Playlist

Preface

"But the willingness to be oneself, outside any mediation, in the immediacy of presence, comes up against two obstacles: the presence of others and the unpredictability of an unstable act." Jean-Charles François "Variations on and for Daniel Charles" Open Space Magazine Issue 12/13 fall 2010/winter 2011

Texts

Live

April 22, 2017
Seattle Symphony
Benaroya Hall, Seattle

Symphony in B-flat Major (#5) - Bruckner - Seattle Symphony, Ludovic Morlot, conductor

Thank you Stephanie and Dave for the tickets!

It has been quite some time since I had the pleasure of hearing a Bruckner symphony live, in an adequate hall. The magnitude of sound in play requires space around it in order to articulate its dynamic range. Recordings are all very fine, but the physical space you yourself, as an auditor, are in, is uniquely essential for these works to address you fully.

But it wasn't the sound that struck me this time around (though the local crew performed magnificently), it was the polyvalent transparency between phrases, between lines of ongoing counterpoint, between beginnings of things and middles of things and ends of things, between the symphony and me, that spoke. It was as though an epic timespan, in mid explosion, had been captured in freeze-frame and conjured into being in order to sculpt of negative sound defined by symphonic shards, an explicit silence.

Joseph Adam
Toccata in F Major, BWV 540 - J. S. Bach
Organ Concerto in A minor, BWV 593 - J. S. Bach
Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543 - J. S. Bach

We were doubly fortunate to finally hear the organ at Benaroya all by itself. I notice they have stopped referring to it in the program by its brand-name. Did the sponsorship contract run out?

April 27, 2017

Your Mother Should Know

Your Mother Should Know, Sarah Pasillas, Alone In Dead Bars, Sun Dummy
Victory Lounge, Seattle

Everybody was playing "acoustic(ish)". YMSK was, with two performers (Neal Kosály-Meyer and Karen Eisenbrey), the largest ensemble of the night. Alone In Dead Bars is John Maiello of Dead Bars, and "Liz" constituted the whole of Sun Dummy. Sarah Pasillas was without apparent alias. The performing area at VL is nothing more than a few square feet of space in front of the window bench, on a level with what would be the mosh pit if it weren't just a place for folks to stand at the end of the bar. The combination, and the friends-of-the-acts-full audience, made for a lovely intimate feel throughout, and not just in the banter between, but in the warm play of conversation that swaddled the performances. I have confessed before: I am a sucker for guitar strumming she-minstrels, so I was not sorry to be there at all, even though it was late for me to be out on a work night. Sarah plays with a near-yodel break between registers, to potent effect. Sun Dummy lives, I think, to lift her voice into a spot behind the mask that evokes oboe or english-horn timbre, a bit like Courtney Marie Andrews, but a few steps lower - more mezzo than coloratura. Hearing Dead Bars songs in this context, without the neo-punk band armor, brought out their more tender, vulnerable aspects. Kind of a trip, actually.


Recorded

April 25, 2017
Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [take 2 from a recording session at Jack Straw Productions on May 10, 2005]

Part of the pleasure of writing songs, for me, is that it gives me an opportunity to get my compositional jollies - without the self-inflicted intellectually prideful pressure I find when writing for solo piano. In this case, I find all sorts of ways to confuse one voice with another, and to trace multiple non-explicit threads through an otherwise straightforward texture. Must admit, that just toots my horn.

Gradus 90 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2006]

Due to a data entry error I have listened to this twice this same month. I found myself (still puzzling about Bruckner) thinking about silence. I may be misinterpreting somewhat, but in conversation Neal professes to be aiming, in Gradus, at a Cagean concept of silence. Specifically he hopes that no sound made therein would be amiss in a performance of 4'33". But what I was wondering was whether the accomplishment of this is doomed to failure, not because Neal makes 'musical' sounds but because Cage's silence is particular, personal, unique, to Cage, unapproachable outside of his own ear. His verbal explanations and theories about it are no more capable of guiding us to the actual 'it' of it than any other verbal blurble is to any musical experience at all. It can only point at what can't be experienced, report on wonders irrevocably lost.

The Prairie-Grass Dividing - [from Campfire Songs] - Brian Cobb

Paced at first like Korean court music, it accumulates the sounds of everything stowed in the wagon.

