Preface
"Conflict between what's relevant to the substance of what you've done and what gets it public attention is poignant."
- Benjamin Boretz "2: (META)" from "inside in . . . / . . . outside out" Open Space Publications, 2020
Texts
Streaming
Wayward in Limbo
With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially “live” performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere.
- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/.
July 24, 2021
 |
| the picture I drew for Carol and Susie |
Carol J. Levin and Susie Kozawa
I drew a picture for Carol and Susie
Recorded
July 24, 2021
Sonata in E Major, Hob. XVI.13 - Franz Joseph Haydn - Christine Schornsheim
If there is a relation between phrase/figure A and phrase/figure B
then
it has a dual nature
first its existence as an experienced comparison of
an ongoing event with a memory
and then its existence as a developing
memory of two memories
these phrases are designed both to facilitate and
overwhelm that process
Fantasia in D minor, K. 397 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Mitsuko Uchida
long sad waiting
with pangs and worry
better in the sunny busy morning
until nightfall or sleep
July 25, 2021
Sonata in G Major, Op. 31 #1 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Artur Schnabel
activating pulse
giving it a body
that it may grow
returning
again and again to familiar ground
by various interpolated routes
some sunny
some dark
some brave views
Aaron and I will be posting these 9 short music and video files for public enjoyment sometime in the next month or so. It consists of recordings I made last Summer of compositions by Aaron and me, paired with various visual elements. At the heart of it are the 12 books of Aaron's Music for Wallace and my 12 Chorales, bookended by Aaron's Hedgehogs and my Frankie and Johnny. Wallace was a spinet piano that lived with Aaron and Jennifer while they were living in Somerville, Massachusetts, and serves as the muse of the project.
first reel
hedgehogs introduce some poetical index thoughts
images
provide a context for thought
an icon first
Wallace the muse
then motion
trees sunlight
West of Kautz Creek in Mount
Rainier National Park
glimpsed sky
the Chorale remains motionless
second reel
image a creek
on the trail to Cape Alava in
Olympic National Park
dense tangles of foliage and reflections
still water reveals and reflects
Chorale image
fir yielding
to strong wind and gray sky skudding by
blue sky image with dark clouds
only possible in The West
on the highway between Ellensburg and
Yakima
third reel
green maple tree
in our back yard
gray
sky
more wind
Cape Alava itself
image trees low gray sky
ocean
meets shallow shores
back to the backyard tree
maple
green giant
fourth reel
bright sky
side of Little Tahoma
from Burroughs Mountain in Mount Rainier National Park
Chorale
image same maple tree
dark and gray
infest with Locust
hanging chain
rocks image
blue bright sky
side of
First Burroughs
fifth reel
from in the car
on the road down
from Paradise
we acknowledge our mover
image canyon cliff
at
Crater Lake National Park
sunlight
Chorale
sunlight on a
manufactured rock formation
our backyard sidewalk
with action
provided by the maple tree above
sixth reel
image rocks snow cloud
shadowed sunlight
Carbon Glacier at Mount Rainier
Chorale
what the little plants tell me
all mankind must perish
image old train
at the Railroad Museum in Toppenish, Washington,
gray sky light 5000
sixth reel
Chorale is the making of feature
Federation Forest State Park
is its own image
seventh reel
tiny plants
tiny white water
in the upper White River drainage in Mount Rainier National Park
Chorale
corn and gladiolas
our backyard
shadow puppets on the fence
eighth reel
lower slopes of Mount Rainier
near Paradise
Chorale
back to gray skies
wind
and preaching stalker trees
image Hayden Valley
in Yellowstone National Park
sky trees water grass
bands of blue and green
last reel
Chorale
shadow clouds below Mount Fremont
in Mount Rainier National Park
image leaves and their sunshine
Ravenna Park, Seattle
from the 20th Avenue foot bridge
Frankie and Johnny
from the car window
driving down from Sunrise
in Mount Rainier National park
below morning
corner in text
matches turning the Sunrise Point corner in video
July 26, 2021
Etude in E Major, Op. 10 #3 - Frédéric Chopin - Alfred Cortot [1933]
careful sequential revelation of melody's ambitus and roundness
alt
harmony
alt universe
alt consciousness
alt key
Selection 7 from Selections from The Nutcracker - Piotr Ilyich Tchakovsky - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy
giving the winds the jobs strings used to do
(accompanimental figures)
the key is the spirit that lives here
or did at times upon times
passions intact as presence
{from my journal entry of February 29, 2004 - Ponti certainly has the color and mercurial essence but doesn't follow the long long phrases as notated in my edition and they are extremely long which leads me to wonder whether that wasn't half of what Scriabin was after}
Pelleas et Melisande, Act IV - Claude Debussy - Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Ernest Ansermet, Camille Maurane, Chorus of the Grand Théâtre, Geneva, Erna Spoorenberg, George London, Hoekman, Veasey, Brady, Shirley-Quirk
this act will out
it won't be good to see
it plunges right down
senza ritornello non regardez
When You Ain't Got No Money You Needn't Come Around - May Irwin [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
woman's voice singing a story
told from a man's point of view
tempo flexes with the storytelling
trigger alert for multiple
racist epithets unironically used
Battle of San Juan Hill - Mike Bernard [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
Byrd wrote a battle too
this one could be news reel playalong
tone
clusters??!!
in 1912!!!
