Playlist

Live

October 3, 2015
Macefield Music Festival
Seattle

at The Sunset Tavern
The Kent 3 are survivors of the mid-90s punkish scene in Seattle, apparently well known among the junta of other survivors of the mid-90s punkish scene in Seattle. Their set is fast and tight, filling every cranny with get in your face, while

Best in the game

at The Tractor Tavern
Mikey & Matty do their best to channel the blood-harmony of the Everly Brothers. Faustine Hudson (nice hat!) is the best drummer I have heard live in ages, perhaps ever. There is a palpable negative space in her drumming, not a stroke is without effect, nor a silence without weight. All that, solid as can be, and she's obviously having a blast in the bargain. She alone was worth the trip to Ballard.

Recorded

October 4, 2015
String Quartet in C Major op. 59 #3 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

Outside the busy household a wraith bides, not invading except as an occasional awareness from inside.

Polonaise in F-sharp minor op. 44 - Chopin - Peter Katin

The mid-bit refuses to move in any direction until suddenly, whoops! it's over here, like some dumb magic trick - a sleight of tonality by misdirection of memory. Mr. Katin orchestrates admirably.

Symphony in C Major op. 61 - Schumann - Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan

Lingering on a note just long enough, persists just exactly to a metrical weight-moment uponwhere we think we might remember someotherwhere this might have gotten to, but moves elseonwards. Underneath the e-string shimmer the slow roll of slumberous hornscellosclarinets - the dreaming body beneath the dream. The last movement, rambunctious, encloses within itself the poignant end of some slow movement otherwise not present.

October 6, 2015
Piano Concerto in B-flat Major op. 83 - Brahms - London Symphony Orchestra, Janos Ferencsik, Julius Katchen

Bridges and roads of stone, not the mountains they traverse, but the views of the mountains from the bridges and roads of stone.

Waltz in D-flat major op. posth. - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

A quick stutter of waltz, giddy til it drops through the floor. Not a waltz for human metabolism.

Das Knaben Wunderhorn - Mahler - Concertgebouworkest, Amsterdam, Bernard Haitink, Jessye Norman, John Shirley-Quirk

Tone painting overdone to the point of ghoulishness, the singers' world envelops, leaves no room for us outside from which to observe, we too are brought in, immersed. Märchenwelt as another exotic location.

October 8, 2015

Prelude "en Tapisserie" - Satie - Frank Glazer

All the parts are in the box. No instructions for conceptual assembly, or what help is given mostly hinders.

Allegro Barbaro - Bartok - June de Toth

Bartok has not, as has Satie, lost his faith in stretto and splash.

Alagazam - The Peerless Quartet [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Poking out from between the patently offensive lyrics and (presumed) black-face presentation, is some pretty fun proto-beatboxing, nonsense words as drums, or up-tempo quantitative verse.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 4, 2015
Trio 151004 - Keith Eisenbrey
I improvised three tracks, one each of bells & gongs, tin whistle, and clavichord.

October 5, 2015
Gradus 276 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Neal introduces a new C-sharp, but not to anypitch else, because any other pitch is unimaginable, a perceptual impossibility. Until it isn't.

Playlist

Live

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

Michael Owcharuk

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

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

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

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

Matthew James Briggs
Radiant Light

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

Jay Hamilton
Nothing Is What It Seems (selections)

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

Recorded

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So that's how he does it all!

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

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

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

Monumentally personally, intimately cosmic.

7 Preludes, op. 17 - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

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

In Session at the Tintinabulary

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

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

Playlist

Live

July 3, 2015

The Botherations

Dead Bars

The Kings

at El Corazón, Seattle

Golly it was hot in there! The sound system's woofer, pumping air around, actually helped. One could feel a slight cooling movement of breeze when the bands played. Being old we decided to head home before the last two acts came on: Regional Faction and Mustard Plug. I'm sorry I missed them but not sorry I got to bed before 11.

Nancy Chase in the attic apartment of The Oaks, back in the day

When we arrived The Botherations were already playing, but I think we only missed a little bit. They would have fit right in on "Nancy's Mix", a mix tape of early '80s mostly punkish rock (XTC, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Jam, Gang of Four, et al) that was given to my Bostonian friend Nancy Chase by a friend of hers and which I dubbed and brought back to Seattle. A few years ago I reconstructed the whole thing on I-tunes. I still have a soft spot in my heart for those sounds.

