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Sad News

Sad News

Some three-and-a-half years ago now, my wife Kathy and I traveled to Bern, Switzerland, to visit audio engineer Peter Brem and his companion Jolanda Costa, the co-proprietors of DaVinciAudioLabs—makers of the AAS Gabriel turntable and DaVinci tonearms that have won so many of TAS’s Product of the Year and Golden Ear awards. It was, perhaps, the most memorable “factory tour” I’ve ever taken—not just because of the gorgeous Bernese Alps surrounding Peter and Jolanda’s beautiful Swiss farmhouse (known as DaVinci Corner), but because Peter and Jolanda themselves were such remarkably gracious, gentle, and lovable people that visiting them was like visiting old, dear friends. Peter and I hit it off in a way that has seldom happened with me and other folks in the high-end industry. His love of music, his sense of humor, and his aesthetic taste made him seem like someone I’d known all my life. (And this in spite of the fact that Peter didn’t speak English particularly well and I don’t speak German or Italian.) 

Unfortunately Peter developed cancer about a year after our trip—and has spent the last two years battling his illness. I met him most recently at CES in 2011 and we were both exceedingly happy to see one another, though Peter—a tall robust man when we visited Bern—had clearly grown frail. I tried not to weep when I came up to him (and he tried, too). We embraced and that is the last time I saw him.

Alas, I found out today that after a long, brave struggle Peter succumbed to his illness.

DaVinci has posted the following words on its Web site (https://www.facebook.com/davinciaudio.labs.gmbh): “Up until the end Peter Brem lived his life for and with music. At the age of 62, on April the 3rd, 3am, in a clinic in Bern, he succumbed to his terminal cancer. At the end pneumonia weakened him even more in his fight against the tumor.

“His musical legacy with his high-end lines ‘Grandezza,’ ‘Preziosa,’ ‘Virtu,’ turntables, and tonearms makes him immortal for his fans…in this sense DaVinciAudio lives on.”

Peter will certainly live on in my mind and heart. For me, he wasn’t just another greatly gifted audio engineer; he was a kindred spirit. And I will miss him.

We at TAS send our sincerest condolences to Jolanda, Sandro, and Nathalie Costa; we’re sure that you will continue Peter’s remarkable work. And a fond good-bye, Peter, from Kathy and me.

Sad News

Peter (on the right) in healthier, happier times. Taken at a cozy inn in Gurnigelbad, Bernese Oberland, November 2009.

Jonathan Valin

By Jonathan Valin

I’ve been a creative writer for most of life. Throughout the 80s and 90s, I wrote eleven novels and many stories—some of which were nominated for (and won) prizes, one of which was made into a not-very-good movie by Paramount, and all of which are still available hardbound and via download on Amazon. At the same time I taught creative writing at a couple of universities and worked brief stints in Hollywood. It looked as if teaching and writing more novels, stories, reviews, and scripts was going to be my life. Then HP called me up out of the blue, and everything changed. I’ve told this story several times, but it’s worth repeating because the second half of my life hinged on it. I’d been an audiophile since I was in my mid-teens, and did all the things a young audiophile did back then, buying what I could afford (mainly on the used market), hanging with audiophile friends almost exclusively, and poring over J. Gordon Holt’s Stereophile and Harry Pearson’s Absolute Sound. Come the early 90s, I took a year and a half off from writing my next novel and, music lover that I was, researched and wrote a book (now out of print) about my favorite classical records on the RCA label. Somehow Harry found out about that book (The RCA Bible), got my phone number (which was unlisted, so to this day I don’t know how he unearthed it), and called. Since I’d been reading him since I was a kid, I was shocked. “I feel like I’m talking to God,” I told him. “No,” said he, in that deep rumbling voice of his, “God is talking to you.” I laughed, of course. But in a way it worked out to be true, since from almost that moment forward I’ve devoted my life to writing about audio and music—first for Harry at TAS, then for Fi (the magazine I founded alongside Wayne Garcia), and in the new millennium at TAS again, when HP hired me back after Fi folded. It’s been an odd and, for the most part, serendipitous career, in which things have simply come my way, like Harry’s phone call, without me planning for them. For better and worse I’ve just gone with them on instinct and my talent to spin words, which is as close to being musical as I come.

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