The Tres Amigos Ride Again-An Ongoing Saga----The Tres are Now Quattro Amigos

[Steve Williams]

Fabulous dinner that evening especially watching Jack fillet his sea bass and eat it all

 

[Steve Williams]

So the next meeting of the Amigos is in February in Mexico followed by a visit next summer from Jack. Jack loves golf and my enticement was more than friendship and music as we live in a small community with 2 golf courses and our back yard backing up to the 13th fairway of the south course. I told Jack I would be his caddy

 

[Steve Williams]

I forgot this one...the final bows from Turandot.


for me the absolute thriller of the opera was hearing Nessun dorma. It brought the crowd to a huge ovation. It wasn't Pavarotti but great enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up as well as goose bumps on my arms. Bravo

 

[Steve Williams]

for those who don't know it......enjoy

 

[marty]

Now that Steve spilled the beans on the identity of the 4th Amigo, I'd like to add that it was indeed a pleasure to finally meet Jack and his wife in the Big Apple. Next time, I hope there will be enough advance notice to plan some joint musical activities.

Seeing Turandot at the Met is always special. No picture of the majestic Zeffirelli set can do it justice.
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/some-days-i-want-to-throw-out-my-stereo.18645/
As Steve said, Turandot's performance (Christine Goerke) was wonderful, but similar to my last visit, it was Liu's performance (Eleonora Buratto) that was the most moving. I also had new respect for the performances of Ping, Pang and Pong (sort of the 3 Amigos of the opera). Unfortunately, the performance we saw was only one of the two this month NOT conducted by the new conductor of the Met Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin who you may know is also the conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Still, a great evening. The last thing worth noting is that when we saw theTemptation musical, all the performers wore forehead microphones in the 1600 seat Imperial theater on B'way. In the Met, there is no microphone amplification and the singers perform in a huge 3300 seat opera house. Now that's some kind of singing!

 

[Steve Williams]

Leif just sent me some updates of our third Amigo's (Russ) new system. Russ must be in seventh heaven

 

[Steve Williams]

 

[Steve Williams]

 

[Steve Williams]

It looks great Russ. We all look forward to getting your first impressions

 

[JackD201]

What a wonderful day we spent with you guys Steve from the MOMA through a real feast of a dinner!

So did my small, fishing village skills impress? LOL

I'm still bummed out that we were two days late for the session at Chez Marty. I have a lot of the reference albums you played so am very familiar. I bet it was spectacular with the Zanden lending its magic glow and texture to an already formidable cast.

 

[jadis]

Is there a Like button for all the posts. I will just push it.

Great story, Steve, you're such a complete story teller (with pictures to boot). Nice to see Jack and Margie there with you and Cathy plus your NJ hosts Marty and his wife. What else can I say but wished I was there. I have been to the NJ/NYC area 3 times in my life, the last 2 times was because my wife's sisters live there, one in Jersey City, and another in Flushing, Queens. When I was there the first time (with my sister), I went on a concert spree - Carnegie Hall, Fisher Hall, etc. Watched plays. My wife has probably been there 4 times more than I had in the past few years but I decided to pass those, probably was burned out from the cities. Hopefully, in her next trip, I will join her (and she will be surprised) since there are WBF members there whom I hope I can visit. I visited one member already in Boston (ack) and it was quite memorable though short. And of course, I've visited Steve, twice, once in Danville, and last year, in Orange County, unforgettable experiences. Hmmm, suddenly, I'm wanting to visit the U.S. again.

 

[R Johnson]

Re: Turandot: The Metropolitan's Zeffirelli production is indeed fabulous, though I've not had the pleasure of seeing it in person. In every production I've seen, the singer performing Liu has really connected with me. Turandot only rarely. There have been many good Calafs, but Pavarotti is in a category of one.

 

[jazdoc]

Great thread Steve. Hanging out with friends is the best part of our hobby. That's why I regularly invite myself to Mike L's

 

[Steve Williams]

Re: Turandot: The Metropolitan's Zeffirelli production is indeed fabulous, though I've not had the pleasure of seeing it in person. In every production I've seen, the singer performing Liu has really connected with me. Turandot only rarely. There have been many good Calafs, but Pavarotti is in a category of one.

