Playlist

Recorded

July 1, 2018

Cavatina "Ecco, ridento in ciedo" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

a distance traveled before we get off the ride

Rainy Night - Duke Ellington [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

say a thing (twice) (or two things) then comment or overturn
the back ends of the melodies invite consideration

The Goodnight Waltz - The Voices of Walter Schumann [Rescued Record]

The Age of Sentimentality's Last Gasp

Walk, Little Julie - Chester Hanchell [from Anthology of American Folk Music Vol. 1]

jaw harp in the raw

Requiem Canticles - Stravinsky - London Sinfonietta, Oliver Knussen

pitch plates microadjust their relative altitude
planar placards plastered on the pitch plate walls
icons

Track 6 - Tillicum Junior High School Orchestra [from my mom's tape of a concert give March 3, 1971]

with vibraphone solo

Subhuman - Throbbing Gristle [from Throbbing Gristle's Greatest Hits]

inverted accentuation becomes name classification

July 4, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 77 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

vacuum cleaner vacuuming floor clacking sticks and ocarina or flute
we have a hum on the tape from something
it wanders

Neal & Anna's Outpost on Brooklyn Ave, as they were packing it up

typing tap tap tap tap ding! szzzhook!

persistent lack of focus, phoning it in, not present
weary and wearying the hum does not help
this tape has ennui
impervious time

Don't Mix The Colors - Courtney Love [from Kill Rock Stars]

words on a good enough rhythm track
half a song or less

Gradus 99 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 2006]

single tones allowed to linger
turn their predilections for proliferation inward upon themselves
become sets of parts independently spinning
fulfilling the compositional imperatives
which notes to play
is so simple to accomplish that the notion of necessity in the short term
or of form at all as a specious trajectory
is left far below

Front Door - Shaprece [from Scatterbrain EP]

circling insistence (a worry stone)

Banned Telepath 47 Somerville - Aaron Keyt [April 2016]

the new note nears quickly
improvisation composing itself as a composition composing improvisationality

July 5, 2018
Cavatina "Largo al factotum della città" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

intricate prestissimo blah blah blah
tour de articulation

Irish Black Bottom - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

wide open window to another celebration
when it is over
feels empty

Tweedledy Dee - Elvis Presley [from First Live Recordings]

clearly worked over before release
with vinyl surface noise just as clearly audible
no-one was, apparently, thinking history and collecting quality data

(He's) The Great Imposter - The Fleetwoods [from The Very Best of the Fleetwoods - Come Softly To Me]

Requiem Cantlicles - Stravinsky - Columbia Symphony Orchestra, Stravinsky

categorically disparate rhythms
though coordinate
choral sound disblending as instruments perfectly
ceremony
voices instruments solos chorus - all treated emphatically impersonally
each is there to function just so
not anybody's show really
as though these were sound samples pulled from hammer space

July 10, 2018

Jascha Horenstein reminisces with Alan Blyth

". . . nineteen tzwolve . . . Webern and Berg were the ushers who controlled the membership cards . . . enowmously tense and inhibited . . . Vienna is the only place in the world . . . a closed shop . . . icy cold every inch the emperor of music . . . "

Well I Just Might Do That - University of Washington Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble [July 1981]

barbasol theater
it's got lemon in it
an historic moment for proto Banned Rehearsal
in that we were beginning to spill out of academic oversight
into sessions which we then inflated into legend out of all proportion to the actual results
good thing most of the sound is lost
come inside you'll catch your
keith
mind your mother
clump clump clomp clomp
done

4th of July, Asbury Park - Bruce Springsteen [from Bruce Springsteen Live 1975-1985]

full blown legend domain see your life as mythic grandeur
your face here

July 11, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 267 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [September 1991]

in the past I have made errors in that regard
moan tube scolding big red bag of fun
soft skinned rattle of rattles
semi independent double reeds
finger independent righty lefty
breath dependent if each speaks or in turn
jalopy rattle get it firing tambourine
this sounds like Aaron's now defunct electric organ
rather than the funmaker
30 minutes in not a dud moment really
terrainish
concerns itself with another subject than the terrain we experience
much as geology arose from metallurgy and mining
Mr. Punch you are a bad bad man
diabolic plotting encrustations of narratives' remains
realms are missing
music is an abstraction of activity
informing our future selves of the past reporting back truly what we say
common pulse theory

