Note: measurements taken in the anechoic chamber at Canada’s National Research Council can be found through this link.
April 2026
Recently, I’ve been re-reading work I’ve published since my first album reviews in 1976. Much has changed in the past 50 years; back then, I was reviewing new releases by the likes of Miles Davis, Stan Getz, and Dizzy Gillespie—now all long dead. If you subscribe to a “golden age” theory where jazz is concerned, it wouldn’t surprise me if you feel that the music hasn’t been the same since giants like those left the scene in the early ’90s. If so, you’re not alone.
Many music critics feel the same; so attached to the artists they first fell in love with that they never move on, using those long-deceased musicians as the standard by which all those who come later should be measured.
That’s always seemed like an artistic—and journalistic—dead end to me. Just imagine the discoveries you would’ve missed if you embraced that mindset and stopped listening to new music 35 years ago: Jason Moran; Kris Davis; Mary Halvorson; the list goes on. Loving improvised music has always been about remaining open to new discoveries. Listeners who have been open-eared enough to move between Earl Hines, Bud Powell, Cecil Taylor, Keith Jarrett, and Moran—to just cite some epochal pianists—are much the richer for being able to make the trip.
Philadelphia native Marilyn Crispell escaped my consciousness until I saw her at an early edition of the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville—the unlikely annual gathering of adventurous musicians at a rural town in Quebec, Canada. Now 79, Crispell began as a classical musician, already enrolled in Baltimore’s Peabody Institute at the age of seven. She was in her late 20s before turning to jazz, a shift she credits to hearing John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme in 1975.
Two years later, she made the pivotal decision to attend Karl Berger’s Creative Music Studio in upstate New York, where she met Taylor, trumpeter Don Cherry, saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, and other important improvisers. But her most vital connection was with saxophonist Anthony Braxton, who soon invited her to join drummer Gerry Hemingway and bassist Mark Dresser in his new quartet. One of the most important and influential groups in creative music, Braxton’s quartet recorded more than a dozen albums and opened the door for Crispell to launch her own career.
While Braxton was a critical musical partner in the US, Swedish bassist Anders Jormin connected with Crispell in Europe in the early ’90s, just as he was becoming a frequent sideman for Charles Lloyd, Tomasz Stańko, Bobo Stenson, and others on ECM Records. “It just touched a nerve in me,” said Crispell, about hearing Jormin’s playing for the first time. “It unlocked the door to the lyrical things that I would have to be doing and wasn’t doing.”
For those accustomed to her energetic work with Braxton, which frequently draws comparisons to Taylor’s playing, Crispell’s quiet, introspective work with Jormin on Memento (16‑bit/44.1kHz WAV, ECM 2867) will be a revelation. Her ability to create flowing lyricism is as evident as her talent at navigating Braxton’s harmonically spiky compositions.
Like Crispell, trumpeter Ingrid Jensen took some time to find her footing on the creative music scene. Born in 1966 in North Vancouver and raised in the same small city on Vancouver Island as singer Diana Krall, Jensen moved to the United States to pursue studies at the Berklee College of Music, and later relocated to Austria to teach. She was nearing 30 when she returned to the US, and had already begun attracting attention through her captivating work on a pair of recordings on the Enja label. Not only was her playing fresh-sounding—characterized by exceptional technique, gorgeous tone, and a trademark ability to make balletic tonal leaps—she made no secret of her lack of interest in playing games by “old-boy” rules.
In 2002, for a CBC Radio interview I conducted backstage at a rehearsal in San Francisco, where she was guest soloist in an orchestra conducted by Maria Schneider, Jensen was frank about what it was like to be young, tall, and blonde on the music scene.
“[Before they hear you play,] the first thing that all the musicians hanging out in this boys’ club think is, ‘She sure is cute. Maybe we can get her into bed.’”
Like other young women of her generation—among them, her sister Christine, Renee Rosnes, and Jane Bunnett, to name just three other Canadians—Jensen set out to blow up that stereotype. She has continued to be a leading force for women at the forefront of jazz, serving as dean and director of jazz arts at the Manhattan School of Music, playing in the all-female, co-operative band Artemis, sitting in as a guest soloist around the world, and leading her own band.
As great as much of Jensen’s recorded work sounds, particularly those albums she made with Schneider, Landings (24/96 WAV, Newvelle NV037) provides the trumpeter with the canvas she’s long deserved. Recorded and mixed by Marc Urselli at EastSide Sound in New York City, the album—also available as a 180g LP in a tip-on gatefold jacket—features Jensen with her husband, Jon Wikan, on drums, organist Gary Versace, and guitarist Marvin Sewell. Landings is her best work to date, and it sounds great.
