Grammy Winners Worth Noting - The 47th Annual Grammy Awards happened Monday night if you weren’t aware. (The classical awards are always completely ignored on the telecast, so I usually don’t bother watching.) There are so many different awards now it is mind-boggling. There are 31 “Fields” and all sorts of categories within each field. There’s even a field for Surround Sound now - a nice addition. “Genius Loves Company” - the Ray Charles duet SACD - got that, along with seven other Grammies. That one was one of several awards to discs we did not give five stars to, but then again several other awards were also our Discs of the Month. Here’s some that might interest our readers:
Various rock awards to: Code of Silence - Bruce Springsteen; Vertigo - U2; Slither - Velvet Revolver; Whiplash - Motorhead; Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow - Brian Wilson; American Idiot - Green Day. Various jazz awards to: Unspeakable - Bill Frisell; R.S.V.P. - Nancy Wilson; Speak Like a Child - Herbie Hancock; Illuminations - McCoy Tyner & others; Concert in the Garden - Maria Schneider Orchestra; Land of the Sun - Charlie Haden. Best Musical: Wicked; Best Soundtrack: The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King (Howard Shore); Best Album Notes: Complete Recordings of Woody Herman on Mosaic Records (Loren Schoenberg); Best Engineered Classical: Higdon: City Scape & Concerto for Orchestra (Jack Renner); Best Classical Album: John Adams: On The Transmigration of Souls (also got Best Classical Contemporary Composition & Best Orchestral Performance); Best Opera: Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro - Rene Jacobs (HM); Best Choral Performance: Berlioz: Requiem - Robert Spano (Telarc); Best Instrumental Soloist with Orchestra: Annie-Sophie Mutter with Andre Previn cond. - Previn: Violin Concerto & Bernstein: Serenade; Best Soloists Without Orchestra: David Russel, guitar - Aire Latino; Best Chamber Music: Prokofiev: Cinderella, Ravel: Mother Goose Suite - Argerich & Pletnev, pianos; Best Classical Crossover: LAGQ’s Guitar Heroes; Best Long Form Music Video: Concert for George Harrison.
New DVD Copy Protection - Macrovision has released a new copy-protection technology to prevent copying using software still widely available since the original copy-proofing was broken in l999. RipGuard is the name of the new copy protection. A coalition of studios and with IBM, Microsoft and Intel are working on another content-protection system for the upcoming HD DVD, called Advanced Access Content System.
Code-Free DVD Players - Not copying but watching certain DVDs at all is blocked by Regional Encoding of discs going to various parts of the world. As with copy protection, some enterprising users find alternatives. Interesting Thing of the Day (which by the way is a fascinating free daily feature) has a short article on this at <http://itotd.com/index.alt?ArticleID=460>
Feb. 16, 2005 