Banned Rehearsal 904 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt [February 2016]



Assembled from Telepaths 43, KK&S here in Seattle, Aaron in Summerville, MA. With fine-tipped crayons we scribble tiny textures. Wallace (Aaron's rented spinet) joins in from afar. Quiet plucking of an evening. Drum a long crookedy line. Busy bugs on a forest floor, scattering gently.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 24, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 933 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy

Playlist

Live

September 4, 2015
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Michael Owcharuk

3 Pieces - That Light, Your Sunny Day, Just The Way It Has To Be

Michael expresses an understandable and common frustration with the analytically derived construction of musical processes as a personally productive mode of creative activity, but I remain unconvinced that his proposed solution of attempting a more direct evocation of human emotions has resulted here in anything much more than an evocation of other musics. He is obviously completely engaged in his music, and so I want to be also. But as much as I love the models, I would rather hear less Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans and a lot more of something undeniably, strangely, unfamiliarly, his own.

Jeremy Shaskus
Selections from a 10 Piece Suite - Untitled Prelude, HHCO, Pew Tang (please excuse my spelling, I hear what I hear)

Working with an attractive sounding ensemble of trumpet, soprano sax, flute, and bass clarinet, we hear three brief and theatrical pieces that, to my ears, were less redolent of hip hop than of 1950's American neo-classical music - like Arthur Berger on the sunniest day ever. Everything ends on the up.

Matthew James Briggs
Radiant Light

A string trio's long quiet tones and a recording of South Dakota prairie bird sounds, barely processed, mesmerate 7 minutes into one.

Jay Hamilton
Nothing Is What It Seems (selections)

Jay's absurdist folk band, The Turtling Dithers, is a Seattle treasure. Where else would you hear a player alternate clackamore, jew's harp, and bibliographical data points? This is all part of a theater piece held together, apparently, by a concern with libraries. What's not to like?

Recorded

September 1, 2015
Concerto in E-flat (#4) K. 495- Mozart - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, John Cerminaro

It isn't simply that the solo horn line is blatantly singably operatic, but that it is throughout the believably singable melody of a single fully fleshed out character. One could imagine it as an intermezzo, with a story line about whether the weather will be fine or not.

September 2, 2015
Quartet in C (#9) op. 59 #3 - Beethoven - Budapest Quartet

Listening first while reading along with the score, I wondered what the score would look like if not just each instrument, but each string had its own line. It seems clear that Beethoven was deeply aware of which string each instrument was playing, and of how the open strings affect the sound - or, at least, an experienced quartet would make it seem so.

Listening next without the score: stray thoughts - silent as a first ending not taken - dancing weights of figures conjoined in meter, centers of gravity shift from foot to foot, hip to hip - wherever sunny place we may be we are a shift of balance away from darkest shade.

September 3, 2015
12 Etudes op. 25 - Chopin - Alfred Cortot (1934)

Tunes of fiddly bits making malleable meter among the octaves among the figurations offset the teeniest of timespans finding threads of passing through permeable layers of swaths of sound.

Overture, Scherzo, and Finale - Schumann - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

A group of movements tightly bound by affinities among their melodies' construction.

So that's how he does it all!

Concerto in B-flat (#2) op. 83 - Brahms - RCA Symphony Orchestra, Josef Krips, Anton Rubinstein

Taking every opportunity to extend the complexities of the pianist's figurations into the orchestra and back again, reflecting and feeding on each other into what becomes in the process more symphony than concerto, or rather a symphony constructed out of a concerto.

Alleluja-Vers "Virga Jesse" - Bruckner - Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Eugen Jochum, Wolfgang Schubert

Monumentally personally, intimately cosmic.

7 Preludes, op. 17 - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

Solid, but as if somehow they weren't complete in themselves. What they are preludes of is what has been left out from inside them, is what they are bereft of.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 31, 2015
Banned Telepath 35 150831 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Banned Telepath 35 150831 Somerville - Aaron Keyt
Banned Rehearsal 893 150831 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Back in the studio after a summer of porch sessions. The breakout moment for me was bowing the lowest string of the antique zither with a souvenir miniature Mariners bat and unearthing an unexpected wealth of quietly subtle melodic overtones. Once again we straddle the continent, Aaron chiming in from Somerville.

