Playlist

Recorded

August 13, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XIV - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Two roles: fast note role / slow note role. The voices switch. The action is all in the handoff.

Schöpfungsmesse - Haydn - English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner, Monteverdi Choir, Ruth Ziesak, Bernarda Fink, Christoph Pregardien, Oliver Widner, Susanna Spicer, Peter Butterfield

Within the larger ritual of any mass are subrituals of affect: where the fugues are; the play of solos, ensembles, and chorus; what sort of music the et incarnatus is; how to set up and word paint the et resurrectus. Haydn had this stuff down cold and played for keeps. It is this example, no doubt, that kept Beethoven looking over his shoulder.

August 15, 2017

Count Basie, most righteous hat

He Likes It Slow - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five with Butterbeans and Susie [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

Yep. It's about sex.

Business in F - Gene Kardos [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This one too, but on top of the fine playing is a subtly organized harmonic rhythm.

Lady Be Good - Count Basie [from The First Records He Ever Made]

Suggests the tune, then riffs on the suggestions as though they had been the song all along.

Lady MacGowran's Dream - Woody Herman [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Prog jazz? Classy and upscale at least, nothing jolts. A table in this joint will set you back friend.

Denial - Miles Davis [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

No past for lingering, no time for it. This boat moves.

C.T.A. - Art Pepper [from Playboys]

Harry Partch, as a beat

Sound so dry and studio controlled it's as though there is no room in which this music sounds. Kind of creepy.

Water! Water! - an Intermission with Prologues and Epilogues - Harry Partch - Gate 5 Ensemble, John Garvey

It strikes me that HP is, as a theater composer, heavily invested in the Wagnerian ideal. The music and the theatricality are irretrievably intertwined zusammenkunstwerklich. That and he clearly wants this music to transform you, radicalize you. He fairly shouts it. He offers music criticism in the form of music theater. The subject matter is everything classical, everything of which he is ostensibly not in favor. And it's fabulous too.


Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Playing the jongleur, quite well too.

Echoes - Pink Floyd [from Meddle]

The anthem that could have been subsides into bluesy noodles, not unpleasantly, but it strikes me now as distinctly less weird than it did back in the day. Boys taking their gear out for a jam.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 14, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 941 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Recorded

July 23, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 249 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [February 1991]

Begins with righteous plunk on toy piano. Throughout: a microscopic attention to intonation, liberated intonation, bending cymbal pitch by angle of stick. If there's enough of it, it must be real. (Quick Quaker Quotes). If there's enough of it, and it's night, it must be surreal. On radio intonations of Desert Storm, Dark Hole. When all the candles go out the tape will be over.

July 25, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 425 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1996]

Bells of various whistle and guitar through synth (wahwahtech). This band is at work on stuff, dragging a muck rake into low sinking murkwood. CONCH! Deep bass blow. Relax the grip.

Ms. Found In A Bottle - Keith Eisenbrey

A composite 20 years in the making, digitally recorded textsound (Confessions of a Polyphonist) with aged magnetic tape of synthesized sound (the rotted version of AKU). Wobbly flangiform synthesizary diphthongs.

July 26, 2017
Being, Hearing, Knowing Now - Stephen Dembski - Christopher Taylor, piano

Each sound resets, proceeds only from the immediate. As memory intrudes we don't go back. Back just comes back.

Banned Rehearsal 785 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 2011]

How: to design an attack envelope for piano reverb.
How: sounds persists.
What: A bestiary with bell kit beast guide.
What: Gathers at the bottom of the beaker.
What: begins to react, and converse.

Your Face - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

A song can be a face of word time pitch time melody time tine time. Is what it says.

July 27, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XIII - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg, organ

Triplets trip the trap. Bits, hints, and teasers.

Die Jahreszeit "Winter" - Haydn - Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Karl Böhm, Gundula Janowitz, Peter Schreier, Martti Talvela, Wiener Singverein

". . . lange dauert." Held back, even the dire chorus building forces underground. Rhythmic hiccups. Nonmotion, a hurried up slowing down. Waiting for, not being at.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

Green Lake, Seattle, July 29, 2017

July 23, 2017
Remlinger Farms Steam Train Ride - Keith Eisenbrey

At a corporate picnic out in the country we took a miniature steam train ride. Too many conversations to post in public.

July 24, 2017
Gradus 316 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Some are interior spaces, the caverns of swiss cheese. Some are incrustations, barnacles. Some are iron rigid bars.

Playlist

Live

Black Lodge

July 13, 2017
Victory Lounge / Black Lodge, Seattle
Anxious Arms
Choke The Pope
Ease
Pity Party
Listen Lady
Ramona

I haven't much to say - the sheer number of bands, all playing various versions of that Ramones-y "we're a happy family" beat, ever faster ever louder, overwhelmed my ability to keep track of which memory was which. Lots of fun though! Out among the beautiful people.

Recorded

July 10, 2017

Peggy Sue - Banned Rehearsal [Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer]

Another post-session "hey let's play . . ." in which I managed to hit record first. It is spirited, but Neal's vocals are lost deep in the fuzz.

At The Funhouse - Fe Fi Fo Fums [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

It's only a minute forty, but still seems a bit padded.

July 12, 2017

Gradus 186 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2011]

Playing very softly, the highest A natural only emerges gradually as a pitch. Prior action noise could have been most anything.

Deep History - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

A bit didactic, but with a fine and intricate string band behind it.

Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XII - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

This is the first of the canons, filling every nook and cranny of experiential space.

Die Jahreszeiten "Summer" - Haydn - Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Karl Böhm, Gundula Janowitz, Peter Schreier, Martti Talvela, Wiener Singverein

Languid near to a fault. Great storm though. Just a few years before the thunder in Beethoven's 6th Symphony - or in Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique, for that matter.

I'm Gonna Gitcha - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

Dixieland rhythm but with a focus on LA's solo sound. What an odd sort of act he was: singer and trumpet player, top of the game in each.

