Playlist

Recorded

March 29, 2016

Colin McPhee

Tabuh-Tabuhan, Toccata for Orchestra - Colin McPhee - Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, Howard
Hanson

Importation into symphony-land, without irony. Accidentally prefiguring aspects of a later pop minimalism. For a moment, a hint of the Great Gates of Kiev, but in the end I couldn't help thinking that equal temperament has never sounded so bland.

I Found A New Baby - Benny Goodman [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

The masters trade bitty licks lickety split, arranged to sound impossibly, miraculously, spontaneous.

You Won't Be Satisfied (Until You Break My Heart) - Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Butterfield, George Koenig, Bill Stegmeyer, Jack Greenberg, Artie Drelinger, Milton Chatz, Joe Bushkin, Danny Perri, Harman 'Trigger' Alpert, Cozy Cole [from Louis Armstrong and Guest Stars]

Sometime in my late teens I was introduced to the music of Louis Armstrong so I went to the record store to find some more. This grab-bag album of tracks (mostly from the 40's), is just full of winners, including this one of Louis and Ella at the tops of their games, hardly working (or so it seems) trading off verses.

Tease Me Baby - John Lee Hooker [from The Legendary Modern Recordings 1948 - 1954]

His strum is swift and weighty, like a cross-bow strike.

March 31, 2016
I'm In Love Again - Fats Domino [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

More trading off licks, here between vocal and sax, both of which hold more or less still in melodic space while the harmonies move under them.

Arthur Berger

3 Pieces for 2 Pianos - Arthur Berger - Paul Jacobs, Gilbert Kalish

From the catalogue of a master compilator. It is as though everything he was digging about the music he heard around him finds its way here in quirky completeness: tempo tricks, prepared piano sounds, intricate chromatic play between the vertical and the horizontal, Webernesque pitch statis - all of it laid out there with his inimitable sensibility of touches, times, and colors. Time's passing sculpted or bent.

Land of 1000 Dances - Wilson Pickett [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

A study in interjections, the song itself having fallen away.

It's Too Late - Carole King [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

I found myself really digging the tiny-echo backing vocals at left and right, barely audible at the ends of phrases.

Say Goodbye to Hollywood - Billy Joel [from The Essential Billy Joel]

The king of monochromatic vocal production. There is a way to sing and that's all there is.

Clubland - Elvis Costello [from Trust]

A latter-day land of 1000 dances presented as a present tense fiction.

Love For Sale - Talking Heads [from True Stories]

Framed by: CountOff at start and KissOff at end.

Study 50 - Conlon Nancarrow [from Conlon Nancarrow: Lost Works, Last Works]

Some stray dude holding forth at a bar, with illustrations, and a replicator. By the time one escapes there must be 20 or 30 of him in there.

Ballintubber Abbey - Amy Denio [from Tutto Bene]

Focus.

Sonic Brilliance 14 - [March 1996 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Holden K, Neal Kosály-Meyer]

Introducing children to synthesizers. I want that bubble sound.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 28, 2016
Gradus 287 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Neal is on the verge of G natural, to imply a modulation, or that we weren't in A to begin with.

Playlist

Live

March 12, 2016
Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle

Mary Stuart - Donizetti

Donizetti

After all these years I may finally be coming around to Italian opera that isn't by Mozart. In particular I have had problems with what seemed to me a mismatch between the affect (light and silly) and the dramatic moment (dire). But here the clarity of the accompaniment, be it ever so boom chick, can be heard as a constant surface of quiddity, beneath, above, and around which are spun melodies of extreme sophistication, and even within which unexpected transformations unfold. These are the grounds of the Berliozian affectual non sequitur. The ensembles are stunningly supple, and there was a moment in the big chorus just before Mary Stuart's last entrance where the choral writing opens into unexpected dimensions, as though we suddenly are aware of the abyss beneath us. Murderous power struggles should not be so timely, alas.

March 18,2016
Jeremy Denk - President's Piano Series
Meany Hall, Seattle

William Byrd

English Suite #3 in G minor, BWV 808 - J. S. Bach
Sunflower Slow Rag - Scott Hayden and Scott Joplin
Piano Rag Music - Stravinsky
Ninth Pavan and Galliard in D minor from Lady Nevell's Book - Byrd
Ragtime from 1922 - Hindemith
Graceful Ghost Rag - William Bolcom
Canon - Conlon Nancarrow
Pilgrim's Chorus from Tannhäuser - Donald Lambert
Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 - J. S. Bach

Jeremy plays with such tender poetry and intricate clarity it seems bad form to quibble, but I do wish he would refrain from all the head wagging and foot kicking. I made the mistake of opening my eyes at the end of the Stravinsky, just in time to catch a flat falling winsome gesture. Please! But aside from my problems with ill-fitting showmanship this was a tremendous evening of fascinating music. His retrospective of crazy rhythms was spot on, though I'm sorry he didn't play Art Tatum's Tea for Two, which was in the program but not performed. The Goldberg Variations were ravishing.

Recorded

March 13, 2016
8 Lieder: Auf dem Kirchhofe, Op. 105 #4; Der Jäger, Op. 95 #4; Regenlied; Sapphische Ode Op. 94 #4; Ständchen, Op. 106 #1; Therese, Op. 86 #1; Vergebliches Ständchen, Op. 84 #4; Wie Melodien Zieht es mir, Op. 105 #1 - Brahms - Janet Baker, Andre Previn

When I ripped these from vinyl I made no attempt to number the tracks, so this mini-recital was reassembled in alphabetical order. Each song has a complete and ornate frame. When the song is done it stays done.

March 15, 2016
Das Lied von der Erde - Mahler - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, Christa Ludwig, Fritz Wunderlich

The symphonic accompaniment plays the part of a cloud of familiars besetting the singer, echoing, mocking. An ever-renewing, inescapable farewell.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 14, 2016
Gradus 286 160314 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

In the first rung, among the As and Es up high all the C-sharps were gathered toward the bottom the keyboard, so that the whole came across as a big first-inversion triad.

In the second rung, two or many threads weave in gentle diagonals, ripples on a frictionless pond - or a diaphanous friction is intimated in the refraction of sound upon sound.