At 43, a generation younger than Jensen, Spanish pianist Marta Sánchez is a leading figure among the cohort of women who have benefited from the pioneering work of the female musicians I’ve mentioned so far. Since moving from Madrid to New York City 15 years ago, her work as a leader of both a quintet and a trio has garnered widespread praise. Sánchez also became a mainstay in the exceptional Webber/Morris Big Band and saxophonist David Murray’s quartet. A glance at her online schedule illustrates how busy Sánchez is as a touring pianist for a variety of other bandleaders.
I’ve heard Sánchez in numerous settings over the last ten years or so, and apart from Moran, I can’t think of another pianist whose first solo recording has been so eagerly anticipated. I didn’t know what to expect, but I’ve been transfixed by For the Space You Left (16/44.1 WAV, Out of Your Head OOYH043) since it landed in mid-February. One reason: As a composer, Sánchez is known for her intriguingly intertwining melody lines. How would that translate to solo piano?
Brilliantly, it turns out; perhaps the most enjoyable prepared-piano sessions I’ve heard.
There was no obvious equipment matchup to these three albums, but once again—as often happens—what turned up for review fit into a larger plan. For a while now, I’ve wanted to dig a bit deeper into the trend toward small, highly affordable speakers, and Starke Sound’s Beta5 (US$499, CA$750/pair) was an ideal addition to the project. For some time, my go-to downstairs speakers have been a pair of PSB’s Imagine B50s (US$799, CA$1099, £649, €699/pair), which I reviewed in December 2024. In the past few months, I’ve also had the chance to spend time with DALI’s Kupid (US$600, CA$600, £299, €338/pair), Totem’s Loon Monitor (US$1299, CA$1599, £1395, €1599/pair), and Focal’s Vestia N°1 (US$1398, CA$1538, £799, €1178/pair) standmount speakers. They all looked handsome in my setting, but what about the sound?
Given what’s currently sitting in my living room, you can probably guess that I felt the PSBs were the best choice, and it wasn’t just because PSB is a beloved Canadian brand. As I noted in my original review, the diminutive Imagine B50 has made me rethink what a pair of small speakers can deliver. This was reinforced by the Kupids. Just a bit pricier, the Totems were beautifully made but proved to produce uneven results across a wide range of music; and the Focals rendered everything with exceptional clarity, but they perform best in small spaces.
How would a pair of Beta5s compare?
As my colleague Dennis Burger wrote in his first look at this speaker, the manufacturer has made concessions to keep the price point low. The finish is textured vinyl, not real wood veneer, and the overall design esthetic of my test sample—a dark grille that doesn’t completely mask the ivory color of the speaker-cone surround, and a wood-grain finish that’s yet another tone—is certainly not elegant.
The Beta5 is hefty, at 15 pounds, although, at 11.9″H × 7.2″W × 13″D, it’s just a tad larger than the PSB. On the back, the quality of the binding posts exceeded what the mismatched look led me to expect. Obviously, the California company, some of whose products retail in the high four-figures, has chosen carefully where to budget for that remarkably low price point.
On the front, the Beta5 features a 1.15″ silk-dome tweeter and a 5.25″ dry-carbon acoustic-sandwich woofer that uses Starke’s proprietary HEMF technology. The company claims that the woofer “proves that a compact 5.25-inch driver can achieve reference-grade performance that defies its footprint.” The company’s website features an in-depth explanation of how HEMF works.
As always, the proof is in the hearing. Short take: The results are impressive.
Memento, Marilyn Crispell’s collaboration with Anders Jormin, is dominated by a sense of spare beauty. The album was recorded in Switzerland at Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo by Stefano Amerio—who has engineered numerous ECM recordings in the past 20 years—and Manfred Eicher. The soundstage is spacious and the recording has the kind of tonal clarity one expects from ECM.
The first four tracks—about 20 of the recording’s 38 minutes—are fully improvised, underscoring the deep level of communication between the pianist and bassist.
The opening “For the Children” was inspired by the young citizens of Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine, and elsewhere who have undergone life-changing experiences, and is a showcase for Jormin’s distinctive, high-pitched arco work. Reminiscent of the sound of the Iranian kamancheh, his playing mimics human cries, and Jormin highlights this by balancing it with some achingly sorrowful, dark bowing. In tandem with that highly emotive string-playing, Crispell’s accompaniment is spare and carefully played, as slow and measured as the steps of mourners on the way to the graveside. The piece offered a particularly good workout for the Starke Sound speakers. They performed well, offering a bass floor that was surprisingly low. Add a sub? I didn’t hear the need.
That high arco technique comes to the fore again in Crispell’s composition “Beach at Newquay,” mimicking the seagulls that captured the composer’s imagination when she first visited the coastal town in Cornwall, UK—reminiscent of the slide-guitar seagull effect Duane Allman uses at the end of Eric Clapton’s “Layla.”
Another of the pianist’s originals, “Dragonfly,” is a gorgeous, slowly unfolding solo performance. Inspired by bassist Gary Peacock, a frequent collaborator until his death in 2020, it speaks to quiet times with close friends, and is an ideal album closer.
