Chamber Music Palisades is an organization based in Pacific Palisades, California (which just happens to be where I reside) headed by pianist Delores Stevens and flutist Susan Greenberg. They have been putting on chamber music concerts on the west side of Los Angeles for just over 10 years...by collaborating with some of the best players in Los Angeles. This is the first recording project that the ensemble has produced and it is a triumph both musically and sonically.

For their inaugural recording project, the co-artisitc directors selected the Shostakovich Piano Quintet Op. 57 in G minor written in the summer of 1940 as the focal point. Shostakovich played the piece at the premiere that same year with the Beethoven Quartet on November 23 of that same year. The piece is a fusion of elements and styles drawn from Shostakovich's experiences as a movie-house pianist during his time as a student and his familiarity with the works of other composers...especially Cesar Franck and Ludwig van Beethoven. Included among the five movements, which are group in three segments, are a Prelude and Fugue; Scherzo; Intermezzo and Finale.

The CMP (Chamber Music Palisades) ensemble enlisted the assistance of some of the finest string players on the west coast for this recording. Roger Wilkie, founding member of the Angeles Quartet, member of the Pacific Trio and principal of the Long Beach Symphony, is a Southern California native and graduate of California State University, Northridge (he was a student there at the same time that I was doing my undergraduate work in composition...small world!). A very fine chamber music performer, Roger plays the first violin in the Shostakovich and handles the beautiful melodies of the Intermezzo and Finale with equal skill as the bouncing Scherzo movement.

René Mandel plays the second violin in the Piano Quintet. He was the concertmaster for the Music Academy of the West and is currently the principal second violinist for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra under Jeffrey Kahane. His playing in the Shostakovich lays in perfect relief to that of the first violin and is aptly powerful in the opening movement and Finale.

Paul Coletti was born in Scotland to Italian parents and played viola internationally for many years before settling in Southern California. He is on the faculty of the Colburn School for the Performing Arts and will be the guest of the Beijing Conservatory during 2008. Mr. Coletti's viola playing is absolutely first rate. He manages to bring a richness of tone and singing quality to his playing that is highly prized and captured on both the Shostakovich and Debussy tracks.

Peter Stumpf spent 12 years as the Associate Principal Cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra before becoming the Principal Cellist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2002. A dedicated chamber music musician, Peter's playing is exemplary on both the Shostakovich and the Brockman. He seems equally at home playing the singing, high register lines of the quintet as he does the percussive, pulsating rhythms of the contemporary work.

Delores Stevens, the pianist for CMP and pianist for the Martha's Vineyard Chamber Music Society Summer Music Festival, played on the very first AIX Records recording back in 2001. I first met her during her tenure at CSU Dominguez Hills, where I am the head of the recording arts program. Her work on the Brahms 7 years ago and her crafted playing of the Shostakovich is clear and concise yet full of emotion when necessary.

The Shostakovich Quintet is a 20th Century chamber music masterwork and the performance on this first every HD Surround music rendition brings the piece into new relief. There is none of the over-hyped artificial reverberation that weakens so many chamber music recordings. The sense of space and envelopment that the "stage" perspective mix brings to the work allows the listener to experience the complex interplay of the Fugue movement as never before.

Debussy's Trio for Flute, Viola and Harp was composed very late in the composer's life and was premiered less a year before his death in 1918. The three movements are a quixotic blend of tender melodic interplay over constantly shifting tempos and melancholy motives that permeate the entire work. The Sonata is essential Debussy in style and character but at an intimate level.

Susan Greenberg, co-artistic director of CMP. is a frequent soloist and chamber musician in Southern California. She is currently a member of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and is high demand in the studios of the city. Susan Greenberg's opening melodic turn is continually echoed by the other instruments throughout the opening movement. The balance on the tracks between her delicate tone and the viola and harp are captured in great detail through the unique stereo miking technique employed by AIX Records. It is this special attention to detail that allow the surround mix of the works to immerse you in the textures. The harp part, played by harpist JoAnn Turovsky, principal of the LACO, is captured with clarity throughout its full register using 2 pairs of stereo microphones. The detail produced by this unique method of recording makes this track especially engaging.

Jane Brockman is California-based composer familiar with composing for the concert stage and for the film industry. Her Feast of Fives trio for Flute, Piano and Cello is a tightly unified exploration of the number 5. It defines the primary melodic motive, the rhythmic structure and even the formal structure. Her single musical gesture contains three discrete sections. The tonality of the work is an example of extended functional harmony without the dissonance that has dominated so much contemporary compositions.

I came across a posting written by Alan Taffel stating on the A/V Guide.com news section that states, “Multichannel audio is apparently dead, at least for now”. His assessment seems to be based on the lack of rooms in the Venetian Hotel at the recent CES show that were demonstrating equipment and/or recordings using a surround setup. And if that’s the only sampling that he used to make his determination on the life or death of surround music, he might be right. But as is usually the case, he’s not getting the full story by walking the halls of the Venetian for a few days in early January. Surround music is alive and well and actually doing quite well.