Playlist

Live

July 24, 2015

Cumulus

Chris Brokaw

Dræmhouse

Narwhal- Seattle

After a lovely dinner at Restaurant Zoë , Karen and I wandered over to Narwhal, an over-over-decorated venue in the downbelow of the Unicorn.

Cumulus has recently picked up two members of Dead Bars, John Maiello (singer for Dead Bars, drummer here) and C.J. Frederick (drummer (mostly) for Dead Bars, guitar here). The sound of the band is solid and muscular, which contrasts nicely with singer Alexandra Niedzialkowski's interesting soprano timbre. Something of a Betty Boop twang made me think of another local she-minstrel, Whitney Ballen, though Alex's voice is pitched down a step or so.

Chris Brokaw centered his sound on the lowest three strings of his guitar. He sang, among other things, a nicely understated version of Stagger Lee. A quick poke on-line reveals a guy who's been around for a while doing some interesting things, only some of which is remotely like pop music.

Dræmhouse filled in all the high partials that were underutilized in Chris's set and jacked them through effects pedals into quite the roiling mass of sound. It was great to see Emma Danner of Red Ribbon holding down the bass end. All that and the stage was lit up with Christmas lights draped with table cloths.

Recorded

July 20, 2015
Sonata in E-flat Major op. 27 #1 (quasi una fantasia) - Beethoven - Walter Gieseking

Performed at a comparatively slow tempo, for clarity's sake. This works especially well in the 2nd movement, where the particularities of the figuration are evident even at the end where the upper part slips an eighth off the beat.

Grande Polonaise Brillante op. 22 - Chopin - Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Charles
Mackerras, Emanuel Ax

Pleasantries in which the ornamentation reveals occasional deflections, or sudden, brief windows into other, darker spaces.

Die Lorelei - Liszt - Mikhail Rudy

Very nearly, for a moment, the prelude to Tristan.

Symphony in C Major (#2) - Schumann - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

Ormandy

1st: From various sides, we approach, windingly, the shining castle. 2nd: the comic domestic, with much bustling; 3rd: Sehnsucht; 4th: the triumphal happy home.

July 21, 2015
Magic Fire Music from Die Walküre - Wagner - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy

Ormandy's rational clarity inflicted on Wagner's gothic monstrosity. It actually works pretty well.

Symphony in C minor op. 68 (#1) - Brahms - Sinfonie-Orchester des Norddeutschen Rundfunks, Wilhelm Furtwängler (October 27, 1951 - Hamburg)

The kettledrum at the opening is actually terrifying.

Graduale 'Os Justi' - Bruckner - Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Eugen Jochum

Great and terrible things happen in pitchwork at pianissimo.

July 22, 2015
The Stars and Stripes Forever - Sousa - Philip Jones Ensemble, Elgar Howarth

Booster pageantry.

Concerto in C minor (#2) - Rachmaninoff - London Symphony Orchestra, Evgeny Kissin, Valery Gergiev

Soft landings, head to pillow. All sonority filled in always.

July 23, 2015
Symphony #7 - Mahler - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer

An attempt to dance with grace and charm in Jupiter's gravity. A forced march dragging the baggage of history. Uprooted isolation, motives slide in like knives, insinuating themselves, prying apart the layers. The grand spectacle of all there is: now in 70mm contrapuntal widescreen! There is a certain Walter Mitty play going on here. The hero looks around him and sees domestic charm. He looks in-round him and reflects the cosmos.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 20, 2015
Banned Rehearsal 890 150720 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
On the porch again.

July 21, 2015
Trio 150721 - Keith Eisenbrey
Radios, drum set, nylon string guitar.

July 23, 2015
Trio 150723 - Keith Eisenbrey
Tamtam, glockenspiel, viola

July 24, 2015
Trio 150724 - Keith Eisenbrey
Toy organ, upright grand piano (in need of tuning), and steel string acoustic guitar with pickup (played through an amp).

Playlist

Live

November 1, 2014
Don Giovanni - Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle

Listen again to the opening chords, how the bass emerges, swallowing. The entire argument of the opera played out in a few seconds.

