Saturday, April 30, 2011

Playlist

Recorded

April 23, 2011
She's Cryin' For Me - New Orleans Rhythm Kings
Three Chants - Ruth Crawford Seeger - New London Chamber Choir/James Wood

Within the room within which these weave we are pulled within the space within what is woven.

April 24, 2011
Lookie Lookie Lookie - Cleo Brown

Not even showing off, just doin' it. Check it out. You're jaw will drop.

Moonlight on the Ganges - Benny Goodman Orchestra/Helen Forrest

Nothing left to chance. Arranged to the nth.

Mean To Me - Bill Harris

An odd thing to pick out, but I really dig the drummer's brushwork on this cut.

Singin' in the Rain - Dave Brubeck
Money Honey (live) - Elvis Presley
Skylark - The Fleetwoods
Corvair Baby (remix) - Paul Revere and the Raiders
Quartet in b-flat minor op. 138 - Shostakovich - Fitzwilliam SQ
Interruption 2 (midi) - Keith Eisenbrey
Tricolor Capers - Eric Mandat - Eric Mandat
Pastorale - Keith Eisenbrey - Fehrwood Ensemble
Banned Rehearsal 214 - Banned Rehearsal

Personnel: Karen Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, and me.

Banned Rehearsal 559 - Banned Rehearsal

Personnel: Karen Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer, and me.

Postlude with Jim Randall in Mind (midi) - Benjamin Boretz

This is the third movement of Ben's String Quartet, in the midi arrangement that was my first acquaintance with the piece. I remember finding that I couldn't sit and listen but had to stand and move. Each new moment of sound pushed at me bodily, forcefully. This time through the global structure was clearly emerging from inside the experience of each sound moment, rather than from the remove of score-reading head-space. The determinate feel is not of a place within a trajectory, but of place and then place, now and then now. Not horizontal, nor not vertical - but as though pierced through at some right angle to now.

Zoo Night - Keith Eisenbrey

The "Night" portion of the "Day and Night" exhibit at the Woodland Park Zoo, a few weeks before they shut it down. Then we step outside and walk to our car.

April 26, 2011
Charleston Charlie - Wilshire Dance Orchestra
Cryin' for the Carolines - James P. Johnson
Caroline - Louis Laskie
Old Man River - Snub Mosely
Big Chief Pawnee - Rex Stewart/S. Scott/E. Bostic
Flying the Coop - Chubby Jackson
Partita - Benjamin Boretz - Keith Eisenbrey

My performance from November of 2005. Still haven't got the tempos right, except for the third movement which is close. As usual for me, rushed. The notes are more accurate than my norm. I've only been working on these pieces for 25 years, and I still think I'll get them eventually.

Songs in the Wind - Lockrem Johson - Lorri Frogget/Keith Eisenbrey

Our performance from October of 2007. Lockrem was a much loved local composer and teacher who died in 1977, far too young. These five songs from 1960 are beautiful examples of his sophisticated pianistic imagination and sensitive vocal writing. Lorri sang magnificently, and I was even pretty pleased with my own playing.

Just Like Me (remix) - Paul Revere and the Raiders

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Playlist

Recorded

April 16, 2011
It Wouldn't Be The Same Without You - Elvis Presley
Runaround - The Fleetwoods
Blue Fox (remix) - Paul Revere and the Raiders
Just Seventeen - Paul Revere and the Raiders

One of those songs that redeem the band. Miles from teenybophood.

Throbbing Gristle's Greatest Hits - Throbbing Gristle

The dark underbelly of psychedelia. Bad trip music.

April 17, 2011
Banned Rehearsal 23 - Banned Rehearsal

For those who don't know, Banned Rehearsal is a free-improvisation group I have been involved with for many years. To the best of my recollection our public performances can still be counted on the fingers of one hand. This is a recording of our first such concert, given at the University of Washington School of Music recital hall in January of 1985. It features the "stack-o-decks" (a low-tech mix of cassette tape machines and boom-boxes), and the "funmaker", a 2.5 octave Wurlitzer electronic organ with chord buttons and pre-set rhythms that could all be played at the same time. Unsuspected by me, my wife-to-be was in the audience. Performing personnel were: Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer, and me.

Banned Rehearsal 213 - Banned Rehearsal

By the time this tape was made, in 1990, Neal and Anna were in California, and Aaron was back in town, and Karen and I had moved to our current location in Maple Leaf. We were playing small instruments in a small room. Personnel were: Karen Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, and me.

Banned Rehearsal 558 - Banned Rehearsal

Ten years later, playing in the studio out in the garage, we make a big fat sax-y sound with a feedback humdrone up the middle. It veers toward the vaguely jazzy, mostly due to Aaron's alto sax and some piano tinklings, but the radio sound hits obliquely and we make our own slow fade out. Personnel were: Karen Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer, and me.

April 19, 2011
Banned Rehearsal 678 - Banned Rehearsal

Six years ago, Aaron and Anna are on their various sabbaticals and Neal comes over to make sounds with us on a more-or-less weekly basis, alternating Gradus sessions and Banned Rehearsal. We start in a classic trio configuration, with Neal playing cornet, Karen on drums, and me playing piano, and out from that jazzish environment we construct a space in which sounds hang suspended outside of music.

Zoo Day - Keith Eisenbrey

Last year I recorded a trip to Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo. This is the segment in the "Day" gallery of the "Day and Night" exhibit, just before the zoo shut it down to save money. Great sadness.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Playlist

Recorded

April 10, 2011
Gradus 73 - Neal Meyer
Banned Rehearsal 771 - Banned Rehearsal

April 12, 2011
Suite in G BWV 816 - JS Bach - Blandine Verlet
Six Little Piano Pieces op. 19 - Schoenberg - Paul Jacobs

These pieces explain themselves so well they could serve as an entry point to Schoenberg. It's all there.

