Sasha Cooke Triumphs In Tannhäuser! This past week, the amazing Sasha Cooke has been wowing audiences with her Wagner in the Houston Grand Opera’s production of Tannhäuser. Well known for her marvelous Mahler as well Grammy-winning performances of 21st century American operas by John Adams and Mason Bates, 2023 saw her critically-acclaimed Wagner debut as Brangäne in Tristan und Isolde. This time, she dons a "slinky Grecian gown" and “delivers a devilish Venus possessed of a voice of unprecedented smoothness, radiated sex and seduction,” to quote the Houston Press. WOW! Hopefully we’ll eventually see and hear this performance on video! Huge congratulations, again dear Sasha. (Photos by Shot By Bishop) (fb)

Rintaro Sekizuka's Visionary Vinyl Delivery Service: A World Where Art, Design, Music and Community Intersect. Vinyl Delivery Service (VDS), a record store founded by Rintaro Sekizuka, whose interest in music, sustainability and community is reshaping vinyl culture as a vehicle for local renewal and ecological consciousness. Taking inspiration from the legendary Japanese jazz kissa (cafés dedicated to jazz music played on high-end audio systems), VDS quickly became a vital hub for audiophiles and DJs alike. ‘I got very good feedback from everyone,’ says Sekizuka. ‘They had never seen the records I’d brought and hadn’t connected with Japanese music much because they couldn’t easily get hold of it.’ ‘Most record shops in central Tokyo are small and packed, with no space to breathe,’ he says. ‘I wanted a place that wasn’t just for record nerds but for everyone’ and instead chose to launch his concept in the Skwat Kameari Art Centre, 3,000 sq m industrial warehouse that has been reimagined as a multidisciplinary space where art, design, music and community intersect. Such a location was more than just a matter of competitive rents: every element of the store is linked back to his concept of music as a catalyst for a better future. For Sekizuka, vinyl is an ecological statement. ‘The records we have here are mostly secondhand. They were made maybe 40, 50 or 60 years ago. In the context of the environment, this is quite an unnatural thing to do, but human beings create a lot of things we don’t need to make.’ His vision is a closed-loop system, whereby old records are repurposed into new ones. ‘Right now, vinyl waste is barely recyclable. It ends up in landfill or gets downcycled into things like cheap chairs. We need to innovate, either by developing recyclable records or inventing a record we can clean up and press again.’ Each month, VDS curates over 80,000 records, selling them both domestically and internationally. From 2018 to 2020, VDS also curated a festival stage at FFKT, featuring an audiophile sound system in collaboration with Desidelata from Fukuoka. (fb)