With the opening track of Landings, Ingrid Jensen also bows to the past. “Amsterdam After Dark” features 91-year-old saxophonist George Coleman, one of the last surviving links in the lineage of Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. As he has aged, Coleman’s voice on tenor has become increasingly personal: gruff, a bit phlegmy, but so fluid that it seems as natural as his breathing. Composed by the saxophonist and released in the late ’70s, the piece is a medium-tempo burner in 4/4 time with a slight Latin feel that gives Coleman, Jensen, and Versace a chance to strut. A short, enthusiastic exchange between Jensen and Coleman after the music finishes is the kind of off-the-cuff moment that underscores the living legacy of jazz’s traditions. If you want to see the band at work, you can watch a video of the session here; it’s worth it just to see how effortless Coleman’s playing seems, as well as how members of the band communicate in the moment.
After Coleman departs, the quartet settles into a comfortable yet edgy flow. In addition to sharing their personal lives, Jensen and Wikan have been musical partners for several decades, and Versace has been in Jensen’s orbit almost as long—both as bandmate and as fellow Schneider Orchestra alumnus. You can sense the ease between them when the tempo drops way down for a languid journey through Carla Bley’s “Ida Lupino,” another connection to Peacock, who played bass on the initial recording of the piece in 1975. Sewell, the versatile Chicago native who has provided tremendous contributions to the music of Cassandra Wilson, Jack DeJohnette, Moran, and others, fits beautifully into the extended family.
Landings was released by Newvelle Records. The label caught my attention in 2015, when it released a gorgeous recording by yet another Schneider Orchestra alum, the late pianist Frank Kimbrough. Newvelle founder Elan Mehler—a pianist himself—started the label with business partner Jean-Christophe Morisseau to create exquisite works of art with an emphasis on quality, from the studio right through to the packaging. As Mehler states on the label’s website: “We record at EastSide Sound in New York City where 5-time nominated and 3-time Grammy Award winning recording and mixing engineer Marc Urselli uses mostly vintage and some tube microphones, all analog and some tube pre-amps and all the inputs are run through and summed through an entirely analog console (a Harrison Series Ten B) that has no AD’s or DA’s anywhere. We strive to keep our signal chain as short and clean as possible.”
For the Space You Left, Marta Sánchez’s solo debut on artist-run label Out of Your Head Records, also stands out for the art applied in the recording process. Engineer Adam Muñoz is well known for his exceptional work with Bill Frisell, and more recently with trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, and I’m always interested in a recording when I see that mixing and mastering wizard Dave Darlington has been involved.
In her notes for the album, Sánchez explains that she began experimenting with piano preparation during a 2017 residency at MacDowell, in rural New Hampshire, and admitted that she had long fought a fear of performing solo.
“I had always been uncomfortable exposing myself alone at the instrument, and creating a solo project felt like the most direct way to face that fear—and grow through it,” she states. Employing preparation techniques—pioneered by Henry Cowell and John Cage, but used more recently in a jazz setting by Benoît Delbecq, Myra Melford, and others—helped Sánchez overcome her anxiety.
Sánchez’s compositional approach is to apply layers of instruments to create counterpoint and underpin it with intersecting rhythms. Short of extensive overdubbing, that poses serious challenges to the solo pianist. “By altering the piano’s sound,” she writes, “I could create multiple internal voices, transforming one instrument into a small ecosystem of contrasting textures.”
The resulting music rewards multiple listens—each one revealing new details within the flow. Overtones bloom from the intersection of notes, with Sánchez’s string preparation yielding a variety of effects. The opening track, “Frost Bloom,” is filled with intersecting lines, carried by a powerful rhythmic drive; echoes of both early-stage Crispell and Cecil Taylor, to be sure. When Sánchez introduces the prepared strings, the result is akin to gazing at a painting by a pointillistic artist like Seurat or Pissarro. It’s the most “visual” music I’ve heard in quite some time. This ability to create aural landscapes is best displayed on the closing “One for Blake,” a jarring, aggressive piece that balances a sprightly, treated melody line and a dark, persistent bass part that clangs like a fire alarm.
After a handful of listens to this trio of engrossing new recordings, it was evident that Starke Sound’s Beta5 could definitely hold its own against the competition. The low price point certainly puts it ahead of the Totem and Focal contestants, although both of those speakers definitely suit specific needs. Without a real-time “A/B/C” comparison between the cheaper speakers, I’d put DALI’s Kupid and my Imagine B50 pair ahead on looks alone.
As I re-read my notes on all the speakers, I see that each had points in its favor, and the competition would be much closer if you were selecting the ideal pair for a smaller or more acoustically cushioned space. That’s great news for the consumer, since all these speakers seem like exceptional bargains when compared with any number of bigger, more expensive options. Overall, given these results, it seems like a great time to be creating listening spaces in small rooms.
. . . James Hale
jamesh@soundstagenetwork.com
