The annual Consumers Electronics Show will be held from June 28 until July 1 and the IHF will collaborate by organizing three seminars. These will deal with Trends in Sound and Music Reproduction, Marketing, and Business Techniques and they will take place at the New York Hilton on June 29 from 9 to 11:30 a.m. "Trends in Sound Reproduction" will cover the present and future of quadraphonic sound, and one of the panelists will be Len Feldman.
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Opera Today Inc., an organization which is experimenting with new forms for opera presents its first New York production at the Armory, 56 West 66th St. from June 8 to the 14th. The opera(?) is called "Spatial Variations on a piece by Benjamin Britton" which involves a tenor and four dancers performing to a quadraphonic recording. It will take place inside a dome of translucent circles on which motion pictures and slides will be projected. The audience will thus be ‘enveloped by the presentation'. The initial recording was made at Sound 80 in Minneapolis because, says Artistic Director Patricia Collins, "It has the most advanced capability we know in recording quadraphonic sound."
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"Who says no one listens to FM classical music stations?" asks Allen Rockford, of WONO, Syracuse, New York. It seems that this station had a week-end Marathon to raise funds for the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra and they finished up with more than $16,000--way above the $15,000 target. Contributions ranged from 6 cents donated by a two-year-old to three gifts of $500. Last year's figure was just over $10,000 so somebody out there must be listening ....
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The Acoustic Research Contemporary Music Project was initiated some months ago and its purpose is to sponsor recordings of present-day composers whose works would not otherwise be heard.
The prospectus states "the aim of the project is to provide composers with direct access to as large an audience as modern technology can offer, and to give listeners an opportunity to hear music of today, chosen by composers on the basis of musical criteria alone." The first series, consisting of fourteen broadcasts and six records, will be available in September and will include works by Milton Babbit, Edwin Dugger ( both using synthesizers) , and contemporary chamber music by Stefan Wolfe,. Arthur Berger, and Peter Westergaard. The records will be made by Deutsche Grammaphon and the low price of $2 each is made possible by Acoustic Research assuming the responsibility of for distribution.
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Altec Lansing held Spring Clinics for its sound contractors in three locations during April--Washington, Kansas City, and San Mateo--to familiarize them with their Random Access School System and other systems designed for use in hospitals. Further information relative to Acousta-Voicing, with particular attention to loudspeaker directivity patterns and efficiency, was presented as part of the company's training program in the many aspects of sound-system design. The Clinic was attended by over 100 at Washington, and similar numbers were expected at the other two locations. I have been lucky to obtain an article on The general subject from Altec's Don Davis, and it will appear in the August issue.
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According to Schwann, the most popular classical record of 1969 was the Angel recording of Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony (LPO and Sir Adrian Boult) . This symphony was often played as a finale in Gilbert" Briggs' live-vs.-recorded music demonstrations. At one affair in London's Festival Hall, there was not enough power available from the amplifiers to do justice to the tremendous climaxes, so for the last few minutes the recording was reinforced by the Festival Hall organ. In announcing this, Gilbert said, with a poker face, "You may have noticed the organ in the background-but what's 3 dB between friends?"
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To those who still find themselves thinking in cps instead of Hz (I do myself sometimes) I append the following formula which I have jealously guarded for some months. It appeared originally in Electronics News and they claim it came from--of all people--the National Forestry Service!
According to the NFS: it makes hertz to cycles conversion a "sinh."
-G.W.T.
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(Source: Audio magazine.)
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