Carbon Glacier, Mt. Rainier National Park - 1976

November 7, 2014
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Jacob Zimmerman - selections from a larger set of duets

Jacob was joined by Christian Pincock and Jeff Draper (is that right?) in three duets involving combinations of tenor sax, trombone, and a tray full of electronics featuring a hot pink telephone handset. Each duet proceeded as a series of discrete event-moments of carefully varied length, each event-moment a lively duality within itself - like a first-species counterpoint of timbre-complexes.

S. Eric Scribner - selections from a larger set of compositions involving field recordings and found
objects.

I was involved as a performer for Steve's pieces so I don't have a good read on how these came across. Only one of the three selections (the middle one) had a written score, essentially just outlining the density of things to do. The two others consisted of the instructions "kind of noisy" (the first one) and "sustained sounds" (the third one).

Nat Evans - a study using field recordings from The Tortoise

Layers of desert wind, horse-bells and cow-bells (Mahler's last sounds?), deep gongs. Images of movement within stillness and stillness within movement, all of it palpably ancient.

Keith Eisenbrey - J - a solo piano piece written in remembrance of the late J. K. Randall.

I wrote this piece in the Chapel Performance Space last September, while listening to Neil Welch remember the victims of the Cafe Racer shooting. The recording is available on my soundcloud site.

Recorded

November 1, 2014
Two Episodes from Faust - Liszt - Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest, James Conlon

This is the stage scenery in which one imagines operatic action taking place. Particular drama needs to be supplied by the audience's sensibility. There is nothing given but an ambiguous trajectory.

November 3, 2014
Schicksalslied - Brahms - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Claudio Abbado, Ambrosian Chorus, John McCarthy

What has been prepared slips to the side. What persists is interrupted, deflected. What we build, dauntless, evaporates.

Variations on a Rococo Theme op. 37 - Tchaikovsky - Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, Yan-Pascal Tortelier, Paul Tortelier
Sonata-Fantasie in G-sharp minor - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

If this were a film the camera would always be in motion, circular, dancing around its subject.

Symphony in C-minor (#1) - Bruckner - Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, Gunter Wand

Like Berlioz, Bruckner has a characteristic flavor of non sequitur. Where Berlioz will drop in just exactly the wrong affect (and then demonstrate that it was exactly correct) Bruckner goes for registration or scale, lurching us forward in time or plummeting us from tiny to vast, or vaporizing the solid rock we were clinging to, leaving us utterly without being.

November 4, 2014
Love Songs After Foster - The Gregg Smith Singers, The New York Vocal Arts Ensemble

Comfort music then: cleaned up for parlor use, non-threatening - possibly even worse now: the nonironic ironic nonironic.

Concerto in C minor (#2) - Rachmaninoff - Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, Serge Rachmaninoff

Imperialism's fatal nostalgia for its own sweet fictions.

The Ragtime Dance - Scott Joplin - William Albright
Finale aus der III Sinfonie - Louis Vierne - Stanislav Surin

Sound fills space from all sides, dissociating what we are hearing from any possibility that a single person could be responsible for it all.

Renard - Stravinsky - Columbia Chamber Ensemble, Igor Stravinsky

The first, and perhaps only, punk rock opera. Brutally perfect.

6 Songs op. 14 - Webern - Heather Harper
Concerto #1 - Bartok - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini
String Quartet - Ruth Crawford Seeger - Pellegrini Quartet

a thorny hedge

a hashing out in court of law

a discussion in the back rows

in the trees just past firelight undulating

November 5, 2014
Psalm - David Diamond - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

A neo-classical mind struggles with the facts of violence.

Melancholy Baby/Rhythm Riff/Nice Work If You Can Get It - Thelonius Monk [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Naked City - Raymond Scott [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The sound is a stunner: a nearly shrill violin, a baritone sax up from miles deep.

Women In My Life  - John Lee Hooker

The guitar sound pulled fat and the stomp stomp stomp stomped with some crazy palmwine mojo, this is in no meter known to any but JLH.

Klavierstück XI - Stockhausen - Aloys Kontarsky
One Little Star - The Fleetwoods

Self-absorbed, cushioned, protected, oblivious.

Quartet in F minor (#11) - Shostakovich - Fitzwilliam String Quartet

As though from in hiding. Music for narrow dark passages.