Cab Calloway

Kickin' The Gong Around - Cab Calloway [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Is this the first mention of Smokey Joe? A kind of journalism, giving us a peek at the seamy undersides of society without our needing to go for ourselves.

Derby Town - Old Ced Odom and Lil Hardaway [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Late night vaudeville wink wink nudge nudge song, veering away from the dirty words just in time.

Don't Worry About Me - Sarah Vaughan, Teddy Wilson Octet [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

The song eases down the scale and slinks back up.

You Tell Me Your Dream - Eureka Brass Band  [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

One imagines this sounding somewhat old-fashioned in 1951, but then it may have been some of those same old dudes playing that same old Dixie they had always been.

Love Me Or Leave Me - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

A study in the careful placement of voice within tessitura. Sounds to me like she was gunning at Sinatra.

Wailers House Party - The Wailers [from The Fabulous Wailers At The Castle]

That completely unmistakable fat guitar with B3 sound. Brilliant.

Temporary Like Achilles - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

The first song on the album that doesn't leave a bad odor in the air.

The Grave - Don McLean [from American Pie]

They were sincere times I guess, but this spends a lot of energy saying words with lots of meaning, then grinding the meaningful into the dirt with a boot heel.

CIA Dope Calypso - Allen Ginsberg, Stephen Taylor, Jon Sholle, David Mansfield, Arthur Russell [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

Torn from the headlines! The fun of the word play overpowers the disgust we feel we ought to feel.

Another Brick In The Wall - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

The whole sound sits at a level, like the surface of a lake, like a J. J. Abrams lens flare, nothing beneath, nothing above. Cool and sheer.

Banned Rehearsal 64 - Banned Rehearsal [Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer]



Cornet overpowers the equipment but not the sound, sheared away, skidded across, re-writing itself
onto the tape from the tape as it cooks on the reel. Steadfastly not entertaining. About 30 minutes in there is a truly wonderful collective chord that emerges with drums and bells, like bootsqueek in fresh snow.

July 14, 2017

Night Of The Subaru - Infamous Menagerie

There is an extra partial beat thrown in there just to knock the whole thing out of plumb.

Sonic Brilliance 16 - Banned Rehearsal [John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Holden K, Aaron Keyt, Kia M, Neal Kosály-Meyer - May 1996]

Banned Rehearsal spent much of the 90's negotiating our continuance in the face of parenthood. For a while we had the kids join us for a pre-session. This was one of the more successful sessions, because the kids essentially made their own game of it. Life of the Dragon, accordion slain. To say we'll say something is to have done it (for the 5 year old crowd). Then Neal takes them outside but was somehow broadcasting back inside the studio, and interviewing Aaron and Anna from in the house. Too many minors on board to share the sound, but if I were to share a Sonic Brilliance this would be the one.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 10, 2017
Gradus 315 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Neal invited a fellow blogger, Kent Karnofsky, over to listen. He curates Community Noise. I believe his article will be posted shortly before Neal's upcoming {August??} performance {at the Chapel??}.

Neal composes with raw subtleties, pursuing the inflections of distinctions as they arise.

Playlist

Recorded

June 25, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 611 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2001]



Even as it has been recently, my 1981 synclavier piece Aku, then, was upfront in my thinking-about. Here it is again: playing in the background, an articulate teapot whistle, sizzling along with an occasional recorded pronouncement [from my 2001 text piece Confessions of a Polyphonist]. But again, all in the background. Presence and balance. Balancing presence to those present. Bells pick up pitch material or project their pitches into the prerecorded space || of course it's all prerecorded now || teapots and kazoos comment: a group composition discussing the brought in sound on its own terms,  double sudden amp feedback.

A Choice of Weapons - The Sermon [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

Action movie scene: the guy off the street hero being introduced to the weapons cabinet. This is that music, and it's not just the title.

Banned Rehearsal 784 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2011]



Tinclatsky puppet theater music. Don't know where that word came from, but I wrote it in my journal

so I thought I'd share it. The Mighty W in its latter days of glorious to the end. Melody in extremis, avoiding exit lingering long on the sense of ending soon.

June 27, 2017
Suspended - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

The rhythmic sense plays with the difference between mass and weight. The mass is clearly present, everything is affected by it. It wheels in Kubrik-ian grandeur, there is simply no earth to which it is bound.

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus XI - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Forward at all moments. Forward within all moments. Dogged. Imperative. The cathedral organ just eats this music up, or is it the other way around?

Quartet in G Major opus 76 #1 Hob. III:75 - Haydn

Nothing is hidden, it is all made plain. Life is rich! Enjoy!

Don't Forget To Mess Around - Louis Armstrong [from Hot Fives & Sevens]

Packed in a poke.

Hell And What It Is - Rev. Emmett Dickinson [from Goodbye Babylon]

Murmur like bees beneath singing low murmuring hymns, burners lit.

I'll Be Rested (When The Roll Is Called) - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Goodbye Babylon]

Just two voices I think, but each so distinctly rich with formants they frequently confound numbering. A shaker. A guitar.

Thermodynamics - Howard McGhee [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Fleet and light, pedal to the metal just to the moment before entropy might kick in.

Criss-Cross - Thelonius Monk [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

Ah. Room to breathe! A little english with the hips, airborne.

I Didn't Know What Time It Was - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

The very model of a through-composed performance. She picks you up at the start and plops you down at the end. You have been taken for a ride and never knew it 'til you woke in the ditch.

Running Scared - Roy Orbison [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Probably should have studied more how Peggy did it before he tried that trick. He's got a certain amount of power and range, but finesse? Whazzat?

Just Like A Woman - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Is it just me or does he spend an awful lot of time telling you who you are? Turn the mirror around Bob.

Winterwood - Don McLean [from American Pie]

A pretty voice, but it gets old fast.

