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MartinLogan Renaissance ESL 15A
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Latest

Keith Jarrett: "Munich 2016"

Details
CD music

November 2019

ECM 2667/68
Format: 2 CDs

Musical Performance
*****

Sound Quality
****

Overall Enjoyment
*****

Sometime around 1970, a young German bassist and record producer named Manfred Eicher sent a letter to American pianist Keith Jarrett, requesting that Jarrett consider making a trio record for Eicher’s nascent ECM Records label. As Eicher recalled it recently for a lengthy DownBeat magazine article in honor of the label’s 50th anniversary, the request was that Jarrett record with drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Gary Peacock. Jarrett, two years younger than Eicher, had a different idea. Already well known for his four-year tenure with saxophonist Charles Lloyd’s popular quartet, which included DeJohnette, and having recorded a handful of albums under his own name, the pianist wanted to move in a new direction.

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"Fists in the Pocket"

Details
Blu-ray movies

October 2019

Lou Castel’s Memorable Portrayal of a Serial Killer in the Making

The Criterion Collection 333
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment
****

Picture Quality
****

Sound Quality
***1/2

Extras
***

Dysfunctional families have always been great fodder for makers of film and television. You can scarcely watch a TV comedy show these days that doesn’t revolve around a screwed-up family. And filmmakers have found that dysfunctional families can be things of terror.

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Harman/Kardon Citation One Wi-Fi Speaker

Details
Music Everywhere

October 2019

Other than its AC power connection, the latest and smallest member of Harman/Kardon’s Citation line of Wi-Fi speakers is truly wireless. You can send it music via a Chromecast-enabled app, Bluetooth, or Google Assistant -- it has no input of any kind for a wired device. The Citation One seems a bit pricey at $199.95 USD, but Amazon and other dealers offer significant discounts -- even Harman/Kardon currently sells it for $159.95.

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Wilco’s "Summerteeth" -- 20 Years Later

Details
Curator

October 2019

When SoundStage! Network publisher Doug Schneider and I first talked about a column that would call attention to important rock recordings, I leaned toward albums I’d grown up with that are now part of the rock canon. But a few weeks ago, while listening to Wilco’s third album, Summerteeth, it occurred to me that a more current release would be worth looking at in depth. Then I looked at the release date: In March of this year, Summerteeth turned 20. Wilco themselves got together 25 years ago. So much for my being hip and cutting-edge -- but Wilco very much retains those qualities.

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Bruce Cockburn: "Crowing Ignites"

Details
CD music

October 2019

True North TND737
Format: CD

Musical Performance
*****

Sound Quality
*****

Overall Enjoyment
****

If, like me, you grew up in the western annex of Ottawa’s compact urban core, you felt you owned a little piece of Bruce Cockburn, who lived in the area for 18 years. You could recite the names of his early bands: The Flying Circus, Olivus, 3’s a Crowd, and The Children. You got to see him in the tight confines of Le Hibou, the city’s venerable coffeehouse, and you felt a frisson of association when his music caught on worldwide around 1979. If you got to actually rub shoulders with him -- which for me was backstage at Edmonton’s Jubilee Auditorium in 1980, at the time when he dressed in guerrilla fatigues and a black beret -- you felt like you were hanging with a guy from the neighborhood rather than someone who was about to have an international hit with “Wondering Where the Lions Are” and appear on Saturday Night Live.

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"Magnificent Obsession" (1954)

Details
Blu-ray movies

September 2019

Douglas Sirk’s Extreme Melodrama Gets the Criterion BD Treatment

The Criterion Collection 457
Format: Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 987
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment
**1/2

Picture Quality
****

Sound Quality
***

Extras
***

Magnificent Obsession was the first book written by minister Lloyd C. Douglas (1877-1951), in 1929. Douglas would go on to write many other books, including The Robe (1942), usually considered his best. Universal Pictures acquired the film rights to Magnificent Obsession, and in 1935 John M. Stahl directed a black-and-white version, starring Irene Dunne and Robert Taylor, that received good notices. A second film version, this one in Technicolor and starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman, was directed in 1954 by Douglas Sirk, king of the 1950s Hollywood “weepies.” Most people consider the later version to be the better of the two, but I’m not one of them. Fortunately, this two-disc set contains both versions.

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JBL PartyBox 300 Bluetooth Speaker

Details
Music Everywhere

September 2019

JBL’s mammoth PartyBox 300 speaker is aptly named. It stands 27”H x 13”W x 12.7”D, weighs 34 pounds, plays really loud, and has microphone and guitar inputs for karaoke. Two PartyBoxes can be set up for stereo, and the LEDs that encircle its woofers light up with an impressive show of mesmerizing color patterns. It’s physically imposing -- but does it justify its price of $449.95 USD?