The Lovers - Samuel Barber - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Schenck, Dale Duesing

The odd politics of inflating personal intimacy into the realm of corporate expression. Or perhaps merely the high-falutin' counterpart of The Fleetwoods' eternal adolescence.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 2, 2014
Samick - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on a miniature electric guitar.

November 3, 2014
Gradus 255 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Recorded

 

September 14, 2014

Variations on a Schumann Theme op. 23 - Brahms - Sharon Gunderson, Jo Ann Smith

 

Appropriate for polite company - only enough Sturm und Drang to peg its time period.

 

Quartet in E minor op. 30 - Tchaikovsky - Copenhagen String Quartet

Tchaikovsky

 

The episodes allow their own existence to mature before allowing movement away. Nested doors open to new episodes. Concert Music Form at the height of ossification.

 

September 17, 2014

Graduale 'Locus iste'  - Bruckner - Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Eugen Jochum

 

Of the vertical extension of soul and its fleshly contingency.

 

Carnival - Dvorak - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Vaclav Neumann

 

By the book - for use at the beginning of a generic symphony concert.

Scriabin

5 Preludes op. 15 - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

 

Ornamented impassioned immobility.

 

September 18, 2014

Suite #2 - Rachmaninoff - John Ogdon, Brenda Lucas

 

A bit of a yawn despite some valiant playing.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

September 14, 2014

Crestline 140914 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Continuing my improvisation project, and folding the second half of the session over the first. The Crestline is a tenor banjo that found its way to me about 25 years ago.

 

September 15, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 869 - Pete Comley, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

 

The whole gang came over to wish Aaron a happy journey. Pete brought a box of toys.

Playlist

Recorded

July 27, 2014

Die Walküre Act 1 -  Wagner - Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Karl Böhm

Longmire - Mt. Rainier National Park

Slowly unpeeling layers of, and then suddenly springing, a deeply wrought trap.

Quartet in G minor Op. 25 - Brahms, Eastman Quartet

Four answers four. Two answers two. One answers one, until it all flies apart. But even the flying apart is answered up to down, left to right.

On another topic - the well-known orchestration of this piece by Schoenberg has been offered as an example of what Brahms could have done had he been a coloristic orchestrator. But I think Brahms's piano quartet version demonstrates that he was exactly that all along.

 

Les Saisons - Tchaikovsky - Ramzi Yassa

Ramzi Yassa

Fascinating little pieces for solo piano, carved with the exactness of a Chopin Mazurka, but ingenuous as Album für die Jugend.

July 29, 2014

Symphony in A (Original Fassung) - Bruckner - Staatskapelle Dresden, Eugen Jochum

 

A symphony of leftovers, scraps. The unfitted fragments of ever and anon hung from a wire in bare space.

July 31, 2014

Variations Symphoniques - Franck - Orchestre Philharmonique De Liege, Paul Strauss, Aldo Ciccolini

 

An economy of balance attended with all the fussiness that Bach applied to keeping his voices in order.

 

2 Impromptus a la Mazur Op. 7 - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

 

Stepwise motion a la Escher.

 

Jungfrun I Tornet - Sibelius - Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Neemi Järvi, Erland Hagegard, Jorma Hynninen, Tone Kruse, The Gothenburg Concert Hall Choir, Gunno Palmquist

 

Avon, Montana - 1988

Among other things this little one-act opera traces a path through 19th century operatic posturing, from Rossini through Verdi to Tchaikovsky.

 

Les trois valses distinguées du précieux dégoûté - Satie - Frank Glazer

 

All hat and no cattle.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 27, 2014

Silvertone 140727 - Keith Eisenbrey

A short improvisation on an electric hollow-body guitar.

July 28, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 866 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt

Once again, on the porch in the cool of evening, making very little sounds.

Playlist

Upcoming This Week

 

Banned Rehearsal

Friday, June 27, 2014 8pm

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

On June 24, 1984, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, and Neal Meyer gathered together to make a tape, improvising on instruments we didn't know how to play. Thinking we might do this 3 or 4 times and because it seemed right to think of our project as a band - and because none of us could resist the pun - we called ourselves and the project Banned Rehearsal. Our personnel has changed somewhat over time, surviving several lengthy geographic separations, but the project has continued and as of this writing we have recorded 861 numbered sessions. For our eighth public event, we invite you to celebrate with us 30 years of noise, 30 years of exploration, 30 years of trying to figure out what we're doing, 30 years of argument in creative musical expression.

