark Levinson was the real start of Phil Muzio's career, which now occupies more hours—day and evening—than he ever envisioned it would.
David Lander: You began working at Mark Levinson Audio Systems in 1974, two years after the company was established. What were your duties in the early years?
Phil Muzio: I was first doing odd assignments for Mark Levinson—delivering things, picking things up. When I started working inside the company, Mark had launched Mark Levinson Acoustic Recordings, and I was inspecting records, doing listening tests and final quality assurance, particularly on the LNP-2 preamplifier. Then I became associated with his engineer at the time, Tom Colangelo. He was overloaded, and he gave me a circuit schematic he needed breadboarded. I had done a lot of that work. I was a hi-fi hobbyist, and I had built several of my own preamplifiers by going into the basement at David Dean Smith and pulling the schematics out of the backs of service manuals and asking a lot of questions of the people in the service department. I built the board and returned it to him in a couple of hours, and he fired it up, and it worked. So he went to Mark and said, "I need this guy in the engineering department." It just kind of snowballed at that point.
Lander: By 1980, you were managing the engineering department. What did it consist of?
Muzio: There were five people, primarily Tom, but zero degreed engineers. It was a design department.
Lander: Was Mark still using John Curl or Richard Burwen designs, as he had done at first?
Muzio: No. We weren't getting any designs from John Curl or Richard at that point.
Lander: Many years ago, you began doing listening tests on equipment under development. That voicing, as you call it, helped create the large, spacious, enveloping sound that characterizes Levinson. What, specifically, are you listening for?
Muzio: I'm not one who gets off on saying that our sound is accurate. Anybody can say "We strive for accuracy." In point of fact, today, products from different manufacturers sound as widely different as they did 20 years ago. The sonic signature is really a personal choice. Bottom line: We're in the entertainment business. Our goal—and we've said this consistently for 30 years—is to re-create the original musical event. That goes beyond saying a violin sounds like a violin and a trumpet sounds like a trumpet. I'm talking about being able to convey the emotional message that the artist can convey in a live performance. Our job is to re-create that within a home.
Lander: What specific sonic characteristics do you focus on in order to get the job done?
Muzio: One is resolution, the detail available in a live musical performance that gives you the cues that trick you into thinking you're there. If it's a live recording, there are cues from the audience. In a piano recital, it's being able to hear pedals being pressed. There's a level of resolution that's key to creating that illusion.
Another one is dynamics. Without that, you'll never believe that it's really music. Acoustic instruments are wonderfully dynamic—-they get loud real fast, they get very quiet. You have to be able to optimize the electronics so they don't limit the capacity to put the dynamics of a performance in the room. That's something we call harmonic richness.
And imaging, the localization of the performers. You get that with the first notes played in a live performance. You know where people are across the performance area, but you also know who's close, who's far away, who's in the back and off to the right. And then you also get a sense of the space. You have to be able to convey that because, on most recordings, all that information is there.
Lander: You've said that you got out of the live music business because you ultimately decided you weren't good enough to succeed as a top-level performer. Before that, though, you did play professionally. Does that experience inform your in-house listening sessions?
Muzio: I had a lot of experience playing in big bands. That was good training. I know that people don't have long aural memories, but I do believe that something develops.
Lander: "The ear educates itself," is how Rudy Bozak—that grand old man of loudspeakers—once put it.
Muzio: Correct. I've spent my life listening, and I think I have a sense of when something sounds right. "Right," to me, means it sounds like it really does occur in the room. And I think I have a sense of when things sound wrong. I was in the rhythm section, so to my left the saxophones were in front, the trumpets were in back. I always got a kick out of people saying, particularly with tube equipment, "It's so musical. It's so warm." If you've ever listened to a trumpet live, you'd never describe it as warm. It's brash. When I read reviewers who say the trumpets were harsh, I never know if they're commenting that they don't like the way trumpets sound or they don't like the way the system is re-creating the sound.
Lander: You've said it varies from project to project, but how many hours might you spend in the listening room evaluating a product during development?
Muzio: Hundreds. We start very early in the design of a product, in engineering, because there are decisions that need to be made at a topological level. That isn't every circuit block in every product; it's up for grabs. There's a lot of science here. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a product that's designed with good engineering practices, good basic physics, good electronics principles, etc., will outperform a product that isn't.
We place a high value on proper design practices and good bench measurements, but there's a flip side to the product-development process. We don't sell the measurements—we sell the experience, and the experience happens in the listening room. It's evaluated by people with their ears. Those two things go hand in hand. You advance the electrical design, and you confirm it in the sound room. From our experience, we know that certain circuit blocks within a product are more influential than others.
We have a whole library of topologies—and we advance them, they evolve. There are a lot of areas in digital design where the library continues to grow, because we're doing more products that have more digital parts to them than ever before. So our guys may come to me and say, "These three circuits all measure well, we think they're all valid to use in this block, but we need you to listen to them to see which one sounds better."
Lander: These days, you listen along with Tom Calatayud, a senior design engineer. Is that so there's someone present who can pinpoint the technological reasons why you're hearing—or not hearing—something?
Muzio: That's part of the reason. We have a pretty stable crew here, and a number of the key players in engineering have gone through this process with me many, many times. They understand what I mean when I say certain things. They know what I expect.
Lander: And, I would think, specific electronics problems create certain sonic aberrations.
Muzio: There are certain sonic characteristics to a system that has ground-loop problems. If it does X, Y, and Z, you have ground-loop problems. There's a whole library of those kinds of things. There's a history that builds up year after year after year.
Lander: Do you know which version of a circuit each prototype under evaluation is using?
Muzio: I never know what choices I'm making. I may know that tonight we need to decide on a feedback loop for a particular amplifier.
Lander: So, in effect, the tests are blind.
Muzio: Yes.
Lander: What are your feelings about the future of SACD and DVD-Audio?
Muzio: I stopped playing the horses, so to speak, some time ago, because I found it not to be productive. With SACD and DVD-Audio, we're talking about formats that, performancewise, have a lot of potential. What I think is important to the marketplace today is compatibility.
Source : stereophile[dot]com