Fame - David Bowie [from Changes One]

A cage of rhythm locked down tight, dried vine vocals entwining.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond / Wish You Were  Here - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

Utterly without hurry :: an aspect of PF that continues to endear.

June 28, 2017

Thanks to Steve Kennedy for the images

Banned Sectional 5 AK NWM - Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]

Yowl and hiss. Subtle flange (equipment issue) like wind several walls away. Consistently not leisurely. Busy, but unhurried, intent, methodical, keeping at it, focused. Happy to be a fly on the wall even these 30+ years later.

My Home - Infamous Menagerie

Sample hyper-slowed, joined occasionally by drumming. On some edge between a what-happens-if-we-play-along-with-that and a truly weird-ass instrumental you hear the next morning and wonder what you were thinking. My people!

Banned Rehearsal 423 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Holden K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1996]

Recalibrations and re-collaborations, divergent but mutually visible threads. Wonderful as a struggle, but still a bit of a struggle.

June 29, 2017
Barbara H (cover of Fountains of Wayne song) - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey,  Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2001]

Put a push-pin here, partway between drop of a hat covers of Wild Thing to full on full on Your Mother Should Know rock and roll.

Two-Part Invention - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

Gavin's piano music somehow seems conscious of itself, or perhaps its voices are conscious both of each other and of their own processes. Old-soul music.

The Way West - Brian Cobb [from Campfire Songs]

. . . is to regiment forward, to prolong the day ever so incrementally. Sun Chaser.

This Little Light of Mine (Autoheterophony) - Keith Eisenbrey


What is the question to ask of this? What itch does it scratch? Cram the familiar together, wad it up tight, press it hard. Hope to find some aspect of it that is elicited only so. In a sense it's like Lucier's I am sitting in a room, except that the room in this case is a space composed of my music ear and the recording device.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 26, 2018
Gradus 314 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

I got to thinking about perfect pitch (I don't have it). Even here where the pitches are few (just four pitch-classes to choose from, named up front) I have to calculate what any particular instance is from the nearby intervals. I can't imagine what it might be like to know a pitch by a name directly, instantly (and I allow how I might be (probably am) completely misunderstanding what having it is like). Plus side: I can hear pitches just fine, but I hear them without name, without category, can divvy them up however ad lib.

Playlist

Recorded

June 11, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus X - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Sequences establish a rhythm of (usually) stepwise motion, allowing cross-rhythms of modulations and quasi-modulations - as though another music were going by in the background at a different tempo.

I love how the grandness of the denouement is fully established within what is really a quite thin texture. We hear it as grand because, in order to hear its logic, we imagine each note as sustaining at full volume - virtual grandiosity with virtual sustain.

Quartet in E-flat Major, opus 76 #6 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

Not sure this is really what's happening, but what I wanted to be happening is a sequence of variations occurring within single iterations of a larger theme and variations - both T and V constructed out of shorter Ts and Vs.

June 14, 2017
Birdwell Blues - Nolan Welsh, Louis Armstrong [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

A tale: police harassment. "You know I been here before." Truth.

Don Redman

Trouble Why Pick On Me - Don Redman, Red Allen [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Unexpected wonders: that voice, those perfectly executed parallel trills thrown in just for fun, showy tonguing, a tightly organized arrangement.

Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind On Jesus) - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Goodbye Babylon]

Keeping it lively, everything is slap. Slap guitar slap vocal.

I'm Through With Love - Sarah Vaughan [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

Nothing wrong with this performance (it's flawless) but it fails to convince me, it never lifts off.

Walking My Lord Up Calvary Hill - Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper [from Goodbye Babylon]

The Passion according to just folks.

A Woman Alone With The Blues - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

Sung as a single thought, a through-composed line. Tubular bells!

Now Is The Hour - Leo Diamond [a Rescued Record]

Rather bizarre, but it sounds like he was quite an interesting guy - trying to make the harmonica acceptable for the hi-fi crowd. The 45 that found me had suffered considerably, with much of the fi scuffed off the top.

Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Kind of a mean-spirited blues when it comes right down to it.

Everybody Loves Me Baby - Don McLean [from American Pie]

In spite of his apparent attempt at humorous self-laceration, this still comes across as narrow and airless.

Young Americans - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Thick and taut, a line pulled past where it ought to break but that just won't.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 12, 2017
Gradus 313 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

June 15, 2017
Etudes - Keith Eisenbrey

These are five little pieces from 2000 that started life as clarinet duets: "Coiled", "Fragment", "Dance" "Air", and "Misterioso". I arranged them later as piano fingering puzzles. I was in the early stages of working with mod-17 pitch sets, essentially asking myself the question "What would regular music sound like if the modular interval were 17 instead of 12?" So, yes, this is what I think regular music is like.

Jerseyville Illinois - Your Mother Should Know [Karen Eisenbrey, drums; Neal Kosály-Meyer, vocal and piano]

In anticipation of a hoped-for pro-studio recording project I recorded three demo takes.

Playlist

Live

May 20, 2017
The Magic Flute
Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle

When it comes right down to it, I've probably spent more time trying to make something of TMF than Mozart did. And after all that it isn't much more than a very pretty picture book - sex education in a patriarchy.

May 26, 2017
Beverly Crusher
Dead Bars
BOAT
Ramona
Barboza, Seattle

What a wonderful evening for people watching downstairs at Barboza! Karen and I, after a lovely dinner at the Tin Table, (up a venerable flight of steps on the second floor of the Odd Fellow Building, one of the few unmistakably grown-up places to be at that end of the hill) staked a place to sit beyond the bar from the stage. We could see both stage and crowd, the scene at the bar, and through two round windows the faces of the newly arriving coming down the stairs. Fine cinema in the play of the small groups of friends mixing. All the young people so beautiful, so awkward. I got to thinking about how Seattleites dress up to go anywhere. For a punk show on the hill you've got to look just right, but that just right also has to look like you just grabbed something out of a drawer.

