Playlist

Preface

windows

"Text #5 'utility, quality'

'masterwork art, definitive formulation, validated method are among the crotchety gluttons at the feast of brotherhood; not its hosts'"
J. K. Randall - "Fontainebleau" News of Music May 1985

Texts

Live

October 5, 2019
Orchestra Seattle 
Seattle Chamber Singers
William White, conductor
First Free Methodist Church, Seattle

Vast Array - Carlos Garcia
Changer Story - Roger Fernandes, storyteller
La Création du monde - Darius Milhaud
The Earthmakers - Carol Sams

Roger Fernandes told us a story about how Beaver made the world.

Carlos Garcia's piece seemed, to me, underdone, full of color and full of color, but dearthed of payoff.

I believe this is my first go at the Milhaud.

Carol Sams pulled out all the stops and then some. A huge piece for masses of folks. I might be able to get a better bead on it if I were to hear it alone. That is, I'm having more and more trouble these days with masses of folks performing for masses of folks. Much of this problem is simply personal to me: I am less and less comfortable being one among a large audience. It stresses.

Prom Queen

October 11, 2019
Prom Queen's 5th Anniversary 'Midnight Veil'
and
Gala w/ Von Wildenhaus
The Triple Door, Seattle

For our 33rd anniversary Karen and I went out on the town to hear two extremely sexy singers in pretty dresses, each backed by bunches of dudes with pretty guitars and other gears. There was also a film made of music videos from Prom Queen's album Midnight Veil. We had a grand time.

Recorded

October 6, 2019
The Purposes and Politics of Engaging Strangers - Benjamin Boretz - Benjamin Boretz, John Peel, Penelope Hyde, The Barrytown Orchestra, The Goleta Anarchist Music Ensemble

Jim (Randall) says

public art

starting now from here a question arose
that's where quality was thrown (into consciousness) like trash in a can
oy
impervious to analysis or discourse
the very purpose of structure is an alienation of expression
how might one describe a word

the difficulty in producing masterwork art, is that it, as a thing, was never there in experience to experience

to refer to any particular creative expression as a masterwork necessitates the activity of pretending the existence of the class

bridge parts

do we believe in the presence of masterworks
the utterances of the knights of most worship

ontological angst
expressive coexplorer

context can not be a method
stubbornly nonverbal facts

should problem people
logically be ostracized altogether

Humoresques - Antonín Dvořák [from Naxos The Very Best of Dvorak]

silent movie music
a story teller's music
its enchantment

Banned Rehearsal 797 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
speaks in communal percussion tongues

the sound is delicate
and directionality is surreally specific

transgressory tom tom

top to bottom

hear this message from your local bodhrán
Neal ponders the train 16 coaches long

there are characters representing a rhythm section
and chord changes and song lounging not on stage

Helluva Mountain King - Chaotic Noise Marching Corps [from Zero to Lizardman]

pretty darned fun neighbors! punkassgrieg.

October 7, 2019
Sonata in D K. 45 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

full of   hesitancies
catches

like clock cogs

Messiah Part 2 - George Frideric Handel - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chamber Chorus, Robert Shaw, Kaaren Erickson, Sylvia McNair, Alfreda Hodgson, Jon Hmphrey, Richard Stilwell, Layton James

to his credit he is clearly concerned with being certain that the words are understood, in every syllable of them

but why do we like sheep?

glorification of the kinginess of Christ
expedient in a monarchy

Lift Up Your Hearts - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, director [April 1966]

Outside The Rain - Stevie Nicks [from Bella Donna]

another one drifts off
none listen to the end anyway

boat

October 8, 2019
Kosály-Meyer 3 - Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 1986]

five thousand seven hundred and forty seven
flies on the wall

a quiet dripping measures the conversation
a guitar is plucked
two strings alternating irregularly, open, framing a sung tone

later a conversation in fowl or wee critter talk

names of the actors
Romeo
Juliet

October 10, 2019
Nightingale Whistle - Aaron Keyt [from November Choses]