Banned Rehearsal is: Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, and Neal Kosály-Meyer.

 

Recorded

 

June 15, 2014

3 Nocturnes op. 9 - Chopin - Claudio Arrau

 

Beginning again higher to descend yet further

Affectual modulation, by affectual common tone

holding moment until moment is all that is

passion in all its awkward splendor

 

Scherzo and Presto Passionata op. posth. - Schumann - Peter Frankl

 

Music emerging from figuration or figuration sparking from music?

 

Overture from Der Fliegender Hollander - Wagner - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz

 

coin flip: Passion!

coin flip: Purity!

coin flip: Sea!

coin flip: Land!

coin flip: Solitude!

coin flip: Society!

coin flip: Alienation!

coin flip: Acceptance!

 

Sonetto del Petrarco No. 104 - Liszt - Charles Rosen

 

see Chopin above: H M U M I A T I

 

Le Corsair Overture - Berlioz - L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Ernest Ansermet

 

Claus Bantzer

June 18, 2014

Drei Gesänge op. 42 - Brahms - Harvestehude Chamber Choir - Claus Bantzer

 

communal intimacy, to which an accompaniment would be a chill, like a chaperone. I love how the staggered cadence at the end of #3 echoes the staggered entrance of #1.

 

Slavonic March - Tchaikovsky - Concertgebouworkest, Amsterdam, Bernard Haitink

 

such nice uniforms! a cartoon triumphalism.

 

Messe in D minor  - Bruckner - Symphonie-Orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Eugen Jochum, Marga Schiml, Wieslaw Ochman, Karl Ridderbusch, Josef Schmidhuber, Elmar Schloter

 

Brucknerian structural articulation: ecstatic non sequiturs, or perfectly logical sequences that read like non sequiturs. As in: "Wait, what?"

Playlist

Live

May 3, 2014

Les contes d'Hoffmann - Offenbach - Seattle Opera

McCaw Hall, Seattle

Nested tales in nested tales and musical numbers in musical numbers tell of people within people. It is all clever and ironic and sentimental and fun, but too slippery to care much about.

Recorded

May 4, 2014

La Damnation de Faust (parts 3 and 4) - Berlioz - Orchestra & Chorus of Rome Opera, Georges Pretre, Nicolia Gedda, Marilyn Horne, Roger Soyer, Dimiter Petkov

Mount Adams 1977

There is a moment in John Huston's film of Under The Volcano when we see Albert Finney's face pass through more expressions than frames can capture. When Berlioz really gets down to business we enter this realm. Each word, each note, is a dramatic movement. Nothing ends where it started.

May 6, 2014

Variations on an Original Theme op. 21 #1 - Brahms - Julius Katchen

Burial by contrapuntal intricacy, forth from which we emerge transfigured.

Selections from Tannhäuser - Wagner - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

An elaborate bait and switch routine. Surely that issue we were addressing has been resolved? But we're kidding ourselves. We've just moved on.

May 8, 2014

Symphony in C minor (#1) - Bruckner - Staatskapelle Dresden, Eugen Jochum

The matter of this symphony is its own metrical framework. Overlapping groups of squares in multiple time scales ought be rigid and stiff, but instead they build to a critical mass and curve back around. We have been seen.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 5, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 858 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal  Kosály-Meyer

Upcoming

May 31, 2014 - 8:30 PM

Your Mother Should Know - Highdive, Seattle

with Ancient Warlocks, Tom price Desert Classic, On the Ground, and Ian Grunfeld

 June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Playlist

Recorded

12/5/2010
Symphony in c-minor (#8) - Bruckner - Staatskapelle Dresden/Eugen Jochum

Lives on what it seems about to do, long deferred. I often get strong whiffs of late Schubert piano sonatas while listening to Bruckner. In addition to that, something about the way entrances appear out of nowhere was giving me a shiver of Varese, an image of dire spiritual necessity. Seeking, then re-seeking. Expanding, then re-expanding. Dreaming, then re-dreaming. In-radiating, then re-in-radiating. Blazing, then re-blazing. Opening an inner space of infinite depth.

