Playlist

Live

September 11, 2015
Harry and Myrtle Olson International Music Festival
David di Fiore, Organist -
University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

Grand Jeu with Thunder Effects - Michel Corrette
Cantabile Symphonique from the Organ Symphony - Camille Saint-Saëns
Toccata and Fugue in d-minor - J. S. Bach
Sonata on the 94th Psalm - Julius Reubke
Just A Closer Walk with Thee- Joe Utterback
Sonata No. 1 in d minor Final - Felix Alexandre Guilmant
All' Offertorio - Domenico Zipoli
Etude in c-sharp minor - Octaves - Jeanne Demessieux
Come Sunday - Duke Ellington (as an encore)

David di Fiore

The close relationship between the technological feat that constitutes each individual instrument and the personality of the creative musician pervades the organ repertoire of the last few centuries in a way that echoes the relation between the various au courant electronic technologies and many of our contemporary musicians. This is front and center in the Corrette, where one could so easily imagine some young punk organist late at night figuring out how to play all the pedal notes at once and thinking "sounds like thunder! I'll make a piece with thunder in it." But it isn't such a great conceptual distance from there to the growly trills of Guilmant, or to the ballsy octaves of Demessieux, or, for that matter, to the blinding glories of the T&F in d.m. The glee and fetish of let's see what I can do with this machine arises from the same tinkering spirit that animates computer music, analog synth music, frippertronics, and every guitar player with a new fuzz box.

David has been organist at our church for over 40 years (and choir director for about 15). He has been a valued colleague and friend since Karen and I first started attending the Temple almost 30 years ago. Although we have had the pleasure, week after week, of hearing David play, and of seeing his repertoire grow both in size and depth, I do believe there was some particular fire in play Friday evening. Today was his last Sunday with us, and it is with sadness and pride that we watch as he sets off for new duties as cathedral musician for the Cathedral of St. Francis Xavier in Banská-Bystrica, Slovakia.

David: We have seen how Europe in general, and especially your many friends in Slovakia, have been pulling you to them for years now. One blogpost is not enough to say it all. We'll miss you terribly, but we also know that, for you, it's time to bloom in a new garden. Godspeed David!

Recorded

September 7, 2015
Concert Overture op. 40 "Cockaigne" - Elgar - London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis

The center of empire as seen by the center of empire. Elegant, glittering, spirited (gung ho!), self-satisfied, militaristic, pompous.

September 8, 2015
Hallowe'en - Ives - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein

This otherwise interesting study in short stringy filaments is marred (at least in this recording) by a colorless, uncontributive piano sound - as though it were speaking with it's hand in front of its mouth - and by an unfortunate and badly calibrated cadence. Sorry Charlies, if you're going to throw away a piece please throw it all the way away.

Symphony in F-sharp minor (#10) - Mahler - BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Mark Wigglesworth

Stray bits of dire stuffed into cupboards, spilling from closets, clogging the hallways - a hoarder's house of fraught incongruities.

September 10, 2015
4 Orchestral Songs, op. 22 - Schoenberg - Philharmonia Orchestra, Robert Craft

More like operatic scenes than songs, in that the singer isn't reciting poetry but instead has become a puppet for a character that speaks from within the text.

Muscle Shoal Blues - unattributed - [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Sonata 1926 - Bartok - June de Toth

an insistance
an incessance
a you will hear this
an in your face

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 7, 2015
Gradus 274 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

As notes accumulate from the gradus-global machine for use in individual session-rungs, there are moments, especially first moments, in which a chosen sonority holds within itself the degree of unstable complexity from which one could imagine an old-fashioned piano sonata emerging, some never-composed Beethoven movement perhaps, a sound poised teetering on the edge of any number of precipices. It is as though a single step had brought us into a new realm of elaborative possibilities, one foot-fall from austerity to super-abundance.

Playlist

Recorded

April 12, 2015
Requiem - Liszt - Hungarian People's Army Chorus, Janos Ferencsik

trying to look like Horowitz

As severe and restrained a setting as one could wish for, resources reduced to the narrow particularities of men's voices, organ, timpani, and occasional brass. The highest tenor voice is to die for.

alternate movement II from Symphony in C minor - Brahms - Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Charles Mackerras

A bit more expansive in layout than the final version, with some variant contrapuntal details.

4 Ogives - Satie - Frank Glazer

These little piano pieces are not far removed, spiritually, from Liszt's Requiem, or perhaps more to the point, his Tenebrae, but with a conceptual wrinkle: They are each essentially identical to their fellows. The differences in detail between them are exactly and only those differences that make no difference.

Lieder und Gesänge - Mahler - (performers not known)

My indexing fell apart here. I think I dubbed this to cassette tape from a friend's CD - probably in the 90's sometime, but neglected to collect any information about the singer (female) and pianist. It may have been paired with Lieder eines fahrended Gesellen. I tried to figure out who it is by perusing discographies on line, but to no certain avail.

April 14, 2015
The Golden Spinning Wheel - Dvorak - London Symphony Orchestra, Istvan Kertesz

This piece is up near the top of list of favorite Dvorak pieces. Among other strengths it is easily the best animated Disney movie ever, like Snow White but with the pacing of Eisenstein.

Jeux d'eau - Ravel - Vlado Perlemuter
The Unanswered Question - Ives - New York Philharmonic - Leonard Bernstein

I'll take these two as a pair. They share an absolute dependence for their power on their names, or rather on the relation between their names and their affects. Each is as literal as the other. I began to think that an excellent rule-of-thumb for what classical music (in the marketing sense) is, is just that music in which the name of the piece has an essential relation to how we perceive the piece.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 12, 2015
Duet 150412 - Keith Eisenbrey

Slide whistle and acoustic steel-string guitar. I added some barn-silo reverb to the final in order to mitigate some unfortunate wind noise on the slide-whistle track.

