Robert Baird

First, let’s talk about that voice.

Usually, when friends become book authors, you tend to fawn a little too much over their golden meanderings. In my case, the opposite unwittingly happened when I tacked a short mention onto a recent Aural Robert that did not begin to do justice to Stereophile Contributing Editor Robert Levine’s Weep, Shudder, Die, A Guide To Loving Opera (It!/Harper Collins, 2011)

"Phase 4 stereo can only be described as a marvel of sound, a radically new and dramatically potent concept in the art of high fidelity reproduction . . . it stands for motion and an uncanny sense of spatial realism unapproached by conventional disc standards."

Uh huh. And we have a miraculous vintage tube amp out in the swamps, spanned by the Brooklyn Bridge, that we want to sell you!!!

An old hand from Down Under returns to rock . . .

Elvis Presley's best recordings, particularly when it comes to his vocals, are his first.

I know folks, dedicated jazz fans no less, who cannot be dragged into piano and bass duo gigs. Something about not having a drummer spells boredom for them. Not enough going on I guess. Or more likely, there isn't a horn at work. While jazz virtuosity is most often thought of in terms of the more ostentatious sounds of saxophones and trumpets, and the most common perception of jazz groups is quartets or quintets, it's the duo format, at its most pure piano and bass, that has always inspired a special vocabulary and sonic signature. Just a pair of instrumental voices and musical visions engenders the kind of special chemistry and quiet connections that can be heard on the new Kenny Barron and Dave Holland project, the appropriately named The Art of Conversation.

If there ever was a sure-enough soul man, it was the Big O.