Open Mike: A Great Weekend for Journalism

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial Page of TOP that appears on Sundays.]

Jasmine Paolini after the best win of her career

It's a great weekend for Italian sports. After her breakout year last year, when she reached the finals of both Wimbledon and Roland Garros, 29-year-old Italian Jasmine Paolini won the Italian Open yesterday, her nation's tournament, at the Foro Italico in Rome. It is the first time an Italian has won the Italian Open in 40 years, and only the second time ever. Showing no trace of home crowd pressure (it's often difficult for players to do their best under the added pressure of national expectations), she dominated World No. 2 Coco Gauff 6-4, 6-2. Even if you don't follow tennis, the highlights are worth watching to see her celebrate. You've never seen a more joyous young person. With her win, she leapfrogs four-time French Open champion Iga Świątek of Poland to reach the World No. 4 ranking.

Meanwhile, Italian men's star Jannik Sinner, newly returned from an unjust doping suspension, is set to play Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz at 11:00 Eastern U.S. time this morning. Despite his enforced three months off, Jannik is still World No. 1 and on a streak of 26 straight match wins (his last loss was to Carlos), but Carlos is ahead in their lifetime head-to-head, 6–4, and has won their last three meetings. Any Italian in the Rome final is a rare event for Italy, and any Sinner-Alcaraz match is currently the premiere event in men's tennis.

Umberto Rispoli
That's not all. In a sensational and eventful race yesterday at Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course, Journalism, the favorite who fell just short at the Kentucky Derby, overcame poor position and a vicious bump in the stretch to sprint to a tremendous come-from-behind victory in the Preakness, the second leg of horse racing's Triple Crown. The finish was spectacular. Journalism's jockey was Umberto Rispoli, who becomes the first Italian jockey in history to win a Triple Crown race. Long a star in Europe, he was Italian Champion Jockey in 2009 and 2010, and has won $48 million in purses and 615 races. He moved to California in December of 2019 to try to extend his winning ways in the United States.

Impeccable transfer
Looking for something good to listen to on a lazy Sunday? I stumbled across this playlist of "Bird and Diz" yesterday, the 1952 all-star bebop masterpiece with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Buddy Rich. There have been various reissues and short takes over the years; most of the cuts here come from the '80s CD reissue, and the two Bird-only tracks from 1952 are missing, but everything that's here sounds great in this HD upload from the Jazz & Blues channel. Especially nice is the four-minute alternate take of "Relaxin' with Lee" that allows Monk some room to stretch out in a solo. Nice.

The 12x12 canvas
Since I've been sleep-deprived this Spring (last night Butters got me out of bed six times for midnight trips to the backyard), so when I was comparing the two covers for Bird and Diz (here's the original David Stone Martin artwork), I toyed for a while with building a list for the blog of best-ever album covers. One of those pointless but fun lists. I found myself looking far and wide for a classical album to include (I thought anything with Deutsche Grammophon's giant yellow cartouche banner would do—originally designed by Heinz Domizlaff, it's been making a comeback on DG releases lately—and I'm partial to the quirky Vox Turnabout covers drawn by spiritualist and graphic designer Gitta Mallasz. (You can see some here.) Greatest of all time, though? With all due respect to Gitta, I don't think they rise to anywhere near that level.

Really, classical album covers almost always rate a grade of B or C+—they're never truly bad or truly good, never set their sights very high, perhaps because of the conservative tastes of buyers, perhaps because of tiny budgets, perhaps because aspiring is unseemly. There are about a dozen different types (portrait of the artist, portrait of the composer, portrait of the instrument, performance shot, conductor in the throes of conducting, nice landscape, fruit, rights-free artwork from the same era as the music, etc.) The ones I dislike the most are a series of different pieces of the same type illustrated by different shots from the same photo session. Somebody once thought that was clever, but it didn't stay so.

One of the better examples of a classical music fruit cover.
On the other hand, one very cheapskate photo shoot.

Anyway, some forum commenter I ran across opined that it's better for classical music that album cover art is no longer needed at all in the era of the download. He felt that cover art often influenced his expectations in ways that didn't really have anything to do with the music. That's hard to sympathize with if you come from the rock-and-pop world—what would Sgt. Pepper's be without its gatefold cover, or for that matter the apple on the label on the vinyl disc? And there's a lot to look at on the cover of Ed Sheeran's 2023 Autumn Variations—but it's an idea I never thought of before, and he has a point.

