Playlist

Live

September 27, 2018
Greg Sinibaldi Trio (Ray Larsen, Remy Morritt, Greg Sinibaldi) / David Pate and Steven Cohn
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

DP and SC:

fluid tour through times and joints (of all the)
linger in the back booths
down the long byways
nightish slipping into reverie ways
passing time(')s past time past passing
flung in part from earthbound

largely concerned with the surface between their individual sounds

a wrestle afloat in temporaneity

skin shared
intent skeined
(more'n one way to)

switch instruments but don't change the subject

keep it lively

GST:

tone fills space

giant slam speaking

location projected with weight throb ventriloquized under liquids and corridors
cathedralic culverts

a raft
pipes
rocking swells

imagine a tempo and phase along it
both

hot rod star machines gunning motors

blow bell blow

simple melody writ enlarged

ether ways net work tapped

Recorded

September 25, 2018
Concerto in D BWV 1050 - J. S. Bach - New London Consort, Philip Pickett

its parts show
its cooperations laid bare
all of them

we are aware of awareness

Quartet in C op. 59 #3 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

straight tone to explain
where it might go anywhere

the sides of each thing are hidden behind what you hear
not until they turn the corner hidden inside

traveling by warp and weave
these parts do not cooperate to fit

they are carved to fit
joined cabinetrically

Sequito del Quintetto "Buona sera, mio signore" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

just taking care of stage business

Hot Mustard - Fletcher Henderson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

such an easy move from part to part
nothing to it
packed with event but never crowded

America - Alan Ginsberg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

drunken reading
"my mind is made up there's going to be trouble"
"I'm addressing you"

stand-up comedy act

his
"queer shoulder to the wheel"

In Session at the Tintinabulary

Sepember 24, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 967 - Pete Comley, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Recorded

May 9, 2017
The Stampede - Fletcher Henderson [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

The rhythm of our focus is composed into the arrangement - long solos, quick breaks, choruses flipping from instrument group to instrument group (changing channels).

A Lazy Farmer Boy - Buster Carter and Preston Young [from Anthology of American Folk Music]

Drawing attention to our internal presumptions of imminent profanity by the oh so clever near misses. An old trick, still works.

Two Old Maids - Billy Mitchell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Among many, another low point in public discourse about sexual orientation: deriding the other as an obscenity.

When Was Jesus Born? - Heavenly Gospel Singers [from Goodbye Babylon]

Mel Powell

Rehearsed so as to sound invented on the spot, but is caught going round and round until it doesn't.

Lover Man - Mel Powell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

French film noir score, a tone poem with hints of Ellington, Gershwin, or Paul Whiteman.

The Happening - Paul Gonsalvez [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Nothing fancy in the arrangement, just solo over accompaniment.

Easy Living - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

Wish fulfillment for the 50's man.

February Piece 1961 - Cornelius Cardew - John Tilbury

Cornelius Cardew

I kept thinking how melodious this was, though made of sharp edged sweepings.

Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

As in Paul Gonsalvez above, nothing really but poetvoice solo above an accompaniment. Our focus is not to waver.

May 11, 2017
Till Tomorrow - Don MacLean [from American Pie]

Not a horrible song, but would benefit greatly by stripping off the strings and stuff, dialing back the reverb.

Suffragette City - David Bowie [from Changes One]

This plays a kind of strip tease with itself, shedding song parts along the way until it's nothing more than its own hook.

AKU (midi) - Keith Eisenbrey


In 2004 I made this midi version of my 1981 synclavier piece. There are a couple three glitches in the sound - alas, I no longer have that midi box to try and fix it. This version preserves the pitch and time schemes, instrument differentiation, and, at times, the curiously uneven way the sound hangs in the room - move your head ever so slightly and the sound shifts dramatically. Something about standing waves, I presume. It loses some of the subtle envelope and overtone differentials that were in the original (though they didn't really come across all that well anyhow). And I suppose the moment in the original where the sci-fi tanks blast through the church walls is (unfortunately) rather more elegant and nuanced here. The balance is not optimal, but it does gain some sparseness and clarity.

Its internal sense of what it becomes as it goes along is cumulative, like the Sibelius of Tapiola, but a better way to put it is that, it isn't entirely unlike that. It is this aspect of it that I, as its composer, find most gratifying.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 8, 2017
Banned Telepath 55 170508 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Rumor has been floated that Aaron will send some sound from Anchorage, so the full version of Banned Rehearsal 934 will have to wait. Our local sound is here for all it's worth.

Playlist

Preface

"The time has long gone since the monumentality of the written text, having found its niche in the great halls of literature, could experience such achievement in proxy for its poet as ultimate bulwark against the flotsam of history and the underlying tussle and torque of time. Neither Keats' Urn nor Yeats' Singing School nor even the dusty owls of Robert Duncan's grim Museum, can hold out any longer against the utterly transitory character of even the most heartily well-wrought artifact. The artifactual nature of reality itself is now felt to be so keenly ensconced in its fleeting identity, that 'the work of time's' subjection to time's ravages hardly evokes a whimper. You must find a way to live with a moment's grace and let the matter of durative identity take care of itself as it can." Charles Stein "Magic Without Tears in the Writings of Lissa Wolsak" - Open Space Magazine Issue 12/13 fall 2010/winter 2011

Texts

Recorded

December 26, 2016

Fletcher Henderson

That Devilin' Tune - Stella Mayhew [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

An oversize stage presence in the service of cringe-worthy minstrel-show lyrics.

