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The young jazz vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant’s arrival on the jazz scene began when she entered and won the 2010 Thelonious Monk competition, which annually spotlights a different instrument. That year was a vocal contest. Singing was not the 21 year old’s intended career choice.

Cable manufacturer Morrow Audio recently opened a used record store on a busy Florence, Kentucky highway. 30,000 cars pass the store daily.

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Sorry about starting an "Analog" column with an HDCD recommendation, but I was going through a pile of new CDs when the sound of one---Evolution, from Modern Jazz Quartet veteran John Lewis on Atlantic---almost immobilized me. The sonic presentation on this solo-piano set, recorded in January 1999, is exceptionally natural: a well-organized, harmonically and physically convincing, three-dimensional picture of a piano within the reverberant field of a real performance space. Clearly, a minimally miked analog job, and spectacular in its simplicity.