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So. Much. DSD News!

6 New DSD Albums
2 Exclusive Early Releases
2 New NativeDSD Blog Posts
2 New ‘One Mic Recordings’
1 New Label Joins NativeDSD

Hi <<First Name>>,

For the further enjoyment of your weekend, we are bringing you 6 new DSD Albums!

• Michael Moore & Paul Berner - Amulet (Sound Liaison)
  * Jazz Recording with Clarinet & Double Bass
  * One Microphone Recording
  * Higher Rates Program: Available up to Stereo DSD 512
  

• Evening Sky - One Mic, Two Weekends (ECM East Records)
  * From the new Label: NCM East Records!
  * Americana Recording with Pedal Steel Guitar, Drums, Bass, Electric Guitar
  * One Microphone Recording
  * Exclusive Early Release at NativeDSD | Official date April 30th
  * Higher Rates Program: Available up to Stereo DSD 512
  

• Javier Laso - Schubert and Schumann: Sonata D. 960 – Davidsbündlertänze, Op. 6 (Eudora Records)
  * Solo Piano, Classical
  * Pure DSD: Recorded, Mixed & Balanced in the DSD domain
  * Exclusive Early Release at NativeDSD | Official date April 30th
  * Includes a Personal Letter from Gonzalo Noqué
  * Higher Rates Program: Available up to Stereo DSD 512
  

• London Symphony Orchestra, Antonio Pappano - Vaughan Williams: Symphonies Nos. 4 & 6 (LSO Live)
  * Classical Orchestral Music in Stereo DSD & 5.1 Channel Multichannel DSD
  * Higher Rates Program: Available up to Stereo DSD 512 and 5.1 Multichannel DSD 256
  

• National Philharmonic Orchestra of Belarus, Daniele Callegari - Friedrich von Flotow: Alessandro Stradella (Fonè Records)
  * Opera in three Acts
  * Double Album
  

• National Philharmonic Orchestra of Belarus, Alexandre Voloschuk - Antonín Dvorák: The Jacobin, Op. 84 (Fonè Records)
  * Opera in three Acts
  * Double Album

In other News, a New DSD Review from Adrian Quanjer (HRAudio) is Published Here on the NativeDSD blog.
“An Hour of Excellent & Intellectual Music”

And as always on Fridays, we reveal our new Album of the Week!

>>> Soprano Sax player Jane Ira Bloom’s Wild Lines: Improvising Emily Dickinson (Audiophile Edition) from the Anderson Audio New York label. Exclusively available in Stereo and Multichannel DSD and DXD at NativeDSD Music. And now on sale! The 20% discount is applied automatically in your cart.

You can now use the NativeDSD Downloader app for Windows and Mac to download your purchases. No more un-zipping is needed. Available in your account.

Happy DSD Listening from all of us at NativeDSD.

Chemistry between musicians is a magical thing. Michael Moore and Paul Berner have that kind of magic. When they play, the music seems to flow in a natural unhindered stream, each note being an obvious continuation of what was played before.

The album starts out with I Never Knew, written by Gus Kahn and Ted FioRito in 1925, ends with You’ll Never Walk Alone from 1945 and along the way includes Night Ride Home, a late 80’ Joni Mitchell song, as well as Emptier and Amulet, two recently composed Michael Moore originals. That’s almost 100 years of song writing right there, yet it all sounds as if each song was composed especially for the Amulet album.

Peter Bjørnild says “It was a thrill to be in the producer’s seat at this session, witnessing these two masters going about their craft. How they would feed off each other and pass the ball at just the right moment. Observing how they would shape a song into a whole by polishing, simplifying, or embellishing where needed, yet all the time being aware of the freshness and immediacy of creating in the moment.”

Michael Moore, Clarinet
Paul Berner, Double Bass

Two Weekends by Evening Sky was recorded with one microphone over two weekends in 2020. The first session was right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit; the other, a month later – with masks on.

The group had released its debut album, a collaboration with different vocalists titled Guest Stars, early in 2020, and it wanted to approach the next record differently.

For this album of all original, instrumental music, the musicians gathered around just One Stereo Ribbon Microphone – an AEA R88 – in drummer Eric Hastings’ studio, The Grapevine in Providence, Rhode Island. No headphones, no overdubs, and “mixing” themselves as they recorded. Additionally, the group members decided the best way to capture this sound was by recording direct to Stereo DSD 128, so the listener could feel like they were in the room with the band.

The result is an expansive yet intimate Americana-Jazz hybrid. The dancing interplay between Chris Brooks’ pedal steel and Gino Rosati’s electric guitar evoke comparisons to Bill Frisell and Buddy Emmons while the rhythm section of Hastings and bassist Joe Potenza lays down grooves that wouldn’t be out of place on a Little Feat or George Benson record. Evening Sky describes its sound as

“Everything from Pat Metheny to Patsy Cline; Coltrane to train beats.”

This set of originals confirms that the band is keeping that musical spirit alive.

Evening Sky
Chris Brooks – Pedal Steel Guitar
Eric Hastings – Drums, Percussion
Joe Potenza – Basses
Gino Rosati – Electric Guitar

Eudora Records is thrilled to welcome Javier Laso to the label. As the great pianist Josep Colom states in the accompanying liner notes, “Javier Laso is inspired”, for “he connects directly with the music, a music which shows us a mysterious place which extends beyond the vicissitudes of life and only a performer who sees that place can reveal it to us.”

The program is a marvelous musical coupling: Schubert’s overwhelmingly moving last Piano Sonata D.960, written just a few weeks before his premature death, and Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze Op. 6, a Romantic and contrasting struggle between the two sides of the composer’s own musical and personal nature. Javier Laso’s rare and inspiring talent is in display in those passionate and insightful performances.

Javier Laso, Piano

Producer & Recording Engineer Gonzalo Noqué tells us:

“I can honestly say that this project is the one I’m most proud of to date. It is not only one of the best sounding albums I’ve done, but above all else, the performances are otherworldly. Javier Laso is simply a genius.”

About ‘Pure DSD’

For this release, NativeDSD Mastering Engineer Tom Caulfield has teamed with Eudora’s Producer and Recording Engineer Gonzalo Noqué to take the album’s original DSD 256 recording session takes and then mixed and balanced them in the DSD domain using the Signalyst HQ Player Pro 4 mastering tools. Each DSD bit rate is individually mixed, balanced, and remodulated to the DSD delivery quality in a separate individual pass. Bringing NativeDSD listeners an exclusive bonus – this wonderful album in Pure DSD! (Other editions of this album, including the Hybrid Super Audio CD (SACD) release were mixed in DXD.)

Throughout the Fourth Symphony Vaughan Williams channels tension and power through the music in amongst moments of light and clarity. It evokes a sense of hardship and persistence, perhaps suggesting the ever-present threat of war in the 1930s.

Written in 1947, the composer’s Sixth Symphony also seems to reflect the hardships and devastation wrought by World War II. Melancholic in some movements, ferocious in others.

London Symphony Orchestra
Sir Antonio Pappano, Conductor

Alessandro Stradella's short, hectic life - he was born in 1644 and assassinated in 1682 - provided more than enough material for numerous operas. His own operatic career started with some smaller pieces for Rome, where his talents as a singer and composer, his aristocratic contacts and his incredible charm ensured him a position at the court.

The album features the Wexford Festival Opera Chorus, the National Philharmonic Orchestra of Belarus and several vocalists conducted by Daniele Callegari performing Friedrich Flotow’s Alessandro Stradella.

One basic feature, which determines the difference between fonè and other record companies, is the recording of performances in their natural spaces, that is in the places where they were originally presented. This leads to a constant search for suitable locations, and the choice of churches, theaters, country mansions, drawing rooms and so on.

The recordings are carried out with the utmost simplicity, the only way not to do violence to the music. All the recording equipment is high fidelity including valve (tube) paired Neumann microphones manufactured in the years 1947 and 1949 (U47, U48 and M49) with an extremely natural and transparent timbre and a bi-microphonic field effect. These microphones have an important history. They were used to record the Beatles at the Abbey Road Studio and by the RCA for the "Living Stereo" recordings.

Costa, Antonov, Morozova, Zahradnicek, Kelly
Wexford Festival Opera Chorus
National Philharmonic Orchestra of Belarus
Daniele Callegari, Conductor

The Jacobin (Jakobín in Czech), Op. 84 (B. 159), is an opera in three acts by Antonín Dvořák to an original Czech libretto by Marie Červinková-Riegrová. Červinková-Riegrová took some of the story’s characters from the story by Alois Jirásek, “At the Ducal Court”, but devised her own plot about them.

Pivovarov, Werba, Grato, Monogarova, Palazzi, Lehotsky, Elliot, Panova, Sharp
Wexford Festival Opera Chorus
National Philharmonic Orchestra of Belarus
Alexandre Voloschuk, Conductor

NativeDSD Senior Reviewer Bill Dodd tells us “It’s been a while since I’ve wandered through the catalog looking for discoveries. I decided to look for some that would help to brighten things a bit. Here are some that do that! And they keep me emotionally involved as I listen…”

The Grammy-winning team of saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom & audio engineer Jim Anderson brings Wild Lines: Improvising Emily Dickinson to Stereo and Multichannel DSD and DXD. This new audiophile edition showcases Bloom’s jazz quartet’s interpretation of Dickinson’s poetry and includes an additional version for Jazz quartet and spoken word featuring readings by popular stage & film actor Deborah Rush.

Bloom performs with her acclaimed quartet in dialogue with poetry in her first foray into music and text in DXD & DSD audio. Her sound is like no other on the Soprano Saxophone and she lets it fly with long-time bandmates Dawn Clement (piano), Mark Helias (bass) & Bobby Previte (drums).

Adding the Emily Dickinson narrative to the ensemble is acclaimed actor Deborah Rush. Bloom composed Wild Lines when she was awarded a CMA/Doris Duke New Jazz Works commission. Bloom was inspired to musically reimagine Dickinson when she learned that the poet was a pianist and improviser herself, reconfirming what she’d always felt in the jazz-like quality of Dickinson’s phrasing.

“I didn’t always understand her, but I always felt Emily’s use of words mirrored the way a jazz musician uses notes.” Wild Lines’ premiere at the poet’s home in Amherst, MA was followed by performances at the Kennedy Center and the NYPL for the Performing Arts. The ensemble then headed into Avatar Studios to record in surround-sound with renowned audio engineer Jim Anderson. The audio production team of Jim Anderson & Ulrike Schwarz mixed the surround sound project at Skywalker Studios and then tapped legendary mastering engineer Bob Ludwig of Gateway Mastering to put on the finishing touches.

The album features fourteen Bloom originals inspired by fragments of Dickinson poetry and prose mined from both her collected works and envelope poems “The Gorgeous Nothings.” The album closes with a solo rendition of an American classic, Rodgers & Hart’s” It’s Easy to Remember.” This time the 21st-century soprano saxophonist reimagines the poetry of 19th-century visionary Emily Dickinson in a high-resolution audio setting with the Anderson Audio team of Ulrike Schwarz and Jim Anderson.

Wild Lines/Improvising Emily Dickinson Audiophile Edition is a sound you’ve never heard before and illuminates why jazz critic Brian Priestly called Jane Ira Bloom “the poet of the soprano saxophone.”

Read a story about listening to surround sound written by Jane Ira Bloom in our Blog.

Jane Ira Bloom – Soprano Saxophone
Dawn Clement – Piano
Mark Helias – Bass
Bobby Previte – Drums
Deborah Rush – Vocals

The 20% discount is automatically applied in your cart.

Thank you for reading our newsletter.
See you next week!

Kind regards, Floor