LATEST ADDITIONS

Recent CD purchases that I need to buy all over again on vinyl, in alphabetical order (obviously):

<B>WAGNER: <I>G&#246;tterd&#228;mmerung</I></B><BR>
Hildegard Behrens, Br&#252;nnhilde; Reiner Goldberg, Siegfried; Matti Salminen, Hagen; Bernd Weikl, Gunther; Cheryl Studer, Gutrune; Hanna Schwarz, Waltraute; Ekkehard Wlaschiha, Alberich; Helga Dernesch, First Norn; Tatiana Troyanos, Second Norn; Andrea Gruber, Third Norn; Hei-Kyung Hong, Woglinde; Diane Kesling, Wellgunde; Meredith Parsons, Flosshilde; Metropolitan Opera Orchestra &amp; Chorus; James Levine<BR>
DG 429 385-2 (4 CDs only). Cord Garben, prod.; Wolfgang Mitlehner, eng. DDD. TT: 4:29:53

A powerhouse trio is playing at the Village Vanguard through Sunday—Ethan Iverson on piano, Charlie Haden on bass, Paul Motian on drums. I saw them last night, and if you’re a jazz fan who lives in the Tri-State area, you need to go see them, too. Haden, who made his mark 50 years ago in Ornette Coleman’s original quartet, remains one of the supplest and most instinctively musical bassists around. He knows just when to hit the fundamental of a chord, when to spell out the arpeggio, when to walk the scale, or when simply to evoke the mood of a song. The last time I saw him, playing duets at the Blue Note in August, he’d recently had a hernia operation, and while the notes he played were spot-on, in their customary surprising ways, he couldn’t play very many of them; I wondered, in this blog, if age (he was 70) might finally be taking a toll. Last night proved he’s fully recovered and plucking full-throttled. Motian, who has played off and on with Haden since the early ‘70s (he was also the drummer in Bill Evans’ 1961 trio that played at the Vanguard on <I>Waltz for Debby</I>), is, to put it plainly, a magician. Nearly each bar, he attacks his drumkit, usually with brushes, in a completely different way (the Motian Variations, you might call them), sometimes in a way that seems at odds with what his bandmates are doing (double-time is one thing, but is there such a thing as one-and-a-half time?), yet it all merges and converges <I>perfectly</I>. Iverson is best known as the pianist for The Bad Plus. I like that group a lot, but he goes leagues beyond on his own, excavating hidden patterns, rhythms and motifs from jazz standards, while preserving their lyricism or blues or swing. The set I saw, the trio played mainly ballads and blues, including Bill Evans’ “Blue in Green,” Haden’s “Silence,” and a couple Charlie Parker tunes, which generally aren’t up Haden’s or Motian’s alley but they swung hard and clear and just a bit intricately off the beaten track.

On Saturday, I accompanied my 14-year old sister and her friend to the <a href="http://www.thebamboozle.com/home.php">Bamboozle Festival</a>, held at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Saturday was cold, windy, wet, and gray&#151not the best circumstances for an all-day outdoor festival. On top of that, I had a shocking hangover&#151a gift from the previous night spent with my 26-year old sister and her husband. I wasn't in the mood.

I am a lucky guy. The <i>Stereophile</i> team is always looking out for me. Today I received this e-mail from Bob Deutsch.

Maude Maggart finishes out a six-week stay at the Algonquin Hotel’s Oak Room near Times Square this Saturday. She’s an appealing throwback, including in her repertoire; her best album, I think, is a collection of old Irving Berlin tunes. Her voice is sultry yet sweet, laced with vibrato, pure in tone, mischievous in intonation. Her current show, called “Speaking of Dreams,” which I saw last night, is ripe with naturally passionate slow ballads. Her few shifts uptempo (Sondheim’s “On the Steps of the Castle” and a Jobim tune with acid-trip Marshall Barer lyrics called “Lost in Wonderland”) made me wish she’d do more, but I’m not complaining. Her swoon through “Isn’t It Romantic” was bewitching. Even the show’s one cabaret clich—a medley of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “Look to the Rainbow,” and “The Rainbow Connection”—came off as anything but; it was even stirring. Ms. Maggart looks five or so years younger than her 32 years, and she’s been singing in public for more than half of them. Cabaret clubs are not usually my scene, but I’ll go see her again happily.

The 2008 Vacuum State of the Art Conference & Show will take place on May 24-26 at the Hilton in lovely Vancouver, Washington. VSAC was started in 1997 by Dan and Eileen Schmalle of the Bottlehead Corporation, designers of <a href="http://www.bottlehead.com/et/et.html">some sexy vacuum tube kit amps and preamps</a>. While the Schmalles are no longer involved in managing the conference, they will be on hand as exhibitors, along with many others offering some similarly sexy, tubey goodness (like <a href="http://www.experiencemusic.net/">Experience Music</a>'s The Chase amplifier in the pic above).