Having just seen it I agree with everything you said. I connected more with Liu emotionally than I did with Turandot and yes, it wasn't Pavarotti but when Calaf sang Nessun dorma it brought a huge applause from the crowd.

 

[goldeneraguy]

Steve , wonderful words and pic's.
I haven't posted in many a moon .
Busy re-doing my sytem, but this former New York and New Jersey resident wanted to take time out to say THANK YOU !!!

 

[marty]

What a wonderful day we spent with you guys Steve from the MOMA through a real feast of a dinner!

So did my small, fishing village skills impress? LOL

I'm still bummed out that we were two days late for the session at Chez Marty. I have a lot of the reference albums you played so am very familiar. I bet it was spectacular with the Zanden lending its magic glow and texture to an already formidable cast.

Hi Jack,
3 things in reply:

1) You may have missed a listening session at my place but hell man, you got to hear Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden last Friday. Even I would have missed a session at my house to hear Billy Joel again at MSG! Besides, my house you can do anytime. Billy Joel at the Garden, not so much! So I’ll catch you at my place next time (and we might even go to Billy at MSG as well- he said he will play there every month until he dies as long as it’s sold out. And let me tell you, after he dies they could put up a prop of him and play tapes and it will still be sold out.

2) The only other people who can probably clean branzino like you are Lidia Bastianich and Mario Batali. I’ve seen ophthalmic surgeons who can’t dissect as finely as you can. So your small fishing village skills are impressive indeed.

3) The Zanden 1200 Mk3 phono was truly a stunning sonic surprise to me. I was very happy with my previous combo of the ASR Basis Exclusive HV phono stage with my VTL 7.5 III preamp. The ASR is the finest SS phono stage I have heard and I have owned 3 versions of them over 15 or so years. It may still well be my choice if I owned a tube preamp. But when I acquired the Soulution 725 preamp recently, the combo was simply too much SS. As many know, I have been a long time believer in the old Dave Wilson mantra “you gotta have a tube in there somewhere”. After trying a few other pieces, I finally opted for the remarkable Zanden. The Zanden by itself is nothing short of outstanding, but as experienced audiophiles know, its really the total system package that counts and in my case, the Zanden was the perfect pairing with the Soulution 725 preamp. The Zanden’s great strengths are its uncanny tonal density and spatial presentation. I really think Valin got it right in his review of the Zanden gear last May. Some excerpts from his TAS review are as follows:

“Indeed, the areas where the Zandens show their tube lineage are the areas where you want them (indeed, pay for them) to show their tube lineage: three-dimensional bloom from top to bottom, exceptionally lifelike colors and textures without the scrim of grain or the looser, fuzzier imaging that tubes so often bring to the table, and that magical spatiality that so wowed me in the (previous) Model 1000 phonostage—and that makes speakers seem to better disappear as sound sources.

This really is a uniquely remarkable Zanden quality: adding more acoustic space between and around more finely detailed and 3-D images of instruments.

Like a blank piece of drawing paper, it simply takes on whatever colors the preamp and amplifier are adding, without (as far as I can tell) adding any marked color of its own or subtracting any speed or energy. (For tubes this phonostage is a very fast and powerful number.) What the Model 1200mk3 does bring to the table, regardless of amplification, is a large measure (though not as large a measure as the complete Zanden system) of that speaker-erasing spatiality and 3-D bloom that sets Yamada-san’s creations apart.

it is markedly more neutral in timbre, far more defined in pitch (particularly in the bass), and much higher in very-low-level resolution than that otherwise phenomenal phonostage of years gone by.”

In short, the piece is built like a tank, finished like a piece of jewelry, and offers bloom, dimensionality, and tone density that make for as life-like a presentation as I have ever heard from an LP. It’s a definite keeper for me.

Marty

 

[Steve Williams]

It was a truly remarkable experience for me.

Since returning home I have purchased all of the LP's I heard at Marty's house that I didn't own.

 

[Kingsrule]

Looking forward to Russ's feedback on his new speakers

BTW I can't remember but was it Russ or Marty that worked at Paul Heath's ?

 

[Steve Williams]

You got me on that one. Who is Paul Heath. It’s not a name I’ve heard either of them mention

 

[Kingsrule]

Paul Heath Audio, Rochester, NY....one of the pioneer high end dealers. I'm pretty sure it was Marty