like the thunder effects in French organ
music they were in the air all over and had been for some time
July 27, 2021
Canary Cottage - Frisco Jazz Band [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
brothelic euphemism
we play fast
such party
exhausting
Ameriques - Edgard Varèse - New York Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez
America as the dark continents
written by Europa
coded alienation
the clothes here don't fit my skin
echoes of Rite of Spring
primitivism
as yet another overlay
one of hundreds
the
undigested continents
Black Bottom Stomp - Jelly Roll Morton and His Red Hot Peppers [from Chicago Days]
just about as much frenetic dancing as can be packed on a 78 rpm side
Long Tall Mama - Big Bill Broonzy [from Allen Lowe's Turn Me Loose White Man]
bragging blues "make a poor man leave his home" "freight train jump her track"
Symphony in D minor (#5) - Dmitri Shostakovich - U.S.S.R. Symphony Orchestra, Maksim Shostakovich
that inimitable Melodiya in your face engineering
the just
or
word matter
orders not
here comes the machine state
Tchaikovsky's evil twin
misread as
strength
Americans had Symphonic Envy
DS must have been flabbergasted
big tune
science laid bare
Nationalist end game
that is
however it must be said
a
ferociously fun timpani part
for a punk nerd teen to play
D Major Glory Land
badge achieved
so socialist so realist
July 28, 2021
Ev'rything I Love - Peggy Lee [from The Complete Recordings 1941-1947]
certainly everything the 40s man wanted to hear
soft and smooth
Duett-concertina - Richard Strauss - Staatskappele Dresden, Rudolf Kempe, Manfred Weise, Wolfgang Liebscher
how it floats on billows of air
Sancho comments from the road
floating billows
hears what is wanted to be heard
just
dinking around
with what became of the vaunted music of the facile
future
lost in fairy dust land
String Quartet - Irving Fine - Lydian Quartet
1
it twists and whips
pulled taut
tent walls in high wind
something constrained
corseted nervous exact
2
how many directions are
in
from this immovable stasis
doorless
the comfortable is lava
walk
on the sharp ice
only
Red Hot - Billy Lee Riley [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]
clever metrical game
the play between
"my gal is red hot
||
you're gal ain't dood'ly squat"
big accent
on the and of four
on "you're"
as the
contradiction overshouts the statement
You Don't Miss Your Water - William Bell [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
I was bad
I'll do better
or wish it weren't too late
greeting card size
Funky Broadway - Wilson Picket [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
alternate meaning
alternate metrical placements
for dancing
alternate qualifiers
could go on and on
proceeds like a set of short variations
overlapping
pulling back
to reveal those that had moved sideways
as in
turn this
sound sideways
and hear what was doing
over there
or will be
or have been
July 29, 2021
("...my chart shines high where the blue milks upset...") - Benjamin Boretz - Keith Eisenbrey [live at the Chapel Performance Space June 5, 2010]
Ben was in the audience
pressure was on
I play once again the
piece that changed my life
here about as well as I ever will
perhaps
the delicate balance between continuity and immediacy
build
evaporate
rebuild
return
July 30, 2021
Back on the Chain Gang - The Pretenders [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
did they do a dance move
on the grunty ooh aahs
as I
understand it
a sincere song
with an unfortunate moral
disequivalence to Slavery Part 2
Cantus (8701xx) partial - Keith Eisenbrey - Fehrwood Ensemble
my 1987 composition in rehearsal
before I added the clicking sticks
for mixed recorder ensemble
foghorn sounds and hailing signals
what would a midified realization
sound like?
leisurely accumulation of what will be a tune episode
love the open sound of the recorders
and the just so difference in
timbre
among the different sizes
as they match pitch
partial
because the tape ran out
String Quartet 4 - Berthold Goldschmidt - Mandelring Quartet
a long
lingering
post Romantic
hold out
more like
Shostakovich's quartets in temperament
than like Schoenberg's or Berg's
curled
in a dark apartment
clutching the last bottles
of
common practice
beset
by a contrapuntal conscience
he does
speak this language
fluently no doubt of that
the tattered standard of Max Reger
still flapping on a strange world
Banned Rehearsal 447 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 1, 1997]
we begin by adjusting our instruments as furniture
clarinet piano
electric guitar drums a brass instrument
my guess is Aaron Neal me Anna?
who? Karen?
may be must be wrong at least partly
an orchestral din
I think Isaac is complaining
but sounds pretty great at this
remove
everything transpires with ears open
but pretty loud
I think Neal is playing both piano and the brass instrument
cornet
most likely
Karen may be on drums
with Anna providing light
percussion
a profound rumble and squealing winds
Isaac does
complain
which fits right in
and is a righteous complaint
violin takes up a cause
exhausted we scatter ourselves about to
recover
The Mighty W
a highly dinnish session
and the
Funmaker soldiers on
to pick up our drunken spirits
we adjust back
in our snoring sounds
we may be falling into a sound sleep
{from my journal entry of November 22, 2004 - opens as much more of an explosion. And the Kingsbury piano makes its debut? or is that just the guitar sounding distinctly pianistic? I don't think so. It really is the piano so that other Sonic Brilliance unmarked (tape) was probably made this evening Fabulously maudlin performance the Wurlitzer adding a touch of daytime TV to the emotional mix Funmaker cuts across and pulls many along with. dissolves into its constituent parts. and den [?sic] to an exquisite ppp segment lovely and delicate}
Postscripts
::Consult the Oracle
sound in mine and jubilation forth and
cause to sound mysteries speaking love is
perfect show means with creatures that are in
Reality Check::
iris ask'd
solstice into
open olive lakes
