The tin­ker­ing under the hood con­tin­ues (it seems like it will never end, but it will, I promise, I think I’ve solved all my tech­ni­cal issues), and the music con­tin­ues, so have some Fri­day links and miscellany:

• ‘“After tax, that’s like, what, $75,000?” an invest­ment banker at a rival firm said as he con­tem­plated Mor­gan Stanley’s deci­sion. He ran the num­bers, mod­el­ing the impli­ca­tions. “I’m not mar­ried and I take the sub­way and I watch what I spend very care­fully. But my girl­friend likes to eat good food. It all adds up really quick. A taxi here, another taxi there. I just bought an apart­ment, so now I have a big old mort­gage bill.”’ Median house­hold income in the US for 2006–2010 was $52,000. Ass­hole. (story is here if you can stom­ach it, cor­rec­tive is here, and read Chris Lehman’s book).
• I caught a set of Fred Hersch’s res­i­dency at the Vil­lage Van­guard this week, all the music is being recorded for a new release com­ing this Sep­tem­ber, and if the play­ing I heard was any indi­ca­tion, he’s going to have a dif­fi­cult time decid­ing what to put on the disc, and it’s going to be terrific.
• The Avant Music Fes­ti­val is hap­pen­ing over the next sev­eral days, and there’s a Cage Marathon Sat­ur­day. See you there.

• I’ve got a new Cage essay, and have some Etudes Aus­trales

• The music of Elliott Sharp made up two of my best events from 2011, and now you can share the expe­ri­ence with his self-released CD Occam’s Razor, pre­serv­ing con­cert per­for­mances includ­ing JACK Quartet’s crush­ingly great one in Ostrava. This is a hand-numbered edi­tion of 200, and Bruce at DMG told me last Sun­day that there were still 185 left. Get it from them, it’s special.
• In good con­science, I can only rec­om­mend two ways to ‘cel­e­brate’ Valentine’s Day; Medieval polyphony from New York Polyphony, or Steven Blier and NYFOS pre­sent­ing “A Mod­ern Person’s Guide to Hook­ing Up and Break­ing Up.”
• The Amer­i­can Com­posers Orches­tra has entered the world of dig­i­tal releas­ing, which is excit­ing, and the lat­est col­lec­tion from young com­posers is out Tues­day. Check for it at iTunes and Amazon.
• The inno­v­a­tive Music/Words series is back, tonight, and Safe Space returns Mon­day with Jeremy Denk (who also writes) and James Wood.
• And for the best price of all, gratis, you can expe­ri­ence the Talea Ensem­ble and singer Dona­ti­enne Michel-Donsac play­ing new music from Mit­tel Europa, includ­ing the charm­ing and amaz­ing Bern­hard Lang.