I was going to listen to the whole set of choses this night
but realized after a few seconds that it was too intense far for that sort of nonsense

bales and whirds

wall

their calls submerge
us

languid and shrill jungles joined at the solvent

Bake Eyes - Yuni in Taxco [from Sanpaku]

the jangle of it, bright, overwhelms

a tiny careful tingly shape

Loser - St. Rage [at the Common Good Cafe, August 2016]

a determined loser
powers attitude through to level two

Postscripts

begins to sing in the second longings

1 of the first stanza concerning this

dark night and its happy traits about which

everything cold

is colder

the blankness of my walls

Playlist

Preface

"What am I doing, mind in the concert hall like that? Maybe it's better to state things more generally: something happens, which will have had, quite inadvertently, any number of complex, variable, and unforeseen interactions with everything else, down to the molecular level. This immanent vitality is quite incidental, belying the notion that one ever does more or less than simply take part in it. Music situates parts -- gathering up bundles of messy connectivity, listening in; putting an ear to all that vast, tangled darkness, we draw close to the beating heart. The question of what we do in music is therefore revitalized by the exploration of incident."
Mark So "Music is Full of Incident (Christian Wolff at 80)" Open Space Magazine Issue 17/18 spring 2015/fall 2015

Texts

Live

December 31, 2017
Sheridan Riley (with 5-Track)
Red Ribbon
Ben von Wildenhaus (with Amanda (?) Blue (sp?))
Gainsbourg, Seattle

Decades ago I lived in an apartment that shared a long wall with Benjamin Boretz's basement music studio in Red Hook, NY. When improvisation sessions were happening in that next room I would often turn the television on without the sound and see what the crazy music next door did unto Barney Miller or baseball. It was more often than not the best thing that had ever happened to television. Gainsbourg is a 'French themed' bistro in Greenwood, Seattle, that, among other things (including excellent food), features (or at least did that night) old French films projected silently, with sub-titles, on the wall behind the tiny stage. These continued through the three musical presentations. I have seen many intentional multi-media works, strenuous juxtapositions of elements, curatorial and high-toned, but rarely have I been so ravished as by this haphazard mashup. Earnest late night conversations across the traveled years.

Red Ribbon at Gainsbourg, December 31, 2017

Sheridan Riley presented as a well-dressed drummer/guitarist/singer joined by 5-Track (or so I'm told), who is a local musician playing bass (or playing guitar as though it were a bass - memory fails). They came on so gently into the evening as to be a near ambience, inviting and warm. It was fabulous to see Red Ribbon again, this time as Emma Danner just herself, her guitar and a little keyboard. Freed from any need to rise over a full band, she was finding all sorts of wonderful spots in her upper register that I had not heard before. A marvelous voice with, I suspect, riches she hasn't discovered yet. More please. Ben von Wildenhaus, back to mostly guitar playing, but with occasional vocal-percussive interjections. A singer, costumed to the French nines, joined him on several numbers, or perhaps stepped forward out of the old time cinema wall, for sure at least playing along with the oldies act, hand gestures and vocal styling streaming from mid-20th century continental torch-song. Too bad she couldn't bring one of those old radio show microphones along with!

January 5, 2018
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Ian McKnight - The Trees Awaken

Story telling is a mode of experiencing time. Melody is another. The reticence with which many composers approach even the notion that they might be exploring the landscape created between them is due, in part, I think, to the unquestionable difficulty of, first: getting the story and melody modes right, and second: getting those modes to work together as a synthesis. Or rather, the issue may simply be one of trajectory. Is this a melody that tells or is it a tale told in melody? In this case, clearly the former. Unfortunately Ian was ill, but we experienced his piece as a projected video file of a live (situated in a lively Tacoma cafe) performance. The players were Ian on flute, Clement Reid on piano, and Carson Farley on cello.

Carson Farley - Film Music

Same set up, same ensemble, video from the same cafe performance, customers walking through the frame, coffee grinders grinding, espresso makers hissing. I must admit it is quite a mind bend to experience, on film, as it were, a performance of a music written for a different film than that which we were witnessing. Between the mind bend, the frozen-eye videography, and my increasing anxiety concerning my own impending performance, I admit to not being as focussed on the music as I would like to be.