Dirty Rag - Brownlee's Orchestra of New Orleans

April 14, 2011
Symphony of Psalms - Stravinsky - Russian State Academy Orchestra/Boys' and Male Voices of the Russian State Academic Choir/Igor Markevitch

Dynamite performance. The boys' choir has a sullen and murderous sound and the rest of the crew follow suit, brutal and thuggish. Listen at your own risk. Wear armor and bring friends.

The Prodigal's Return (The Things I Usta Do I Don't Do No More) - Hallelujah Joe
Spain - Bob Crosby's Bobcats
Swingin' on Central - Nat Cole
Liza - Al Haig

Live

April 11, 2011

Gradus 191 - Neal Meyer

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Playlist

Recorded

April 3, 2011
Suite in g minor BWV 808 - JS Bach - Colin Tilney
That Beautiful Rag - Stella Mayhew/Billie Taylor
Careless Love - Oscar Celestin's Original Tuxedo Jazz Orchestra
Symphony of Psalms - Stravinsky - Radio SO-Berlin/Riccardo Chailly
Throwing Stones at the Sun - Willie Bryant
Contrasts - Harlan Leonard
What More Can a Woman Do - Sarah Vaughan/Dizzy Gillespie and his Orchestra
Love Lies - Jack Teagarden
I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone - Elvis Presley
Beatnik Sticks - Paul Revere and the Raiders
Action - Paul Revere and the Raiders
Gone Movin' On - Paul Revere and the Raiders
Interruption #1 (midi) - Keith Eisenbrey

April 5, 2011
The River - Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

The first three sides of this album have a similar structure. Each begins with several songs arranged for the full band sound and performed in Bruce's "young tough prick" persona, painting an eloquent picture of the rage of young blood at the adult world and the obligations and restrictions it imposes, while frustrated at every moment by the realization that the desire of that blood is for, precisely, the freedoms of the adult world and the knowledge that the freedoms come at a price. Each of these first sides ends (if I remember correctly) with a more introspective song in an acoustic arrangement that offers a view inside the persona of the adult as it slowly chooses itself. The last side consists almost entirely of this more introspective aspect, and finishes with a kind of warning - "There but for my acceptance of my adult self go I". Considered together they function as a song cycle in four parts offering a moving account of the pain and sorrow of choosing manhood over adolescence, with an epilogue of where a failure of that choosing would have ended - the 'river' being that flowing through Cautionary Valley. The varying style of arrangements works well structurally, and the song-writing is quite strong (even for Bruce) throughout. I have often said that the only album of Bruce's I liked unconditionally was Nebraska. I amend that opinion now to include this extraordinary work.

April 7, 2011
1/3 Poem x N - Neal Meyer - Banned Rehearsal

I remember the name of this piece of Neal's, but I didn't remember that the whole band, including me, joined in its performance, nor what the piece was like. We intoned repeated phonemes above a feedbacky sort of ground. Quite an unexpected pleasure.

Banned Rehearsal 212 - Banned Rehearsal

Magnificently blatant.

Banned Rehearsal on KSER- Banned Rehearsal

My recording of our moment of glory on Chris DeLaurenti's "Sonar Map" program on KSER back in 2000.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Playlist

Recorded

3/26/2011
Youkali (Tango Habanera) - Kurt Weill - Diane McNaron/Shari Boruvka
Sweet Substitute - Jelly Roll Morton
Symphony in 3 Movements - Stravinsky - London SO/Colin Davis

I keep getting a sneaking suspicion that the three movements of the title are not the three obvious ones, but that at every moment there are three afoot.

3/37/2011
Dancing on the Ceiling - Barbara Carroll
I Don't Care if the Sun Don't Shine - Elvis Presley

a live recording with a honky-tonk piano player in the back.

Rosace - Henri Mulet - David Di Fiore

I've heard David perform this piece live on numerous occasions, and it always comes back to the question of how we put meter together in our heads as the music goes along. The issue is right up front with this piece, because the metrical appearance on the score is pretty straightforward, but as the notes speak into space our sense of where the downbeat is is dis-moored.

Momente (1965 version) - Stockhausen - Symphony Orchestra of Radio Cologne/Martina Arroyo/Aloys Kontarsky/Alfons Kontarsky

This piece pre-figures, using low-tech labor-intensive means, much of what later electronic music found itself doing. The signal produced by a sound source (the soprano) is split apart and transformed by the mechanism (the rest of the crew).

String Quartet #7 - Otto Klemperer - Philharmonia SQ

Not a great piece, but it comes across as a valiant attempt at static pathos, like still photographs that ought to evoke stories, but refuse to.

Big Foot Feller - Buell Kazee
The Inuit (Eskimos) of the Arctic Circle vol. 2
Pastorale 850114B - Keith Eisenbrey - The Fehrwood Ensemble

This tape is the same take layered onto itself 16 times, combined with a tape of an ice storm on my window in Red Hook to cover up some of the tape hiss.

Banned Rehearsal 211 - Banned Rehearsal

3/29/2011
Banned Rehearsal 557 - Banned Rehearsal

Early on in the life of Banned Rehearsal we coined a word to describe certain sessions that seemed ready to fall asleep at any moment, in which nothing could be done to move anything or do anything. Often these were lovely things to listen to, as is this quintessentially sedatory recording.

3/31/2011
what remains . . . - Tom Baker

Among other things, a selection of the surfaces of recorded sound. The structure is strictly intent on getting out of the way of just what a thing sounds like, whether it be a thing of body or a thing of ether.

Gradus 171 - Neal Meyer

Live

3/28/2011
Gradus 190 - Neal Meyer