April 13, 2015
Banned Telepath 32 150413 Seattle
Banned Telepath 32 150413 Somerville
Banned Rehearsal 883 150413 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer (in Seattle); Aaron Keyt (in Somerville)

Playlist

Recorded

 

September 24, 2014

Central Park In The Dark - Ives - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein

 

Such tunes as there are appear like ghastly voices, disembodied, unaffecting their surrounds.

 

Daphnis et Chloe - Ravel - Orchestre de Paris, Jean Martinon

 

Even the shadows are resplendent and glow. Violence is vanquished by balance, mathematics, proportion. Harmony is defused. Drama relies on accelerating crescendi and textural pullbacks.
 

Our Planet

September 25, 2014

The Planets - Holst - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein

 

An attempt to understand horror by placing it within a system, a character within a pantheon, one among the several aspects of the Man.

 

Frankie and Johnny - Al Bernard

 

An arch performance of a quintessential American song - simultaneously rooted in particulars and expansively mythic.

 

Lyric Suite - Berg - Galimir String Quartet

 

Here the 12-tone method is a means of control over a hyper-varied landscape. The method is a focus, but it isn't the object of focus.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

September 21, 2014

Holmes Harbor 140921 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Recorded at dawn September 21, 2014, at the south end of Holmes Harbor, on Whidbey Island. Some traffic in the distance, but also gulls, ducks, and the quiet tickery noise a damp barnacly beach makes at dawn.

 

Fryingpan Glacier from Second Burroughs, Mt. Rainier National Park

September 22, 2014

Second Burroughs 140922 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Between the wind noise that even a wool sock wrapped around the Zoom couldn't keep out is the sound of water gushing out from under the Fryingpan Glacier several miles away.

 

First Burroughs Trail 140922 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Likewise, but the somewhat louder sound of the White River deep in the gulf below.

 

Gradus 252 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

Of prime compositional concern is the nature of change that the fact of being subsequent inflicts upon the present.

Playlist

Upcoming This Very Evening

 

Your Mother Should Know

Canals of Venice

Bucktoad

August 10, 2014, 7pm, at the Skylark. All ages!

 

Recorded

 

August 3, 2014

Asrael - Josef Suk - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Vaclav Neumann

 

I was thinking about the titles of musical works and the degrees to which, and the ways in which, those titles, and our various understandings of them, color our experience of episodes of musical experience. Specifically I was interested in how a title, if allowed, groups its instant work into a literature of like objects. Symphonies can be compared to each other, as can concerti, string quartets and piano sonatas. The flowering of program music in the 19th Century, among other things, forced a door (or merely removed the illusion of a door) between concert music and allegory, mapping explicit ideas from outside into the pure (or stagnant) realms of music. Titles such as Symphonie Fantastique reveal the dialectic: pure symphony or story told? Is there a program? Why do I need a program if it works as pure music? If it doesn't work as pure music how could it work as program music? Asrael is deeply invested in this dialectic, but the spectacular elements of Berlioz and Liszt have vanished. Death is not played here at the remove of the big screen. The sublime is for keeps.

 

August 5, 2014

The Gong on the Hook and Ladder - Ives - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein

 

I was going to say "talk about your spectacular elements" but there's something more going on here. Not a picture, but a poem or conceit, concerning or from an imaginary point of view. We are the title object and we have a sound comprised of our receptions, through our life's duration, of the sounds of our surroundings. We are what we have heard.

 

4 Impressions - Griffes - Olivia Stapp, Diane Richardson

 

I wonder if the vernacular ghost of Stephen Foster lurked too closely behind Griffes to allow him anything but this starchy oh so artsy style of song writing.

 

Concerto in C - Prokofiev - Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, Antoni Wit, Kun Woo Paik

 

All sorts of things can be strung along a steady riotous pulse.

 

August 6, 2014

Mass - Frank Martin - Robert Shaw Festival Singers, Robert Shaw

 

A completely devastating piece of work. Clarity and inflection are painted here, not words.

 

Liberty Theatre, Toppenish, WA - July 2014

August 7, 2014

Piano Concerto 2 - Bartok - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini

 

The concert abstract in your face. This is built of bricks and so it is.

 

Carmina Burana - Carl Orff - London Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, Eduardo Mata, Barbara Hendricks, John Aler, Hakan Hagegard

 

It would be easy to dismiss this work as an overblown Les Noces wannabe, were it not for the fact that it seems to be establishing itself culturally as a kind of sinner's Messiah: On Christmas we sing-along with Handel, but on New Year's Eve it's Orff all the way. A series of short pieces, strongly pulsed, constructed with such narrow pitch material that the particular slant each has on the idea of tempo is the real point, strung together for contrast and sequential impact. One would almost think it's a '70s concept album stripped down to bare punk and re-imagined as though the universe had never heard of rock and roll.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

August 3, 2014

Takemine 140803 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

The blogger on woodchips - Seattle - August 2014

Trying something a little different: playing two sessions following each other immediately and then layering them. End result is three little improvisations. Not sure yet where it might go.

 

August 4, 2014

Gradus 248 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

A Short History of Pitch-Class Colonization in the New World:

 

expand realms

start over

consolidate gains

hegemonize

start over (armored)

threaten

unify

fill

distill

start over

segregate

visitate

investigate

celebrate

occupy

monopolize

regularize

classicalize

explore

reconfigure

dissect

continue

defoliate

isolate

apply policy

republicanize

summarize

slumberize

 

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!