Playlist

Recorded

June 4, 2011
Nights When I'm Lonely - Boswell Sisters
It Must Be True - Bing Crosby

June 5, 2011
Here Comes Cleo - Cleo Brown

I was so taken by Cleo's knockout recording Lookie, Lookie, Lookie (aka Here Comes Cookie) on Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune collection that I bought an album. Brown is the very model of supple articulation, both in her piano playing and in her singing. She has a lovely pianissimo, shivery-vibrato melodic tail-off to her phrases that is a world all its own. The later songs, some of them not much more than bad jokes, are a real heartbreak. I don't know the whole story, but if this is the only kind of material they would record for her, it's no wonder she quit the business.

June 7, 2011
Pickin' The Cabbage - Cab Calloway
Tall, Dark, and Handsome - Ivy Anderson
Zulu's Parade - Johnny Wiggs and his New Orleans Band
Brandeis - Elaine Barkin - Keith Eisenbrey

This is from my recital of November 5, 2005. These pieces are right at the edge of my capabilities as a pianist. Consequently I am so focused on notes while playing them that I find it difficult, at the same time, to project much of a coherent idea of what the piece is doing. Next time I perform this I need to spend more time recording myself and listening back. I think there is something there about the persistence of register within layered and tesserated fragments.

The Best of Lenny Bruce - Lenny Bruce


Even after all these years, and even remembering some of the punch lines, this made me laugh. A pretty amazing voice actor, among other talents.


My Special Lover - The Fleetwoods
The Ventures' "Rocketing Rhythms" Interview - The Ventures
Beaumont Rag - Frosty Lamb/Buzz Fountain
Bryd one Brere (studio recording) - Keith Eisenbrey - Aloysia Friedmann/Keith Eisenbrey

Aloysia was a classmate of mine at the UW back in mumbletymumble, and she graciously agreed to play this little violin & piano piece. She has since gone on to great things and a wonderful career, as we all knew she would. The title comes from a 13th century English song that had come up as an example in a music history class. At the time my compositional method was to throw as many techniques as I could think of at the page and see which ones stuck. Use of quotations was one of them. The result in this case is kind of rollicking and showy. Aloysia negotiates my occasionally violinistic writing with pizazz. I do my best to keep up.