Unknown Blues - Fletcher Henderson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Loose-jointed piano playing.

Panama City Ltd. - Ada Brown [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Delicious horn section.

I'm Crazy About My Baby - Fats Waller [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The sophistication of the performance leaves the song far behind.

December 27, 2016
Romeo et Juliette Act III - Prokofiev - Orchestre du Theatre Bolchoi de Moscou, Algis Juratis

Clearest bliss layered on clearest bliss, but viewed from an angle that fragments each line, especially in secret, where intricacies are worked out.

Nat Cole

Just a Sittin' and a Rockin' - Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Sets up shop and stakes a claim.

Somebody Loves Me - Lester Young, Nat Cole, Buddy Rich [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

All three of them are fabulous, but Nat Cole's piano playing is astonishing in the way it folds rhythm and tune together.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 25, 2016
UTUMC - MCC Coffee Makers 161226 - Keith Eisenbrey
When we got to church Christmas morning Karen and I took our choir folders, which we had taken home with us late on Christmas Eve, back to choir room in the basement. In the hall was a coffee maker, and in a kitchen off the hall was another, all by themselves, happily singing carols.

December 26, 2016
Banned Telepath 52 161226 Anchorage
Banned Telepath 52 161226 Seattle
Banned Rehearsal 925 161226 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, and Steve Kennedy, in Seattle; and Aaron Keyt in Anchorage

Playlist

Live

March 6, 2015
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Jeremiah Lawson

Jeremiah presented two sets, in C Major and C minor, of his 24 Preludes and Fugues for solo classical guitar, finding a personal place among several venerable instrumental traditions at once. In response to a question he stated that working the counterpoint out on paper as though it were for voices and then transcribing it for guitar worked well because the restrictions of vocal writing were more strict than for guitar. Fancy that!

Ann Cummings

In Three of a Kind for string bass, piano, and banjo, Ann and her collaborators Jesse Stout and Ethan Subotta aspire to reinvent gamelanic polyrhythms from the ground up. The spectacular result here sounded like a giant autoharp. What fun!

Clement Reid

Each of us has their particular life within the music we know, our peculiar histories within the music that fascinates us. A large part of the value, for me, of the Salon is its function as a sharing of those histories and those lives. For me as a habitual composer of solo piano music, Clement's music underscores just how varied those histories can be. Dreams and Improvisations are composed of six (if I heard correctly) pieces fully of splashy inside-the-piano sounds and un-fussy tunes. I've said this before, but his approach reminds me of Greg Short in its easy acceptance of all manner of crazy within a familiar setting. Its strength is not in its newness, but in its imaginative amiability.

Nadya Kandrevis and Jeremy Shaskus

Part One - Creation for cello, piano, and soprano saxophone. What is clear is that something of vital importance is being worked out. The arena in which the work occurs is as personal and private as it gets, that is to say, it is of the greatest possible vastness. Some comments were made about the relative temporal segregation of the instruments. To my ear (as it was to others I think) this feature was its power. If I have a comment I would suggest drilling this segregation even further, down into the individual parts. The less like regular music this was the more I was digging it.

Recorded

February 28, 2015
Concerto in C (#3) - Prokofiev - Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrei Chistyakov, Evgenyi Kissin

A music of two lives or spiritual locations - one workaday, busy, vigorous: a public face; the other dreamy, sentimental, languid: a private face.

Concerto #1  - Bartok - London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis, Stephen Bishop

Tight canons to startle and scare. The patterns increment stepwise to plateaus. In terms of treating many of the instruments as percussion it follows the example of Stravinsky, but in a more linear concert piece trajectory - the new ensconced in the comfortably established. It gets pretty interesting when it reduces itself to little more than a field of colored impulses.

Arthur Grumiaux

Violin Concerto in D - Stravinsky - Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Ernest Bour, Arthur Grumiaux

A still picture, framed, An evoked place rather than a story to tell. Energized stasis by means of constant misdirection.

March 3, 2015
Quartet #4 - Schoenberg - LaSalle Quartet

From under a crab's carapace a tiny window looks out upon a dingy yard. What is possible is only so for a moment, at each moment it is more of a struggle.

A Pixie From Dixie - Fletcher Henderson

Sounds are arranged in pairs (brass / reeds :: piano/guitar / string bass) with a Haydnesque sophistication. We can dance because our place here is clear, socially unambiguous. Subversive role reversals occur within careful bounds.

Quartet #3 - Shostakovich - Fitzwilliam Quartet

a comic song (don't look

behind you)

chunk chunk chunk chunk chunk chunk

see

I'm being good 

looked didn't you

lament is perilous

(if it can be imputed to the soul it can be pathologized)

back to comic song

good boy

unwilling to ever

ever ever

leave

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 1, 2015

like the one on the left -
but I think I paid more for it

Silvertone 150301
Silvertone 150301 folded
Silvertone 150301 folded rubbed - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on my first electric guitar, a hollow body with three pickups. Pretty sweet.

March 2, 2015
Banned Rehearsal 880 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

No accompaniment from the snowy east this time.