The bands acquitted themselves well: BC nailed the tempo shifts from song to song (have they heard the Seeger String Quartet?); DB is ever a joy, bubbling with good feeling; B was a like a history lesson, in a really good way - the influences were there, shades of sounds from all over, integrated with great care; R, I want to say sounded like the 80's, but like the actual lived-in 80's, not the "the-80's-are-in-again" 80's.  One of those nights when the party on the stage and in the room are one.

Recorded

David Gilmour

May 21, 2017
Jean Genie - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Structure bit: how the little rave-up in front of the last chorus sets up the long rave-up-from-below that ends it.

Money - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

A little something for all those guitar aficionados out there, Gilmour laying it out real pretty.

Banned Rehearsal 62B - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]

The next day we were performing at Brechemin, and this was the rehearsal for the 2nd part of the show, consisting of 'sudden songs'. That particular project was at an awkward stage, since they weren't part of the regular sessions anymore and we felt that we were performing something from the past instead of something we were doing then. The last 20 minutes or so of the tape are taken up by some collective soul-searching, which is most of the reason I'm not posting this one on soundcloud.

Immediate Impound Zone - Infamous Menagerie

Heldenalto fronts a glorious noise.

May 23, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 422 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 1996]

Holding a 40 foot long drowsy dragon puppet aloft. Its parts are not solidly connected to each other, so pushing the whole anywhere is cumbersome. Intricate negotiations until it gels and a long winding down.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

This was the last take we did at Jack Straw in May of 2005.

Gradus 91 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2006]

Water dripping in a dark cavern. Silence as discipline, as the act of listening without acting, expounding non-speaking.

May 24, 2017
Missing The Trail - Brian Cobb [from Campfire Songs] - Craig Garretson

Panic! Every strange detail could be an attack.

Banned Telepath 43 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy [February 2016]

Part of what became Banned Rehearsal 903. Scribbling tiny notes on tiny papers.

May 25, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus IX - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

The slower second fugue makes explicit what we always guessed was going on inside the whole time.

Quartet in D, opus 76 #5 Hob.III:79 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

This is intense. One could imagine the late Beethoven quartets as an attempt to do something even half as fine. An insider's music, convulsive, grabs body-mind and wrests it aloud.

Blackville - Hazel Meyers [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

The implicit top-down hierarchy of concert music gets a (deserved) bum rap for its stratification of labor (conductor is in charge, players do what they're told / master and slave). But this more demotic music developed its own hierarchy of function. Rhythm supports melody, everybody knows their place.

I Can't Get Mississippi Off My Mind - The Dorsey Brothers [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Arrangement as an assertion of control, chaotic forces kept on a leash. Hard high hat cut off.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 22, 2017

Banned Rehearsal 935 170522 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

May 13, 2017

Gamelan Pacifica presents

Lou Harrison at 100 Years:

The Seattle Connection

featuring Gamelan Pacifica and Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet

directed by Jarrad Powell

with guests:

Heather Bentley, viola and violin

Jennifer Caine Provine, violin

Paul Taub, flute

Bonnie Whiting, percussion

Maria Scherer Wilson, cello

Wayward Music Series, Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

May Rain (1941)

Gending Park Chokro (1976)

Threnody for Carlos Chavez (1978)

Pathetan Wantah, laras pelog pathet lima (in remembrance of Lou)

Ladrang Epikuros (1981-82)

Air in G Minor (1947)

Končerto por la Violono kun Perkuta Orkestro (1959-1940)

timbre

mix at

certain edge

of the set of overtones

that particular sort of

slowing down we do at

ends - coded differently

as a structural cue

it turns everything

into a microtonal

landscape

the parts rely on each

other not just to

keep together but

to be what they

are within what

they are singing

a particular

way with the

sensibility of

how things wander

off

it is extraordinary how something so ordinary could be so extraordinary

drone

membrane of a soap-bubble lake

flute swallow-fleet

rippling swift across

Recorded

May 14, 2017

We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

What we want to hear from the cool: "Join the party!"

Banned Rehearsal 245 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [January 1991]

Jump right in. magnetic tape echo spiral residue reconfigurable membrane morphing drum we can
hear our bodies moving by their occlusion of sound. Hangs in there for a good long time not being music. Try different settings! Fluid transit intention. Now we're plucking and plunking.

My Stuff - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Female point of view as such, in contradistinction to the more typical pop-sensibility: What from a male point of view the male would love to believe is the female point of view, but probably isn't, at least not straight out, without the slow poison.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

The third take from the Jack Straw recording session of May 2005. The reverb, strangely, confines the music, envelopes it, gives it skin and face.

327 - Black Horse [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

In what social context is this appropriate? War? Riot? Steam Letting? The danger of raw emotional evacuation is that the steaming turd has a social effect, and it accumulates.

Isaiah 60:1-5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

A recording we made at home in January of last year. What gives the composer in me pleasure is how the accompaniment spotlights the voice, following it closely, like an aura, a glow.

Paradox Bagatelles - Craig Pepples - Sascia Pellegrini

each atom spaced so as to reveal aspects of itself that would otherhow not make impact :: these atoms are all and each clearly about the thing they are all and each saying, spoken clearly :: the sense in which they are a plural of bagatelles is that those animals, those bagatelles, must be all in the sequence, lumpily interspersed, grazing.

May 16, 2017

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus IX - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Long tones are short-term drones. A florid fugue plays the surface of a sedate fugue.

Quartet in C Major, Opus 76 #3 Hob. III:77 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

Kept safely deep within this very model of a repertoire string quartet (all to be admired and copied): worries, hesitations, concerns. The finale, party crashing, wandered in from some minor key quartet.

String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

Scraps of bits, unaware they are part of any sort of design. Commentary and disagreement. Full of sudden shifts, shortcut modulations, make do with where we have gotten to [in order] to get where we must go. Nothing else quite enflames the soundbox like scribble-bowing, glowing hot.