I spent most of Monday and Tuesday walking the same halls and venturing into the same demonstration rooms that Alan (and lots of other journalists) were visiting. I was looking for two things. Was the audio being presented really high definition AND was the playback system being used stereo or multichannel. Let’s focus on the second part of my quest and leave the high definition component aside for now.

If you’ve been to a consumer trade show based in a hotel, you know that the rooms...no matter how luxurious the rooms...are simply not capable of presenting 5.1 surround music correctly. Remember the companies that are buying the rooms want to maximize the number of people that experience their wares and that means getting the most bodies in and out of the best listening area. Using a two-channel system is better at doing that and is much easier to setup and tweak.

I have done numerous presentations using a great 5.1 surround system. Over the past three years, AIX Records has partnered with Intel, Microsoft, Dolby Labs, B&W, Boulder, Niveus Media and others to present at the EHX (Electronic House Expo) events in Long Beach and Orlando. The rooms we used were 60 feet by 30 feet with 14 -16 foot ceilings...obviously much larger than a hotel room. These divided ballrooms were much larger than the suites at the Venetian where the companies with the big bucks laid out their demonstrations. My point is this. Maybe part of the reason that Alan (and all of the other visitors to the Venetian) didn’t experience a lot of surround music was because it was either too expensive or the spaces offered didn’t allow 5.1 sound to be installed properly.

There was some, however. Ray Kimber had his usual “Iso-Mike” room with the DSD fed recordings that he and his team have made playing through some very large electro-static speakers. The sound was big and reflective of his recording philosophy. Esoteric had surround playback in their suite... as did McIntosh and PMC. I would love to have been able to set up a great room at the show but my partners are interested in the custom electronics installers that attend EHX and CEDIA. That segment of the music marketplace is almost exclusively 5.1 surround because they’re building home theaters...not two-channel playback rooms to the audiophile in the family.

The high performance audio market is still tied very tightly to vinyl and stereo. There are event people reissuing analog tape as a consumer format.  But the rest of the population is into flat panel TV (usually HD) and surround sound as part of their home theater system. There are over 125 million of them! Alan is correct that the audiophile community is still wary of multichannel playback. I think it’s because they’ve never really heard a great surround music system playing really great tracks. Multichannel is not dead. There’s more people listening to multichannel music than every before. It’s in your car, in your home theater and even being delivered in headphones.

 
 

Introduction to iTrax
iTrax, a new high definition audio and video download service is a music and video website for people who believe music should be enjoyed at the highest possible fidelity. Music enthusiasts are finally being rewarded with the kind of high definition music and video content that has previously been available only on disc. The iTrax website features a variety of music genres and can be downloaded in any of six audio formats, with or without video and in stereo or two surround sound perspectives. All of the content was recorded and produced in high definition audio and video and no upsampling gimmicks have been used.

iTrax Audio Video Recordings
iTrax is the creation of Dr. Mark Waldrep, President of AIX Records, a Los Angeles based music recording and production company. He is fanatical about music and high fidelity, so much that he records all of the artists featured on iTrax, so he owns the content. Since he owns it, DRM (digital rights management) is handled as a trust issue – he trusts that users will not copy and distribute his content. You won’t find top 40 tunes on iTrax, but you will find acoustically stunning two-channel and multichannel recordings that elevate music to its finest, from artists who love music at its finest. One of my favorite AIX recordings, “Now is the Month of Maying” is performed by Zephyr, an a cappella ‘recording in the round’. Twelve vocalists positioned at each hour on the clock bathe the listener in rich, full surround sound, as if you’re standing in the center of the group. It is simply an astounding recording that places the listener in the recording venue. His classical, folk and jazz recordings are equally jaw-dropping with exceptional clarity and detail. The iTrax music library is expected to grow as the company signs on additional artists who produce high definition content.

iTrax is 'iTunes for Adults'
At a recent industry trade event, I listened as Mark introduced iTrax to his audience. As he explains it, “Current download services are not taking advantage of the technical advances made in the art and science of recording. Today you can download almost any standard definition CD or dumbed down MP3 file, but that’s not the best available, far from it. iTrax is a no-compromise approach to high quality music and video downloads, it’s iTunes for adults.”
How to Download iTrax Content
iTrax tunes can be purchased individually or as an album and are priced differently depending on the audio format. In general, they range from $.79 to as much as $2.99 per song and as high as about $20.00 for an entire album. You can also listen to a free preview of each selection before making a purchase. iTrax songs and albums can be easily downloaded to a computer or music server and stored on the hard disk. Each selection identifies the size of the file and the length of time required to download it. iTrax supports Windows (including Vista) and Mac OS X operating systems. Copying an iTrax music file to a disc is a bit more complicated depending on the type of file you want to put on a disc. However, the iTrax website includes easy to follow instructions for each type of file and disc.

Conclusion
The iTrax service is long overdue for serious music enthusiasts. Lower quality compressed music formats certainly have a place, and so do high definition music and video formats. iTrax is ‘music for the rest of us’ who enjoy hearing all of the fidelity, clarity and transparency that is possible with high definition audio and video recording technology. For more information and for downloading some hi-def tunes, visit the iTrax website.