I might do an album cover post someday—I know a few stories—but it will have to be when I'm back to getting a little sleep at night. This Spring has been hard on me.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Ben: "Take a look at this recently published blog post on the history of album art. Focuses on Alex Steinweiss (first album covers, for Columbia in the '40s), Reid Miles (Blue Note), and S. Neil Fujita (more Columbia: Mingus Ah Um and Time Out, for example). Talking about classical, there's a really nice Glenn Gould album cover with one of Fujita's paintings in the article, and the Steinweiss cover for Barok's third piano concerto is great, too. "

Mike replies: That's fantastic but way too short/light. It could have been ten times that long...thanks for the link.

Comments

[Nigli]

I note Diego Ulissi won yesterday's stage (on 17 May) in the Giro d'Italia, the first Italian to enjoy a stage win since Alessandro De Marchi in 2021.

[Nigli]

Sorry, got that totally wrong, Diego Ulissi got to wear the pink jersey as race leader, being the first Italian to do so since Alessandro De Marchi in 2021. Ulissi came third in the stage.

[Ugo]

I don't think that chasing a horse on a track or a ball on a court can be qualified as "sport". That's work for them! Nobody pays to see people at work: we all know what it is. When in the Merry wives someone says "these gentlemen in their sport" she means they're having a few laughs among them; perhaps also a walk in the woods or a mountain hike could qualify; certainly not running after a ball too small to be seen with the naked eye.

[MikeR]

Album covers from the progressive Rock era were "art" of themselves ... sometimes exceeding the "art" in the grooves. CDs ruined it all.

[robert e]

DG's signature big yellow marquee is a nice piece of branding but a significant obstacle for cover designers. But I'm biased toward understated LP covers generally, whether in themselves or as temporary visual additions in my home. Does anyone else like to look at an album's cover while they listen to it?

Well, Sinner didn't win his final, but Paolini earned a rare (these days) double-championship when she and fellow Italian Sara Errani defended their doubles title.

(btw, is this post's title a mistake or a joke?)

[Mike Plews]

Most all the covers for CTI jazz albums were photographs by the magnificent, super genius, blows me away every time photographer Pete Turner.
At one point you could order prints of them. I was so broke then and now I'm so sad. One should not have regrets but this one hurts.

[Dogman]

Best jazz album covers? One of them has gotta be "Underground" by Thelonius Monk. I love that photograph so much I have it on a tee shirt.

[jp41]

Another nugget of TOP-tier information I appreciate. This commemorative t-shirt was offered as a gift during a pledge drive last year. I had been meaning to find the origin of its artwork and then I was serendipitously spoon-fed the artist David Stone Martin, and the album cover "bird and diz," that it's from: https://jp41.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/img/P5183307a_800.jpg

[Moose]

I've always liked these:

[Tex Andrews]

Well, lots to say about my main man Mr. Monk....too much for here. But here's my #1 Deutsche Grammophon album:Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilleges (Von Maazel). It's my favorite recording of this short but so beautiful(and wild!) opera. I think only available used, sadly.

[Oren Grad]

These days there's a Substack for everything:

https://theartofcoverart.substack.com/

I wish I'd bought this when it was published:

https://www.amazon.com/ECM-Sleeves-Desire-Contemporary-Music/dp/1568980647

[David L.]

My late wife was a composer and musician of jazz and classical music. My photos appear on her album covers and on numerous publicity media. My photos are also on musician friends' album covers and publicity media as well. Several musicians love my photography and ask that I be at their performances. I continue to photograph musicians and enjoy their friendships.

[Hansen]

I'm partial to the Naïve Vivaldi edition album covers. They all are brightly coloured fashion-like portraits of models unrelated to the performances or the music. The graphical design has a very modern aesthetic with a sans serif font, an atypical choice for early music. There is a huge variety within this theme. When I still bought cd's I wanted to collect them all.

On the other hand I always liked the classic yellow DG banner with some sort of painted artwork, fruit is nice. Photos of the musicians tend to make the worst covers. Guys look dorky, female violinists show off their dress, their violin and their 'attributes', conductors look pretentious. Not to mention the 'candid' shot of musicians collaborating over the sheet music.

[Jim R]

Mike, thanks for the link to the Paolini win & celebration - seeing pure joy is always, always a great experience. Grazie Millie!!!

[James]

It wasn't the least bit unjust. As the athlete, you are responsible for your support team. Three months sitting out is light, considering. It's not jail.

The only injustice is that Sinner had the resolution so quickly, on account of expensive lawyers. Djokovic has it right in this one.

[Imagine having your driving privileges revoked for three months for driving 35.000003 MPH in a 35 zone. That's a perfect analogy for Sinner's offense and punishment in this case.

Water under the bridge. It's over now. --Mike]