May 17, 2017

Deep Henderson - Charlie Straight [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Fat precision. Like a sloppy drunk clearing a pool table to the last spinning ball. No sophistication, but deep for sure.

Easy Come, Easy Go Love - Sunny Clapp [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Crammed (frat boy phone booth). More fat precision.

Crying Holy Unto The Lord - The Blue Chips [from Goodbye Babylon]

Appropriation of the profane by the sacred, or invasion of the sacred by the profane?

Get Ready for Christmas Day - Rev. J. M. Gates [from Goodbye Babylon]

Digging through the rhythm of language into the substrate of melody - it breaks off just before ignition.

Boyd Raeburn

Over The Rainbow - Boyd Raeburn [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Runs through more presets than a casio. Every possible arrangement of the tune in quick succession.

It Could Happen To You - Bud Powell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Same deal as above, but all by his lonesome. (Chopin!)

My Heart Belongs To Daddy - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

The image of: independence from the beat, as though just talking, except that it never wavers from being exactly where it needs to be. She may be hiding behind the male point of view's desire for what they want the female point of view to be, but she does it while openly dripping the fatal drops into your drink.

Hello Mary Lou - Ricky Nelson [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Star Vocal! Hear it Here! (a blended orchestration of echo effects) Repeat with instruments.

One Of Us Must Know - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Excuses, excuses.

Vincent - Don MacLean [from American Pie]

Well Don, I'm sorry, but "snowy linen land" is just puke-worthy. Wodehouse had your number decades ago (see "pale parabola of joy".)

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 15, 2017

Gradus 310 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Quasi-similar motion (pitch-class nearness by shortest route) as countermotion. Take that, MF! 

Playlist

Preface

"So when I ask myself a question about thinking about music it devolves naturally into questions about the relationship between understanding and experiencing: not questions, for me, of either/or, but of hierarchy, of the direction of implication, and, to put it crassly, the most basic questions of personal goals and values. Are the ontologies of understanding-structures intercompatible with the ontologies of experiencing-episodes? Are they contingent upon one another, mutually, or in either direction? In another register, I may ask: is aesthetic perception distinct from extra-aesthetic perception, that is, from what I might call analytic perception?" Benjamin Boretz "fourth and long in Baltimore" Open Space Magazine Issue 12/13 fall 2010/winter 2011

Texts

Live

May 5, 2017

Seattle Composers' Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

John Kammerer and Rebeka Ko

New Music for marimba + electronics

They partly construct and partly conjure a wall-less but circumambulatable space. Oh so many crannies, meadows, brooks, and glens to explore!

Patrick O'Keefe

Morning Stroll - Emerald City Saxophone Quartet: Barbara Hubers-Drake, soprano; Molly Pond, alto; Harold Rosenkrans, tenor; Jim Glass, baritone

Patrick tells that this piece is about distractions from a stroll. Personally I think that's backwards. For me this was about scattershot distractions surprising themselves in discovering that it is a strolly sort of thing they are doing.

Jeremiah Lawson
Guitar Sonata in A major

A tender memory of a ragtime intimacy.

(On piano the energy of playing notes is vertical to the string - at an arced near-right angle.The face of the sound comes to us reflected off the lid, we hear it as though in a mirror. But here the energy of playing notes is horizontal to the string - across them at a near-horizontal. The sound comes to us directly from the soundboard. We hear its face directly.)

John Teske
ad;sr (vectorscores) - Neil Welch, Evan Woodle, William Hayes

(a short segment of a long space)

read-

ing

a-

long

read-

ing

a

long

road

read

a

long-

ing

read

a

long-

ing

road

Recorded

May 1, 2017

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus 8 - J. S. Bach - Zoltán Kocsis

A triple fugue attempts escape velocity through stretto alone.

String Quartet in B-flat Major, opus 76 #4 - Haydn - Amadeus-Quartet

We are addressed as colleagues and familiars.

May 2, 2017
String Quartet in C-sharp minor, op 131 - Beethoven - Quartetto Italiano

This recording was ripped from 1970's vinyl. (The past and its thwipdips.)

wafting smoke falling silk

the camera pans up to fade

the memory of a quartet

broken linear dreamlogic

the past is the price paid for this moment

it earns its odd threads

by sacrificing so many other paths

Playlist

Live

April 18, 2017
Strange Like Us, Your Mother Should Know, Mud On My Bra
Sunset Tavern, Seattle

Strange Like Us consists of: Kyle Sturner, vocals, guitar; Sadie Alley, vocals, keys; and Arna Garcia, drums, vocals. Darling synth sounds and solid playing all around provide a potent platform for Kyle's weaponized trans girl baritone. Add Sadie in parallel octaves for the KO.

Your Mother Should Know is, of course, Neal Kosály-Meyer and his sister (and my spouse) Karen Eisenbrey. This was their first electric show in quite a while. There were some shaky spots here and there, but they pushed through them. Karen got to try out her new headset microphone, and this may have been the first time I remember being able to really hear her vocals clearly.

We have heard Mud On My Bra (Myla and Aria Mud) before, and were eager to do so again. Aside from their stunningly tight ensemble (at the service of some fancy rhythmic games, I might add) I was able this time to attend more to the songs themselves, and to Aria's voice, within the ping of which I noted a hint of Jad Fair.

All that and our parking karma could hardly have been better: practically right outside the door, and free. Thank you so much to the woman who saw us trying to disgorge drums from the car and let us have her space when she left. And we got home before 11!

Recorded

April 15, 2017
A Matter of Trust - Billy Joel [from The Essential Billy Joel]

BJ has great control, just no range, or sense of timing. Even the count-off is performed, tamed.