Patrick O'Keefe - A Morning Stroll - Thornton Creek Clarinet Quartet

We heard an earlier version of this piece last year. Patrick has tightened it up considerably, and the ensemble of 3 regular sized clarinets (not sure if they were B-flats or A's) and one bass clarinet sounded great. An attractive and entertaining jaunt somewhat in the vein of Nielsen, but happier.

Aaron Keyt - Selections from Music for Wallace

Aaron and I go way back. Wayyy back. On top of that, these pieces are in my stack of "prepare these next" scores, so I wasn't hearing them cold. However, hearing them while playing them is quite different from hearing them while not also concerned with fingering and note reading. What shines, and it shines bright, is their knife-edge poetic focus. These pieces do not bludgeon, they incise.

Keith Eisenbrey - Selections from Second Thoughts

I'll refrain (this time) from commenting on my own pieces, other than to list their names: A a, B a, B b, C a, C b, C c, D a, D b, D c, D d. Since I only found out I was on this show at 1:30 that afternoon (at the time it was thought that Ian's illness might leave two spots open) I stopped before I got to any that were difficult to play. I mentioned during the Q&A a midi version of all the parts packed in the box. Here it is:


And here are all the parts spread out on the floor, performed on a real life piano:




Recorded

January 1, 2018
The Fifte Pavian and the Galliarde to the Fifte Pavian - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

Phrases to savor in the mouth, ornamented with florid scholarly encrustations, glossed, commentaried, captioned, titled, moraled, glowing with all of text's accoutrements.

Black Cat Blues - Old Pal SmokeShop Four [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

Sitting close to that uncomfortable region where the blues veer near or into their own caricature.

Jackhammer Blues - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

Each line is short a beat, which is to say that they is some sevens in there snuck among the eights.

I Walk The Line - Johnny Cash [from Sun Records Essential Hits]

There is a quiet bowed tone just before JC enters, or is it hummed? It sounds like a cello to me.

My mom, seated in the middle, with me. 1959.

Elijah Rock - arr. by Jester Hairston - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from my mom's tape]

The Hollywood style counted then, in 1961 suburbia, as popular, modern, with it. It wasn't.

It's All Over Now, Baby Blue - Bob Dylan [from Biograph]

Rhythmically aware accentuation of the verse in at least three independent modes of delineation -  pitch, duration, emphasis - all cooperating at different rates.

January 2, 2018
Going Mobile - The Who [from Who's Next]

beep beep. The lighter acoustic guitar arrangement upfront allows room for the electric to enter into the space opened up by the drums.

TVC 15 - David Bowie [from Station to Station]

What it's about (its words) is not the point. What it is is an excuse for rhythm games, how to accentuate the title as an ordered set of syllables.

Improvisation - University of Washington Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble [from Neal's Recital Tape, May 1981]

applause bravo author
goes rockish
heroic fanfare
count ONE!
the gavel bangs
(disapproval)
bravo
author.

In good humor I suppose. We tried.

January 4, 2018
Fall On Me - REM [from Life's Rich Pageant]

Even the drum track sounds strummed with subtle tambourine, softening the whole harmony.

Banned Rehearsal 257 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [June 1991]

Me and John, 1991

Oh that new parent yawn! I guess it had finally caught up with us. Reed organ (a toy) beset by radio on radio off. Shifting sounds, that is, the sound of us shifting ourselves, picking up instruments, moving about in the room. We have weight and bodies. We can be heard. These instruments do not magically appear. Sudden entrances, sudden blossoms.

Hot Foot - The Boss Martians [from 13 Evil Tales]

Sliding down the Ventures' side of Surf Mountain.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 1, 2018

Greenwood 180101 - Keith Eisenbrey
Waiting for a bus at Greenwood Avenue North and North 85th Street. Fireworks for a new year and a tow-truck. beep beep.

Banned Rehearsal 949 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt