LATEST ADDITIONS

I'm far too disorganized to have kept an accurate count, but I'm pretty sure that at this point in my life I have installed or adjusted well over 5000 phono cartridges. These days I work on three or four turntables in a typical week and have been doing that consistently for the last 40 years.

Music often brings me joy, awe, and, if I'm lucky, something close to transcendence, but it's not my only route there. A few years ago, on a sunny January day in Madrid's Prado museum, I went looking for Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Drummer Cindy Blackman Santana sings along to music from Herbie Hancock, Davis, John Coltrane, Tony Williams, and Wayne Shorter to get her creative juices going. "I do that all the time!" she exclaimed. "It's like breathing to me. It's second nature."

Earlier this year, I wrote two articles on record cleaning, in particular the ultrasonic kind. Some of the ideas I expressed were good and correct, like the choice of surfactant (Tergitol 15-S-9). Others, like the amount of Tergitol to use, were less well-considered.

Oscar Peterson was born in 1925. In late 2026, a set titled World Tour was released on the Mack Avenue/Two Lions label. It is advertised as "part of the continued celebration of Peterson's centennial." Consider this article a modest attempt to join the celebration.

Believe it or not, there are still active shopping malls in the US—and at least one, Garden State Plaza in New Jersey, leases to a modern record store, The Sharp Notes. The notion is so retro it's almost quaint.

Jim Pugh: New American Symphonies; Vivaldi: Concerti per fagotto VI, Sergio Azzolini, L'Onda Armonica, Rebekah Heller: Righteous Rage; Moszkowski: Orchestral Music, Volume 4, Sinfonia Varsovia/Ian Hobson; R. Strauss: An Alpine Symphony; Metamorphosen, London Philharmonic Orchestra/Edward Gardner.