Banned Rehearsal 244 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, January 1991


Consisting largely of a reading of A Cat's Life, accompanied by violin scribbles and quiet ocarinal hootings. Aaron provides extensive, if eccentric, marginal commentary. As much as I enjoy listening to my own music, and I do, inserting such a constructed form into an improvisation is an error. It remains, especially in my ear, separate from the on-progressing activity of making it up as we go along. It is persistently deaf to the other people in the room. When I get done Aaron takes over on the piano (or joins me for a 4-hands improv - recollection fails), and a truly awfully awesome sound ensues. Far superior as a part of the activity than my composition could ever hope to be.

Sunset's Wall

April 18, 2017
Taste Test - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Rotating pitch collections.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [from Jack Straw recording session May of 2005, take 1]

Each assay of the tune finds a new place within the harmonic-contrapuntal thicket.

10 Penny - Repeat Offenders [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

Attention is paid to the hollow moment just ahead of the downbeat.

Isaiah 60:1-5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [recorded in September, 2013]

This piece demands a more reverberant space to live in than is given here. It needs stone walls and a dome.

Musica Ficta - Sascia Pellegrini - Sascia Pellegrini

It is unclear from the program notes who is playing piano, but I presume Sascia is on the vibraphone. It is striking how 'on stage' the characters are, as they mimic and join, hide and seek, meld and face off.

April 19, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus 8 - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

a broad gentle downward slope
another
a grand mansion overlooking

Symphony in G (#94) - Haydn - Austro Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, Adam Fischer

Cracks in the façade, but not endangering. Rising waters, but not alarming. Yet.

String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130 - Beethoven - Quartetto Italiano

Sunset's Floor

If a quartet is both a unified thing and a suite of several differing things, then disparities of style, affect, and key can participate in a unified thing, and the same techniques with which the participants of a suite of several things can be said to become unified can be said to unify other orders of disparate parts, and each individual participant of a suite can be made of deeply disparate parts. How far can the parts be sundered and yet remain parts of a thing, not alien to it?

Katya Kabanova Act 3 - Janácek - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Mackeras, Gabriela Benacková, Dagmar Pecková, Erika Bauerová, Dana Buresová, Eva Randová, Miroslav Kopp, Jozef Kundlák, Peter Straka, Zdenek Harvánek; Czech Philharmonic; Prague National Theatre Chorus;

Ritualized sacrifice, as demanded.

April 20, 2017
Got The Blues - Blind Lemon Jefferson [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

Among many other things, the blues are a medium by which life advice is passed, and the forms and texts are entwined with the society of their arising.

Brown Baby - Eddie Edinborough, Bobby Leecan [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

It's difficult for me to hear what exactly those instruments are. Guitar? If so then it really loves those lower strings. Kazoo? If so, then just possibly the most magnificent kazoo playing ever.

I Don't Want to Make History - Stuff Smith, Johan Jones [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

It isn't just that the singers have been listening to the instrumentalists and vice versa, but they each have also been watching the dancers, and translating the dance into the sung parts of song, and the instrumental parts of song, as well.

Embraceable You - Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, Jo Stafford and The Pied Pipers

Lights down low. Something more comfortable.

China Boy - Frankie Trumbauer [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This one is for the dance floor.

Godchild - Red Norvo [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Ken Benshoof had a theory about jazz harmony treatises. The puzzlement was that you could read what a practitioner wrote about what they were doing, but it never quite lined up with what they seemed to actually be doing. His theory was that jazz players always played "off" of something: "off" a beat, "off" a chord, "off" a tune. The treatises can only describe beats, chords, and tunes, not the nature of the "off". This is a prime example of the importance of "off" precisely calibrated.

Peggy Lee

I've Got You Under My Skin - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

Skates on the thin ice of a sensibility. The rhythm of her vocals is almost just simply saying the words. There's that ever so precise "off" again. Peggy Lee genius.

Bewildered - James Brown [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart Of Rock & Soul]

A parody of teen crooner delivery taken so far over the top as to enter a new land. Those breaks toward the end are composed just to hear the reverb the engineer let loose around it.

Pledging My Time - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Another parody of sorts, this time of delta blues. Of sorts because also a pastiche of sorts. Of sorts because also a submission, a sacrifice. The long-held harmonica notes toward the end are straight out of Louis Armstrong's toolshed. Then he does his best to conjure a synthesizer with it.

American Pie - Don MacLean [from American Pie]

This was the first record I owned, a gift from my brothers. Having ripped this from my own vinyl copy, it still has all the familiar pops on it. I find it curious, after all these years, that the first popular music song I took to independently of my parents, and that wasn't by Simon & Garfunkle, concerned itself with the past. The music of my time was the music of a past time.

Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie [from Changes One]

And of course, DB presents nostalgia as a point of view, in order to invent a fictional past.

One Of These Days - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

There is, or was, a class of youth, and I imagine they are, or were, mostly boys, for whom these crazy long spacy tracks were "so much better than that pop crap all my friends listen to" that they truly longed to infiltrate the dance mix at the sock hop with one of these behemoths. To that class of youth, these were indeed "great dance songs", and Pink Floyd was by far the best of their purveyors. In that sense this otherwise incomprehensibly titled Best Of Collection could be considered as perhaps their most archly meta of concept albums.

Banned Rehearsal 62A - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]


We are being vewy qwiet. Cassette machines sound like ammo lock and load. Gradations of multiple media transference terroir. Literally, mediations. A chorus awakens beneath waters. A cranky slide viewer. How quick the generations to the alien? One? None? The darkly glass. The layered hollows of wind. Crackly undulations. Flames of the fiery furnace. Gloriously spacious, the underlying is revealed. Remove masks. Pluck tendrils. We breathe and allow discussion.

This was side one of a two sided session as we prepared for our third Brechemin outing the next evening. My recollection is that Aaron might have been around, but didn't participate in the concert because he felt that in his absence in Berkeley he hadn't had a chance to properly rehearse. Karen was still living in Tacoma at the time, and wasn't able to come up either. Our second Brechemin show was called "A Short and Simple Concert", and the first part of this new show was essentially a repeat of that one, re-titled as "3 Compositions No Breaks". And that is what you hear on this rehearsal. First, Neal's Hunting and Gathering, then my Trance Butchered Knight for Wurlitzer Funmaker Sprite and tape, finishing with some plucking and singing.

feast on my car - Infamous Menagerie

I'm pretty sure that's the title of the song, but what is sung is clearly "feast on my heart". A manual? A labeled diagram? Every time I hear something by IM they become my absolute favorite band of the 90's.