Three-Page Sonata - Ives - Clive Lythgoe

12/6/2010
Streichsextette in F-Dur, op. 118 - Reger - Die Kammermusiker Zurich

Contrapuntal expressionism. The way out is long from here and night deepens. No sweetness without poignance.

Three Orchestral Preludes from "Palestrina" - Pfitzner - Berliner Philharmoniker/Ferdinand Leitner

Concerning: a desire to let the world have its evil if only we can remain unsullied.
Concerning: worldly business and domestic business
Concerning: responsibility and conculpitude

 Lovin' Sam from Alabam - Mamie Smith

12/7/2010
Symphony #1, op. 35 - Alexander Krein - London PO/Martyn Brabbins

Voluptuary.

Sweet Sweet Woman - Douglas Finnell and his Royal Stompers
String Quartet No. 1, op. 7 - Hans Erich Apostel - LaSalle Q

A frantic plea - shriller - desparater

A Good Man is Hard to Find (excerpt) - Miff Mole
Don't Blame Me - Billy Eckstein Orchestra/Sarah Vaughn

Most of the jazz & blues stuff that gets thrown into the listening comes from the collections That Devilin' Tune, and Really The Blues put together by Allen Lowe. I can not give Mr. Lowe a big enough shoutout for these. Bravo!

Quintet for Clarinet, Two Violas, and Two Cellos - Diamond - Chamber Music Northwest

It isn't that Diamond is deaf to the high histrionics of Apostel & Co. or even trying to pretend they didn't happen, but that he is attempting to comfort us in the face of it. The music runs a risk of flippancy for all its musical sophistication, a notion that, in spite of what has just occurred, we can can continue as we were.

Sunflower Sutra - Allen Ginsberg

Mr. Ginsberg begs to differ.

12/8/2010
Mr. Blue - The Fleetwoods
Diamond Head - The Ventures
Radio Spot for Hawaii Five-O Album - The Ventures

An afternoon of local bands on the make.

12/10/2010
The Who by Numbers - The Who

Default move: Go to power. This quickly runs into diminishing returns. It is always a pleasure to listen to Keith & John do their thing, but the general bad-feeling of the album gets tiresome.

Live

12/6/2010
Gradus #184 - Neal Meyer

12/10/2010
Crosstalk (website)
Jesse Canterbury, clarinet & bass clarinet; Brian Cobb, bass; Paul Kikuchi, drums; Tiffany Lin, piano
at the Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

#3 - Jesse Canterbury

Arrangement of "Cage" - Charles Ives
Improvisations
Steady - Brian Cobb

I lost track of what the pieces were, and also of who did the arrangement of the Charles Ives song Cage (??), though Jesse gave credit from the stage.

One aspect of jazz that can distinguish it as a mode of musical discourse is the play between images of tight and loose. A typical expression of 'tight' comes during the high-bebop, wickedly syncopated, unison performance of the head, that of 'loose' during the more strictly improvisatory solo bits. The joy of it is in how this works out in the wild of the event, the loose invading the tight and the tight the loose. Crosstalk is a newly formed group with strong players still learning to deal with each other in this configuration. Personally I love listening to learning happen and I was having a great time. I look forward to hearing this group as their tight gets tighter and their loose gets looser.

Being a pianist myself, in ensembles like this I tend to root for the keyboard player. I was sitting where I felt I had the best chance of hearing what Tiffany was doing, but even at that she may have been working at an acoustic disadvantage. Much of what distinguishes the piano sound from the timbrally similar clarinet & upright bass (slightly amplified) is the quality of its attack. The Kimball at the Chapel has a lovely, subtle, rich attack, but it is asking too much of it, without help, to compete with a drum-kit's huge dynamic. When Paul was playing with brushes (low incidence of attacks) the balance was just about perfect. I'm not sure there's a good solution to this. Amplification of the piano may be the best. What gets lost in the process may not have been audible live anyhow. None of this should be a problem on well-engineered recordings.

That aside, I really loved what this crew was doing and enjoyed myself immensely. Thank you!