Dead Bars started a few years ago as a one-gig (fill up a slot) pick-up band comprised mostly of EMP employees and ilk. Something clicked and they have been touring and recording and performing as much (I think) as they can while it lasts. The personnel has shifted around, and partly come back around. The drummer at their first show bowed out early since he was already in too many projects, but has now returned playing bass. This was the first time we got to hear them sing their cover of Neal Kosály-Meyer's song Tear Shaped Bruise, and we even got a shout out. Thanks John! Always a pleasure. Next time I hope they get to play a longer set.

I learned later that this was ostensibly a ska show of which we only caught the first act. Ska is a sub-genre I am not familiar with, but I gather from The Kings that it involves a pack of horns, quick staccato off-beats (which reminded me of very fast James Brown), and lots of stage strutting. Also a wolf mask. I learned that girls and boys are not allowed to dance with each other as couples, but must dance in separate groups. Boys on the left, girls on the right.

Recorded

June 30, 2015

Symphony in C minor (#1) op. 68 - Brahms - Concertgebouworkest, Amsterdam; Bernard Haitink

Moving up down and stuck in vertiginous spaces, vast interiors (much of which fails to punch through the warm mass accumulating the midrange of this recording, though cranking the volume helps). One could read this as a socialist tract (or as something more insidious): nation-building through strenuous cooperation. The fourth movement posits the hope: the nation aspires to become a cathedral of souls.

Waltz in G-sharp minor op. posth. - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

A Chopin pastiche for sure (and dead on as such), but also more than that, like an exploded view of a Chopin waltz just before being reassembled in surreal animation.

Also sprach Zarathustra - Richard Strauss - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

Comes on like a circus barker, as though it knows it can't deliver.

July 1, 2015

Symphony in D (#2) - Sibelius - London Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Monteux

The whole is elusive. We observe attractively painted parts, in close focus, moving against each other. We surmise, connecting and moving the parts, marionette strings. The inaudible string puller is the uncanny ghost coming up behind us.

July 3, 2015

Symphony in E-flat (#8) - Mahler - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Georg Solti

Ecstasy
as location || as journey

The first movement is the glorious mountain about which the landscape of the second is spread, and of which glimpses can be seen, calling.

6 Kleine Klavierstücke - Schoenberg - Paul Jacobs

Shielded. Locked in. (key turned from the inside).

Country Club Medley - Gus Haenschen [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The drumming anchors a sophisticated piano piece to a ground of dance. What might be only subtly tracked without the drum becomes plain with it. In that sense the drumming is an abstraction of, a theory about, the piano piece.

Denes Zsigmondy

Sonata for Violin and Piano - Bartok - Denes Zsigmondy, Anneliese Nissen

Looking for that quiet intimate moment or grimly dancing as these people fight, sniping with astounding articulation.

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Washington in the late '70s I was fortunate to have accompanied several of Professor Zsigmondy's students. As I recall there was a large poster of Bartok on the wall in full view of the piano bench. This was a great and treasured experience, but the picture was not comforting.

Knoxville Blues - Sam McGee [from Alan Lowe's Really the Blues]

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 28, 2015

Trio 150628 - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on Big Red Bag of Fun; Bells & Gongs; Tenor Banjo. When I left home for Annandale-on-Hudson in June of 1982 I brought with me as luggage a small leather portfolio and a big red nylon suitcase. Since my return this unwieldy red bag has served as a place to store small noisies: lids to pots and pans; pots and pans; cookie, coffee, and tea tins - often repurposed as rattles; that sort of thing. Over the years it has become quite full. Early in Banned Rehearsal lore it was dubbed the Big Red Bag of Fun. The various bells and gongs have accumulated without much effort on my part, their individual provenance lost many years ago. The banjo arrived in the early '90s when a co-worker's girlfriend needed to trade her banjo for cash to pay taxes. $100 later it still lives here, waiting for her to come back and claim it.

June 29, 2015

Gradus 270 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

A moment could be a memory state (as in digital computing) || one must grasp the whole system in mind from the outset

A moment could be a node in an emerging structure (a beam in a bridge trestle) || one must regard each moment as qualified by its place in what will not be known until the end.

A moment could be its own ultimate self || one must regard each moment as our self 

July 4, 2015

Trio 150704 - Keith Eisenbrey

I took advantage of the relative cool of the morning to record this week's trio a day early. The instrumentation is xylophone, bodhrán, and german concert zither. The xylophone was purchased from a co-worker who was tired of storing it in his attic. The bodhrán is a recent acquisition from a co-chorister. The german concert zither came from the estate of a much-missed member of our church who passed away some years back.

Playlist

Live

February 12, 2015
Stuart Dempster, Lori Goldston, Jessika Kenney
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

The stuff of music is primitive and absolute only if we, or it, is not accelerating in a relevant space. Here our listening ears are like a camera in a tracking shot, following these sounds as they travel through time and timbre and tune - only seeming stillness.

Recorded

February 7, 2015
Sonata in F Op. 24 - Beethoven - Itzhak Perlman, Vladimir Ashkenazy

A realm explored: the space between what counts as tuneful and what doesn't.

Nocturne in F op. 15 #4 - Chopin - Alfred Cortot

Parts are inside and parts are outside, mismatched just so.

February 8, 2015
Symphony in B-flat (#1) - Schumann - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan

From within the music as it goes about its symphonic business emerges sudden glory, or revery.

Missa Solennis - Liszt - Budapest Symphony Orchestra, Chorus of the Hungarian Radio and Television, Janos Ferencsik, Veronika Kincses, Klara Takacs, Gyorgy Korondy, Jozsef Gregor

Utterance is unpacked methodically, stepwise - heaven compelled in discipline.

Quartet in B-flat Op. 67 - Brahms - Budapest Quartet

Seems balanced, but nothing ever quite finishes - new thoughts spill in mid-syllable. The material shifts itself within its meter as though it were not quite comfortable in its chair.

February 10, 2015
Waltz in f minor - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

Ever so microscopically aloft, the ground dropping out from beneath.

Symphonic Suite (Symphony) #2 "Antar" op. 9 - Rimsky-Korsakov - Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Neemi Järvi

Music of event and sequence. And then, and then, and then.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 8, 2015
Franciscan 150208
Franciscan 150208 folded
Franciscan 150208 folded rubbed  - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on nylon string acoustic guiatar.

February 9, 2015
Gradus 259 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Neal moves to C-sharp, the third pitch-class - for those who are counting.

Playlist

Live

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

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

Carbon Glacier, Mt. Rainier National Park - 1976

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

Jacob Zimmerman - selections from a larger set of duets

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

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

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

Nat Evans - a study using field recordings from The Tortoise

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

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

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

Recorded

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imperialism's fatal nostalgia for its own sweet fictions.

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

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

Renard - Stravinsky - Columbia Chamber Ensemble, Igor Stravinsky

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

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

a thorny hedge

a hashing out in court of law

a discussion in the back rows

in the trees just past firelight undulating

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

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

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

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

Women In My Life  - John Lee Hooker

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

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

Self-absorbed, cushioned, protected, oblivious.

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

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

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

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

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 2, 2014
Samick - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on a miniature electric guitar.

November 3, 2014
Gradus 255 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Recorded

 

September 14, 2014

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

 

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

 

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

Tchaikovsky

 

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

 

September 17, 2014

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

 

Of the vertical extension of soul and its fleshly contingency.

 

Carnival - Dvorak - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Vaclav Neumann

 

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

Scriabin

5 Preludes op. 15 - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

 

Ornamented impassioned immobility.

 

September 18, 2014

Suite #2 - Rachmaninoff - John Ogdon, Brenda Lucas

 

A bit of a yawn despite some valiant playing.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

September 14, 2014

Crestline 140914 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

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

 

September 15, 2014

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

 

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

Playlist

Recorded

July 27, 2014

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

Longmire - Mt. Rainier National Park

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

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

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

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

 

Les Saisons - Tchaikovsky - Ramzi Yassa

Ramzi Yassa

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

July 29, 2014

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

 

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

July 31, 2014

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

 

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

 

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

 

Stepwise motion a la Escher.

 

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

 

Avon, Montana - 1988

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

 

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

 

All hat and no cattle.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 27, 2014

Silvertone 140727 - Keith Eisenbrey

A short improvisation on an electric hollow-body guitar.

July 28, 2014

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

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

Playlist

Live

 

June 27, 2014

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Banned Rehearsal at 30
LtoR: Neal, Steve, Keith, Karen, Aaron

 

Before the performance began, we had clocked 34 days, 10 hours, 36 minutes, and 49 seconds of recorded sound, including 861 numbered sessions, peripherals, and proto-sessions. We continue to occupy proudly the distant sloughy backwaters of Seattle's improvisation scene. Banned Rehearsal is: Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, and Neal Kosály-Meyer.

