Jason Victor Serinus

This week, XM Satellite Radio launches <I>Classical Confidential</I>, a series of hour-long artist profiles. Modeled after XM's <I>Artist Confidential</I> series, in which listeners can get to know high-profile artists "up close and personal," per XM, the new show's first installment features an hour with Sony BMG's favorite male violinist, the sweet-toned, extremely gifted Joshua Bell. Subsequent shows will feature the magnificent mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli and conductor Leonard Slatkin.

In an era when music as instant entertainment enjoys increasing dominance over music as art, cellular phones have emerged as the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/101005upod/">latest purveyor of music on demand</A>. Issues of sound quality mean little when the goal is to accumulate more and more files at an ever-accelerating pace and have ever easier access to those files.

The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra announced the launch of its new e-label, MSO Classics, on October 4. In a worldwide digital distribution deal with IODA, the Independent Online Distribution Alliance, the symphony will draw on its archive of over 300 live performances recorded between 1970 and 2005 for airing on its nationally disseminated radio broadcasts.

Naxos, the world's leading distributor of classical music, has just signed a worldwide digital distribution deal with the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA), which will use its Digital Distribution Dashboard (D3) technology platform to distribute and manage music files from the Naxos family of distributed music labels. The deal entails distributing titles to many of Naxos' 22 Digital Service Providers, including Sony Connect, Rhapsody, iTunes, Napster, and Microsoft (which charges consumers the lowest download price of all: $4.99 for an entire Naxos CD).

Telarc's stunning hybrid multichannel SACD of Jennifer Higdon's <I>City Scape</I> and <I>Concerto for Orchestra</I> has received the 2005 OutMusic Award for Outstanding New Instrumental Recording. The disc has also received the 2005 Grammy for Best Engineered Classical Recording (well-deserved by Jack Renner) and 2005 Grammy nomination for Best Orchestral Performance (equally well-deserved by Higdon champion Robert Spano and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra).

The first National Critics Conference in US history took place May 25&ndash;29 at the Omni Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Subtitled "Critical Unity in Critical Times," the gathering brought together US and Canadian members of organizations devoted to visual arts, dance, jazz, classical music, and theater criticism.

"Some say it dates back to 1927, when <I>Gramophone</I> magazine's editor thundered that electrical reproduction was a step <I>backward</I> in sound quality," said the promotional copy for Home Entertainment 2005's opening-day event, "The Great Debate: Subjectivism on Trial." It continued: "But whenever it started, the Great Debate between 'subjectivists,' who hear differences among audio components, and 'objectivists,' who tend to ascribe such differences to the listeners' overheated imaginations, rages just as strongly in the 21st century as it did in the 20th." On April 29 at the Manhattan Hilton, <I>Stereophile</I> editor John Atkinson and one of the Internet's most vocal audio skeptics, Arnold B. Krueger, debated <I>mano a mano</I> where the line should be drawn between honest reporting and audio delusion.