Banned Rehearsal 421 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 1996]

The Funmaker 10 years later (we start in with what we have at hand and see what it makes) up to its old tricks again. Its cruddy reverb is lustworthy. And the Mighty Wurlitzer at its Wurlitzeriest. This sort of lava is hard on the feet. A near unanimity of purpose among some members is narrowly averted.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 17, 2017
Gradus 310 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Fog dark densely grown. (We may not have enough bread crumbs.)
At sea. Billows, birds, whales. Beacon. Stars. Moon. Phosphor.

Playlist

Recorded

April 9, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus 7 - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

This is a plug

All about the fugal entrances, and how each one opens a new window.

Symphony in D (93) - Haydn - Austro Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, Adam Fischer

Dramatic pauses and uneasy balances. The fart joke falls flat because it only points out what was obvious throughout anyway: dramatic pauses are the subject matter.

Grosse Fuge in B-flat - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

A fugue we enter through a hall of inward facing windows.

April 11, 2017
Katya Kabanova Act II - Leoš Janáček - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Mackeras, Gabriela Benacková, Dagmar Pecková, Erika Bauerová, Dana Buresová, Eva Randová, Miroslav Kopp, Jozef Kundlák, Peter Straka, Zdenek Harvánek; Czech Philharmonic; Prague National Theatre Chorus

Listening to this music is like reading the expression of an open-book face.

Chock House Blues - Blind Lemon Jefferson [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

I kept wondering if, as has been suggested of the contemporaneous recordings of Robert Johnson, this was recorded at a slower rpm than we hear as playback. There is probably no way to know for sure, but the possibility of it might be determined by a comparison of other recordings. Did his voice always sound so weirdly high? If you bring it down a step or so does his voice sound more like it does in other recordings? Is it a likely guitar key? Can the probable tuning of the guitar be ascertained by figuring out which notes are on open strings? Are there other recordings of the period that we know were sped up, i.e., might it have been a common practice? Is the weirdness confined to this time period (ca 1926)?

Hard Times Stomp - Red Perkins [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Sheik of Araby - Milt Brown [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Lovely, fat, almost clarinet-like guitar sound.

Apollo Jump - Luck Millinder [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Children's Dances - Zoltán Kodály - Jenö Jandó

Classy teaching pieces. The lesson hidden under the fingerwork is about the deftly shifting attention's focus from one voice to another.

April 13, 2017
Just One Of Those Things - Charlie Parker [from The Cole Porter Songbook]

Breathless momentum, stripped down arrangement.

John Verrall

Autumn Sketches - John Verrall - Kimberly Davenport

The ground is solid rock, but neither level nor even. Up is on a different slant than Down. Any attempt at parallel is doomed from the get go.

Ain't No Use - Sarah Vaughan [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

Precise placement of voice. She dances inside her instrument.

19th Nervous Breakdown - The Rolling Stones [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

An instrumental with a backing vocal for an excuse.

99 Lbs - Ann Peebles [from Original Funk Soul Sister The Best of Ann Peebles]

In the same sub-genre as 60 Minute Man. The song is so brief as to barely get started. Perfect at every moment.

Changes - David Bowie [from Changes One]

An assemblage in lieu of a song. Tactic: garble the narrative.

AKU (cassette version) - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey, Christopher Mehrens

Realized on Synclavier, courtesy of the University of Washington Department of Systematic Musicology. Chris and I spent hours and hours laying down these tracks. The reel to reel master tape deteriorated into something else entirely, so this is the "safety" copy I kept on cassette tape. There was a certain amount of institutional grief involved trying to schedule a time to play this for the composition faculty at our weekly Friday department workshop. Looking back on it now, I have to wonder what I was thinking, to play this for exactly that group of people? Over 30 minutes long, it pretty much forgoes anything like regular musicality in favor of design. The synclavier could only play 8 sounds at the same time, so in a fit of maximization I decided to base the whole thing on a sequence of 8 numbers. This sequence (I've forgotten what it was) determined the relative amount of time each patch would be present in the mix, the relative density of notes within each patch-track, various settings of complexity of wave form and envelope for each patch, and (my favorite) the relative amount of time from the end of each patch-track to the end of the piece. The notes were a hodgepodge of things, quotes of myself and others, "that'll do" doodles, and carefully stacked pitch piles. And then I had to arrange it so that there were never more than 8 sounds playing at once. I had charts all over the place.

In Session at the Tintinabulary
April 10, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 932 170410 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy

Steve brought over a little purple guitar and played it.

Playlist

Live

March 24, 2017

Floating in the high cold air - Lori Goldston (with friend)
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

LG

feedback of the box :: an additional hyperbow with which to pull each string's particulars into relief. Geologic. Ample. Generous as a long prairie drive.

LG wFriend

silent harleys flocked wheeling :: floating west to the foggy gray sea

roadless road trackless track pathless path

the deep pressed feel of pressed deep

smeared cyclic rhythm abstract :: surface of an ad hoc medium

elicits out of nowhere a baritone saxophone solid as amber

mind body spirit pull away

shore side

an anthem

Recorded

March 21, 2017
Taking Me Home - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Delivery on the flat line, punk nouveau.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [recorded live at University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle, on November 6, 2004]

Mt. Rainier National Park - ca. 1975

I'm perhaps inordinately pleased with how delicate and transparent a thing this turned out to be.

Cell Block 21 - The Hollow Points [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

A cinematic chorus from a punk rock musical. Our hero lands in prison. Video unnecessary, it's all there in the music - though perhaps if Busby Berkeley tried it . . .