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Bill Frisell: "Harmony"

Details
CD music

September 2019

Blue Note B0030782-02
Format: CD

Musical Performance
****

Sound Quality
*****

Overall Enjoyment
****

In several ways, guitarist Bill Frisell is the ultimate Baby Boomer improvising musician. Born in Baltimore in 1951, raised in Denver, Frisell grew up listening to the rich panoply of popular music in the ’50s, fell in love with the Beach Boys and the Beatles, and had his mind blown with the rest of us by Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and the other revolutionary electric guitarists of the late ’60s.

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"Klute"

Details
Blu-ray movies

August 2019

A Mesmerizing Jane Fonda on Criterion Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 987
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment
****

Picture Quality
****1/2

Sound Quality
****

Extras
****

Jane Fonda won her first Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Klute (1971). Though she went on to win another Oscar, for Coming Home (1978), as well as many Golden Globes and other awards, we perhaps most easily remember her for the prostitute she plays here. Klute was one of the first films I remember seeing that explored the desires and vulnerabilities of a strong female character. Not long into rehearsal, Fonda wanted to quit, but director Alan J. Pakula (1928-1998) persuaded her to stay on. At the time, Fonda was heavily involved in the movement to end the war in Vietnam, but Pakula later attested that she never let that get in the way of her profession.

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Kanto Tuk Powered Loudspeakers

Details
Music Everywhere

August 2019

It’s refreshing to see a speaker system that has a model name instead of a number. The Tuk ($799.99/pair USD) comes from the Canadian company Kanto Distribution Inc., and is named for Tuktoyaktuk, a remote village on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, where the aurora borealis is particularly spectacular.

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Anthony Braxton: "Quartet (New Haven) 2014"

Details
Download music

August 2019

Firehouse 12 FH12-04-02-030
Format: 16-bit/44.1kHz FLAC download

Musical Performance
****

Sound Quality
*****

Overall Enjoyment
****

Anthony Braxton loves Merle Haggard.

That’s right. Braxton. The cardigan-wearing, pipe-puffing cypher who plays every reed instrument under the sun and gives obscure titles to his avant-garde compositions. He loves the Okie from Muskogee so much that he and his bandmates -- guitarist Nels Cline, trumpeter Taylor Ho Bynum, and drummer Greg Saunier -- devote an entire hour of this four-hour improvised session to him. According to the other dedications on Quartet (New Haven) 2014, he also digs Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and James Brown.

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"War and Peace" (1966-67)

Details
Blu-ray movies

July 2019

Sergei Bondarchuk’s Restored Masterpiece Dazzles in a New BD from Criterion

The Criterion Collection 983
Format: Blu-ray

Overall Enjoyment
****1/2

Picture Quality
****1/2

Sound Quality
***1/2

Extras
****

Leo Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace is in the DNA of all Russians. I don’t know if it’s true any longer, but in the 1960s, when this film version was released, every Russian teenage girl wanted to be Natasha Rostova, here radiantly portrayed by Lyudmila Saveleva -- at least, that’s a view supported by one of the excellent extras Criterion includes in this Blu-ray Disc edition.

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Grace Digital EcoXGear EcoTrek Bluetooth Speaker

Details
Music Everywhere

July 2019

Reviewers' ChoiceI remember when Grace Digital launched their first EcoXGear model -- a small, waterproof Bluetooth speaker. Now the line has swollen to more than 20 speakers of all sizes and prices, and something for everyone. One of the most recent is the mighty EcoTrek ($229.99 USD). Weighing 19.2 pounds and measuring 17”H x 15”W x 10.2”D, it falls midway between the EcoBoulder ($249.99) and the EcoXplorer ($169.99), both of which I’ve reviewed -- but the EcoTrek is the only stereo model of those three. Or you can link two EcoTreks, set up as much as 30’ apart, for two-speaker stereo.

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Bruce Springsteen: "Western Stars"

Details
CD music

July 2019

Columbia 19075941972
Format: CD

Musical Performance
*****

Sound Quality
****

Overall Enjoyment
****

The summer I turned 14, my father took us on a month-long road trip through the US Midwest, out to the western edge of Montana. Fifty years later, the enduring memories include the early mornings speeding west along Interstate 90 -- the sun rising behind us and Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” ubiquitous on AM radio.

Read more …

  1. "The Heiress"
  2. Recording Drums with Howard Bilerman, Part 3: The Mix
  3. JBL Link 300 Voice-Activated Wi-Fi Speaker
  4. Various Artists: "Jazz Fest: The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival"
  5. The Allman Brothers Band's "At Fillmore East" at 48
  6. “A Face in the Crowd”
  7. Audioengine 512 Portable Bluetooth Speaker
  8. Michael Gregory Jackson Clarity Quartet: "WHENUFINDITUWILLKNOW"
  9. "To Sleep with Anger"
  10. Recording Drums with Howard Bilerman, Part 2: Loel Campbell on Setting Up Drums
  11. JBL Charge 4 Bluetooth Speaker
  12. Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea Reissued in Blue Note's Tone Poet Series
  13. Van Morrison: "The Healing Game (Deluxe Edition)"
  14. Grace Digital Mondo+ Classic Wi-Fi Radio
  15. "The Magnificent Ambersons"

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