 

Recorded

 

June 24, 2014

The Gladiator March - Sousa - Philip Jones Ensemble, Elgar Howarth

 

up and down the square (the vid game score)

 

In Nature's Realm - Dvorak - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Vaclav Neumann

 

Fairytale Nature: spooky, but civilized spooky. Staged.

 

24 Preludes op. 11 - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

 

fracturing collisions

beneath the shards of which

further fracturing collisions

are intimated

among which

tonality is occasionally glanced at

 

June 25, 2014

Quartet in G minor (#1) - Max Reger - Reger Quartet

 

figures jammed together tight

(all the counterpoint that can be crammed)

 

Belshazzar's Feast Suite - Sibelius - Robert Kajanus

 

we are here and we are getting here

but

we did not arrive from

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

June 22, 2014

Samick 140622 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

I had so much fun doing this that I brought this miniature electric guitar along to the Banned Rehearsal gig last night.

 

June 23, 2014

Gradus 245 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

Attention is on the precise proportion of Just Then to Is Now. An exploration of the border area between Now and Memory.

Playlist

Live

April 12, 2014

A Cat's Life

A piano Recital by Keith Eisenbrey, with special guest Olivia Sterne

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

Attitude (Two soloists punch their way out of a paper bag) - Doug Palmer

Greek Nickel #2 - J. K. Randall

Sonata - Aaron Keyt

A Cat's Life, a little opera for solo piano - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Herocat revisits the scene of the crime

After I was done and we were putting things away a resident cat came to inspect the piano.

 

Here are the program notes:

 

In spite of his unfailing attempts at self-deprecation, composer, instrument maker, and partially reformed auto mechanic Doug Palmer has emerged as a unique and valued voice in the Seattle new music community. Attitude began it's life as a duet for cello and piano, but when a cellist was not forthcoming I asked if he could rework the piece for solo piano. Its subtitle: two soloists punch their way out of a paper bag, is pretty much all the program notes you will need.

**

J. K. Randall has been such a powerful presence in American musical life for so long that it is difficult to overestimate his influence. He is among the first pioneers of computer-synthesized music. He taught many generations of composers and theoreticians at Princeton until his retirement in 1991. He is an inimitable writer, editor, theorist, and critic. Over the course of his long life he has collaborated with dozens of musicians, but his decades-long on-going conversation with Benjamin Boretz, in words spoken and printed as well as in music improvised and composed, stands as one of the most fruitful intellectual duets of our time. Typically, Greek Nickel #2 does not invite so much as demand engagement. The surface is spare and nearly void of rhetorical clues. What kind of a thing is it? I've been working on it for a year or more and I'm still not sure. We'll have to dive down pretty far, I think, so take a deep breath.

**

Aaron Keyt is a local composer. He studied composition at the UW and Princeton. He has composed for orchestra, chamber groups, and piano, as well as working with computer-generated and -modified materials. Along with Keith Eisenbrey and Neal Meyer, he is a founding member of the improvisational group Banned Rehearsal, now in its 30th year. Sonata (2012) is a hard-edged, unapologetic, neo-classical foray, modeled from movement to movement - with various schemes - on Haydn's Sonata in E, Hob.XVI:31. The most interesting aspect that shines through as a property of both is the peculiarity with which one phrase moves to the next - never exactly graceful or lyrical: more spidery, subtle, insurrectionary.

**

In writing A Cat's Life, I wanted to tell a story in music, using every time-honored rhetorical trick I could think of: long and short range key relationships, motivic recurrence and transformation, and of course words spoken out loud. Starting with the name of a friend's kitten (Heldenkitty), tale and music developed together: a fable of Herocat's life and death, his dreams and doubts, and even his great task (a double fugue, no less). Is it an opera? I think so, though perhaps only as a literary conceit. But what is opera after all, if not a literary conceit?

April 18, 2014

Kleine

Hoax Foot

Lion Pincher

Pouch

Victory Lounge, Seattle

 

 A quartet of two-piece bands, HF and LP (hmm) share a drummer, LP and P share a guitarist.Squint a little and the line-up reads like the name of a law firm. K made a valiant attempt to conjure up a working jet engine by starting with the roar. HF dialed it back (a little). LP and P didn't so much dial it back up (though that too) as finesse the design.