Xtet: Last Dance for Milton - Elaine Barkin [from Milton Babbitt: A Composers' Memorial]

clear lines

clear abruptions

episodes of interruptions

stabilities flourish here and there

but persistence is not deemed necessitous

It makes perfect sense now that I think about it, remembering all those crazy pages of scrawl-doodled commentary {(Igor's goriest, etc.), how like precision scores they are, as in: play this tune exactly so, at an angle to the page, hand drawn, fanciful, from the idiolect} that Ars Antiqua and its "proprietary squiggles" would appeal so deeply.

Self-Righteous Fool - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

Curve balls so subtle you'd be past 3rd base before realizing you had struck out.

March 23, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus VII - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Collisive. A time-scale shredder. Armor up before listening.

Symphony in G Hob. I:94 (Paukenschlag / Surprise) - Haydn - Academy of St. Martin-In-The-Fields, Neville Marriner

If the image of the music is the exploring of the most pleasing aspects of something, what is the something we are exploring the most pleasing aspects of? A discourse of the spaces between sets of tunes?

And herein we find that brilliantly square one fingered tune (Pa-Pa Hay-Dn's Dead And Gone) that lurks behind Beethoven's Eroica variation theme.

String Quartet in F Major op. 135 - Beethoven

A telescope extended and collapsed at once, in networked dimensions. And waddayaknow? There in the midst of all that "Es muss sein!" is PPHDDAG inverted, in three quarter profile!

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 20, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 931 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Yellowstone National Park, 1998

Playlist

Live

March 2, 2017

James Falzone & Bonnie Whiting

Utterances - music based on text, spoken word, and translation
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Bonnie Whiting: percussion
James Falzone: clarinet, piano, shruti box, bells
with special guests:
Beth Fleenor: bass clarinet
Ivan Arteaga: alto saxophone and clarinet
Neil Welch: tenor and soprano saxophone
Steve Treseler: tenor saxophone and clarinet
Eric Vanderbilt-Mathews: alto saxophone and clarinet

Prelude - Bonnie Whiting and James Falzone, 2017
Amazonia Dreaming - Annea Lockwood, 1987
Sighs Too Deep For Words - James Falzone, 2017
Exercise No. 4 for Hands Right, Left and Deserted Mouth - Susan Parenti, 1984
The Room Is - James Falzone, 2013
Perishable Structures That Would Be Social Events, IV. Varése - Bonnie Whiting, 2017
White (part 1) - James Falzone, 2013
Your Thoughts While Listening - Richard Logan-Greene, 2015
White (part 2) - James Falzone, 2013
Toucher - Vinko Globokar, 2013
Grace and Chance (at the same time) - James Falzone, 2015
Postlude - Bonnie Whiting and James Falzone, 2017

The event as a whole wholly subsumed its constituent parts. Not that each part was not utterly distinct in its own integral event-ness, but that each part gave itself up wholly, in all of each of its integral event-nesses, to the passage of the event as a whole. That is, each event's moments were lifted into a status within the whole event that outshone their narrower moment-hoods. This doesn't just happen. Serious lifting was involved.

One hell of a band too.

March 3, 2017
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Sheila Bristow :: two songs: Strong Wisdom and Leap Into Love, for mezzo-soprano, piano, and cello. Melissa Plagemann sang, Sheila played piano, and Meg Brennand was her usual magnificence on the cello. Sheila has been working on this set for some time now and we have heard earlier versions of at least one of them at other Salons. I admire her straight-ahead, get out of the way of the text, illustrate clearly without over dramatizing things approach to song writing. Although her style is nothing like my own, the attitude is like, and refreshing. The entire cycle will be presented at the Chapel on April 8.

Steve Eric Scribner :: Tree and Stone (Artificial Version), for paper tree parts and chair stones (performed by the audience); and The Sherványa Nocturnal Music, for piano, harp, and other plucked instruments (peformed by Steve, piano; a harp player whose name I was too dead tired to remember to write down; and Karen and me on miniature kora (bug-guitar) and three-string ukulele). I was involved - in the sense that I plucked a few notes quietly through most of it - so my only comment is that I think I had the best seat in the house. The paper sound from the audience was luscious.

ComManD :: Thaumaturgy, for percussion, saxophone, dance, and electronics. Being, as I say, pretty much dead tired from a wicked week at work, I didn't manage to catch all the names, but Ivan Arteaga operated, to some extent, as spokesperson. They are working on some fancy computer-enabled ideas of collaboration, interaction, and mutual sound manipulation. The image that struck me strongest was the dancer, tricked out with accelerometers at wrist and ankle, somehow being both marionette and string-puller at once. Weirdly fascinating.

Blake DeGraw :: Electronic Quartet for Humans, for four saxophones. I recognized Jeremy Shaskus, but the other two names escaped my enfeebled note-taking. Adam and Justin was all I got. Bursts of sound from four sides projecting an image of a surrounding space. Bursts of no sound from all sides projecting an image of a withheld space.

Recorded

February 28, 2017

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus VI - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

This stands in front of you several times over all at once. Resistance is not futile, it is presumed, vanquished. Nothing like music as usual.

Symphony 95 - Haydn - Austro Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, Adam Fischer

First the overture. A domestic crisis with fatherly advice. Fatherly advice activated, public acclamation follows. Wrap it up.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 27, 2017
Assembly Rechoired 56 170227 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey
There was rain. There was snow. There was thundersnow. And then came the overturned propane tanker on I-5. Traffic was beyond a mess. In honor of our compatriots trapped in traffic Karen and I carried on with noise. Since before our marriage (the first two were in June of 1986) we have called any improvisation session with just the two of us and no other Banned Rehearsal regular an "Assembly Rechoired". This is #56. Karen played the Excelsior and I bumped around several noisy items, at the end pouring all the ping pong balls out of the bucket into the chimney. And back.