Holding his thumb and forefinger together to reveal barely a sliver of light, <A HREF="mailto:calish@ix.netcom.com">Chris English</A> said, "This close. We're this close." He wasn't talking about how far apart we were sitting, but about how close <A HREF="http://www.threshold.com/">Threshold</A> is to being back in business after an <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10096/">attempted restructuring</A> last year did not work out.
Accidents and disasters have no sense of good timing, and when they strike have a way of fouling even the most promising love affairs. Case in point: loudspeaker manufacturer <A HREF="http://www.vonschweikert.com/">Von Schweikert Research</A> and the small town of Watertown (pop. 30,000) in northern New York, about three hours' drive from Toronto.
Owners of Apogee Acoustics loudspeakers are apparently being left to twist in the wind by <A HREF="http://www.adst.com/">a/d/s/</A>, the company that took over Apogee and subsequently shut it down (other than to apply the brand to a range of switch-mode power amplification modules). Service will no longer be available for the ribbon speakers, according to Apogee owner <A HREF="mailto:mcarnicelli@bigfoot.com">Matt Carnicelli</A>.
Among major American cities, San Francisco probably ranks near the top in culture per capita. It's therefore no accident that an Internet venture billing itself "the world's first website journal of classical music criticism" should have originated there. The site, <A HREF="http://www.sfcv.org/"><I>San Francisco Classical Voice</I></A>, is celebrating its first six months online.
The world is mourning the passing of Yehudi Menuhin. The 82-year-old violinist, conductor, author, educator, and humanitarian died of heart failure at Berlin's Martin Luther Hospital on Friday, March 7. He was in Berlin to conduct performances of Brahms and Mendelssohn by the Warsaw Symphony Orchestra.
The musical road less traveled leads to places like New York's <A HREF="http://www.dtmgallery.com/">Downtown Music Gallery</A>. If your taste in music lies somewhere outside the marketing-demographic bell curve, DTMG has tunes for you: live tunes, recorded tunes, strange tunes, bargain tunes. There's something for <I>almost</I> everyone at recently launched www.dtmgallery.com---from Classical to Klezmer to Progressive Jazz to World Music to Absolutely Uncategorizable.
In the race for technological superiority, audio electronics companies in the United Kingdom, with a few notable exceptions, haven't often been first out of the gate. <A HREF="http://www.arcam.co.uk/">Arcam</A>, however, may have already lapped the field with its Alpha 10 DRT (Digital Radio Tuner).
Singer Dusty Springfield died at her home near Oxford, England last Tuesday, March 2, a few weeks before what would have been her 60th birthday and only one day before she was to have appeared at Buckingham Palace to be honored by Queen Elizabeth. The cause was breast cancer.
Unit sales of CD players rebounded in 1998, rising 4% to $336 million, according to statistics from the <A HREF="http://www.cemacity.org/">Consumer Electronics Manufacturers Association</A>. All segments of the CD hardware market---single-play, carousel changers, and mega-disc changers---improved over the big slump of 1997, when unit sales fell 60% and dollar sales fell 40%. Through November 1998, single-disc player sales were up 33% in units and 24% in dollar volume. Carousel changers, component-CD's largest segment, rose 15% in units and 7.5% in dollars during the first three quarters of 1998.
The popular condensation of Darwin's theory of evolution is "adapt or die." The phrase could certainly have been addressed to the music-industry establishment by any one of four Internet entrepreneurs in a public discussion last week at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club. The four---Gerry Kearby of <A HREF="http://www.liquidaudio.com/">Liquid Audio</A>, Gene Hoffman of <A HREF="http://www.goodnoise.com/">GoodNoise</A>, Arnold Brown of <A HREF="http://www.audioexplosion.com/">AudioExplosion</A>, and Andrew Keen of <A HREF="http://www.audiocafe.com/">Audiocafe.com</A>---gathered at the public affairs forum Tuesday evening, February 22, for a spirited discussion of "The Future of Music Distribution."