 

Sociologically, these bands are essentially playing for their friends - a good many of whom are in other bands. To some extent the differences among them (especially notable in this line-up) have more to do with the particulars of the way each duo interacts with each other than with musical differences per se. K could be the cousins from Boise, the others a subset of the local poly-amorous sub-commercial rock scene, all getting together for a jamboree. There is apparently another music venue next door to VL, so there is also a steady stream of slightly differently costumed folks wandering in to use the ATM. A certain gymnastic ability is required if you want to squeeze past the band to get to the porch, which gets trickier the more you've had.

Recorded

April 13, 2014

Polonaise in A-flat (1821) - Chopin - Peter Katin

 

If the date is to be believed, he would have been 11 or 12 when he wrote this. Already the paradigm is vocal, the left hand discreetly chunking along while the right hand sings.

 

Concerto in B minor, op. 7 - Paganini - London Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Dutoit, Salvatore Accardo

 

A coloratura with superpowers. Paganini was one of the many composers who, envious of the attention and social power divas were drawing from audiences, absconded with the toolkit.

 

Papillons - Schumann - Peter Frankl

 

A set of waltz fragments that shifts gears so many times and turns so many corners it makes your head spin. It really shouldn't work at all, as a piece, but it does. There is a deep melody there whose notes are made from the angles between each phrase, each figure. Meta with capital M.

 

Remeniscences de Lucia di Lammermoor - Liszt - Alfred Brendel

 

Following in Paganini's footsteps to some extent, but Liszt didn't want to be just the singer, he wanted to be the whole opera, and not only to be that, but to be transfigured as well.

 

Overture from Der Fleigende Hollander - Wagner - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

 

Premeniscences.

April 14, 2014

La Damnation de Faust - Berlioz - London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis

 

First of all a complaint: Is that the conductor I hear moaning along with music? Sheesh.

 

As flabbergasting as Papillons, but on a massive scale. The individual numbers are set on inclines. New elements sneak in under cover, or from behind, or plop down, dis-ceremonious, into our laps. There are long stretches of terrifying immobility - no dance or counterpoint or long line to lead us here or there, just a fragmented bit of music . . . then another . . . then another . . . then another.  Catastrophe might lurk in a single pianissimo note lingering ever so slightly too long, or a root position triad in not quite the right place. Not an easy listen, but hard to stop thinking about.

April 15, 2014

Scherzo in E-flat minor, op. 4 - Brahms - Julius Katchen

Offertorium 'Afferentur regi' - Bruckner - Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Eugen Jochum

Overture on Russian Themes - Rimsky-Korsakov - Bochum Symphony, Othmar Maga

 

Another complaint, this time about the production: Every instrument is in your face and dynamic contrast is messily lost. I suppose this would help it to sound better on a bad radio, but I doubt R-K would approve.

 

Quartet in D Major - Tchaikovsky - Copenhagen String Quartet

 

The music is held in a tight grip. Individual straying is sternly tolerated and must return to the grip.

April 17 2014

Quartet in D Major - Borodin - Borodin Quartet

 

Imperial comfort music. Nothing gets in the way of the tune. Each function knows its place. Even when it's in canon with itself the moving parts carefully trade the spotlight. I must admit though, they're pretty great tunes.

 

Sonata in A Major -  Franck - Jascha Heifetz, Artur Rubinstein

Mt. Hood and Mt. Saint Helens, from the Wonderland Trail,
Mount Rainier National Park - August 1976

 

Lines of hills interfolded into the distance.

 

Zwei Lieder - Mahler - [unlabeled]

Allegro Concert in B-flat minor op. 18 - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

 

Uncontainable.

 

You've Been a Good Old Wagon (But You Done Broke Down) - Len Spencer  [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

St. Louis Rag - Pryor's Band  [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Valses nobles et sentimentales - Ravel - Vlado Perlemuter

 

It never occurred to me just how Schumannesque this is. A set of fancy waltzes like Papillons, but also a study in contrasting personalities. Ravel might have just as appropriately called it Eusebius et Florestan. A fancy clock with ports that open to views of its clockwork, and ports in its clockwork that open to views of itself at its clock work.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 13, 2014

Zuckerman 140413 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Clavichord improvisation. Pretty happy with the sound.

Upcoming

May 2, 2014

Seattle Composers Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle 8pm

I will be performing selections from my work in progress Études d'exécution imminente.

June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle