Saturday, March 2, 2013

Playlist

Live

February 24, 2013
The Music of Emily Doolittle
Poncho Theater, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle

Sorex - Cristina Valdés and Oksana Ezhokina, piano
Music for Magpies - Paul Taub, flute
falling still - Brent Hages, Oboe; Mikhail Shmidt, Violin; Mara Gearman, Viola; David Sabee, Cello
Social sounds from whales at night - Catherine Lee, Oboe d'amore
Why the parrot repeats human words - Maria Mannisto, Narrator; Laura DeLuca, Clarinet; Mara Gearman, Viola; Matthew Kocmieroski, Percussion
Four Pieces About Water - Paul Taub, Flute; Laura DeLuca, Clarinet; Seth Krimsky, Bassoon; Mark Robbins, Horn; Sara Mayo, Trombone; Oksana Ezhokina, Piano; Mikhail Shmidt, Violin; Rajan Krishnaswami, Cello; Joe Kaufman, Bass; Julia Tai, Conductor
All Spring - Maria Mannisto, Soprano; Paul Taub, Flute; Laura DeLuca, Clarinet; Matthew Kocmieroski, Percussion; Mikhail Shmidt, Violin; Joe Kaufman, Bass; Julia Tai, Conductor
A Short, Slow Life - Maria Mannisto, Soprano; Paul Taub, Flute; Winnie Lai, Oboe; Laura DeLuca, Clarinet; Seth Krimsky, Bassoon; Mark Robbins, Horn; Matthew Kocmieroski, Percussion; Mikhail Shmidt, Violin; Natasha Bazhanov, Violin; Rachel Swerdlow, Viola; David Sabee, Cello; Julia Tai, Conductor

This concert was a joy from beginning to end, with far too many wonders to mention. But somewhere between the timbral circles Paul Taub was drawing within single repeated pitches in Music for Magpies, and the play among the contours of the tunes Catherine Lee was spinning against the spacial vectors of electronic sound in Social sounds from whales at night, brought to mind the giddy mass flocking of birds and fish as they wheel in near unanimity, an image that worked quite well as a key to negotiating the delicate, carefully calibrated rhetorical flow of these musics.

February 26, 2013
The 21st-Century Piano with Cristina Valdés, piano
Meany Theater, University of Washington, Seattle

Transfigured Etudes - Huck Hodge
La Mandragore - Tristan Murail
Tombeau de Messiaen for piano and CD - Jonathan Harvey
The Mechanics of Escapement for toy piano and clock chimes - Nathan Davis
A Little Music for two pianos - Richard Karpen - Richard Karpen, piano

As a note for my benefit, and not as a complaint: a case could be made that each of these pieces, even the toy piano piece, concerns itself less with the piano as such than with varieties of latter-day Lisztian virtuoso pianism, and with what can be extracted from that prodigious energy. It is interesting that more than a century after the passing of the Abbé, it seems to be difficult to approach the keyboard without a nod in his direction. Cristina, of course, just eats this stuff up. My local music bias was pleased that the concert began and ended with the music by local luminaries, and that they held their own quite easily. I was also pleased that within three days time I heard Cristina begin a concert playing piano 4-hands, and end another with a piano duo. Who arranged that?

A huge hand to both Emily and Cristina for the immense amount of work it took to so ably produce these spectacular and thought provoking events.

March 1, 2013
Seattle Composers Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Attitude - Doug Palmer - Keith Eisenbrey
Escape Sequence - Matthew Briggs
1 and 3 from Possible Aphorisms - Tom Baker
music from the film 'Love In The Year 2000' - Marcus Oldham

Four takes on the idea of accompaniment, taken in reverse: music and film as mutual accompaniments to each other; likewise with music and dance; percussion providing a wire-frame for a piano trio; and the incorporation of two parts into one.

Recorded

February 24, 2013
Summertime - Billy Stewart [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
Banned Sectional 6 KEENWM - (May 1985, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer)

The aural record of my reverie on Sibelius #1, Kajanus, hi-fi, compact disks (new at the time), and phonographs, the greater part of which ended up published in News of Music. What I don't remember is whether I was writing this text as I was speaking it, or more likely was simply reading it.

February 25, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 34 - (May 1985, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer)

Not surprising that someone cued up Sibelius #1, but I was intent upon airing deeper anxieties as an experiment in text-generation (accompanied by detractors and an enabler). One of many tapes in which things were tried but in which results were thin.

February 28, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 592 - (December 2000, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Isabel Kosály-Meyer, Neal Meyer)

The tamtam roil arises from the impression that whichever way the pitch committee is headed the populace is going the opposite, which sense lingers even past where the tamtam has ceased to sound, and even past where uppitchness and downpitchness have wandered into other qualia sets.

Flyer by Darick Chamberlin
Upcoming

Tuesday March 5, 2013 8pm
Your Mother Should Know, Red Ribbon, Dead Bars, Canals of Venice
Comet Tavern, Seattle - $6 cover

Saturday May 4, 2013 at 8:00 PM
Keith Eisenbrey and Neal Meyer at The Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Music for solo piano:
Eisenbrey: Welcome to my planet. I come in peace.
Meyer: Cage - Solo for Piano

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