LATEST ADDITIONS

Capital Audio Fest 2021 was well-attended, yes but more importantly the enthusiasm level and excitement was off the charts. CAF usually attracts mainly the newbie and wannabe exhibitors but this year the show was positively mainstream with the show taking up the 3rd floor meeting rooms and 5th floor Twinbrook Hilton hotel rooms as well as the lower level atrium floor where record vendors proliferated and VAC/Von Schweikert occupied the biggest room off to the atrium side.

Not kidding. Supersense and Universal Music Group, Austria are making available a limited number of lacquers cut directly from the original master tapes of a few albums including A Love Supreme and Getz/Gilberto. That's what they are saying, I don't blame you for being incredulous.

Ella Fitzgerald's Christmas album is a secular holiday delight sure to please every listener, even atheists and agnostics. Originally released in 1960, the sound here is warm and inviting as a Yule log burning in the fireplace—once you get past the opener "Jingle Bells", which is somewhat brighter, brasher and more in your face than the rest, though having Ella in your face is hardly problematic.

In the worthy annotation to this historically remarkable release, educator and author of the biography “John Coltrane His Life and Music” Lewis Porter provides a play by play of this unlikely nightclub performance of Coltrane’s worshipful masterpiece recorded October 2nd 1965.