DX7 - Brad Anderson [from Dark Energy - Interstellar Pianos]

probes in substance with danger traps beacons left behind
creatures that feed on geyser's edge in pitch darkness

July 12, 2018

Day Signals Sonic Nebula - S. Eric Scribner [from Stormsound Cycle, live at the Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, on May 21, 2011]

slow circle
drawn
dug
stethoscope to deeper tunnel
clanging cagebars
rain drops what zooms by cares not
performance as self preservation
face of impervious
the slowly drawn circle nears, lurking, respiring
a membrane within the sound
cessation without conclusion

July 17, 2018
Finnegans Wake Chapter 4 - Rio Matchett [from Waywords and Meansigns]

immediate: as though related over morning breakfast finger thump on table
scifi traffic medievaly chanting past on the interstar
repletely misoverheard
leaning close over the cafe table
not fussy about the jointures
color not corrected as gossip passed
then report per radio tv with background
journalismus

July 18, 2018
Duetto "All'idea di quel metallo"- Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Will Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

light orchestral touch
the air they breathe

You Made Me Love You - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

not much space on these old tracks, timewise or dynamical
best to fill it completely

Tynan Tyme - Chet Baker, Art Pepper [from Playboys]

now we got us some elbow room

A Thing Of The Past - The Shirelles [from Shirelles Anthology]

such subtlety of vocal pressure
just exactly the right weight given to each part of each syllable

no slop

Secret Agent Man - Johnny Rivers [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

something in the sound is often repressed

July 19, 2018
Selections from Finian's Rainbow - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from my mom's tape of a concert given May 4, 1971]

extended medley or truncated show
Irish as ethnic quaint (harmless) lesser European pastoral
LA < > NY
Hollywood < > Broadway
good enough modulations (not to write home about)

Universal Corner - X [from Wild Gift]

measures measuring measuring measures

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 2, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 962 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


July 16, 2018
Assembly Rechoired 57 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy

Playlist

Preface

"First (1.0) 'a pitch' is stipulated to be 'atomic' - that is, indivisible into components not equivalent to the whole of itself. This designates the 'basic' vocabulary of entities for music, i.e., 'pitches'.

Next (Df. 1.0) two pitches are designated as distinct if there is any third pitch such that one of the two, but not the other, matches it, or if the two do not match each other.

If there is no such third pitch, and the two pitches do match each other, they are equivalent pitches, and are assigned to membership in the same pitch-identity class (1.1 and Df. 1.1; note again that 'pitch identity' is, properly speaking, a relation, not a 'property' - the latter, insofar as it is applicable here, as a notion, is only so in the 'property' of 'being a pitch')."

Benjamin Boretz Meta-Variations: Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought 1969

Texts

Live

September 1, 2017

Seattle Composers' Salon

Chapel Performance Space

Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Steve Scribner - Untitled Tondish Music

Folk music of a fictional culture, but a real fictional culture, in that there is actual solid fiction (books!) in which that culture arises. Karen and I got to play squiggly percussion in the second one.

Patrick O'Keefe - Sonata for Piano

Like listening to familiar musics through someone else's ears. I hear 30's Stravinsky, some Debussy, some Shostakovich, but not quite the SD&S's with which I am acquainted. Someone else's, and at other slants.

Cole Bratcher - Transit Maps

We visit graphic aspects of San Francisco and Copenhagen. Work in progress on a fascinating project that hits squarely on two of my geek-outs: music and maps. We are all waiting eagerly for Tokyo.

Blake DeGraw - Diler, for strings

Four string players, each playing a single string, attempt to match the pitches of a track heard only by them. See Preface above. Theory hits the pavement. Damn!

Recorded

Charlie Rich

August 26, 2017

Who Will The Next Fool Be - Charlie Rich [from Sun Records The Definitive Hits]

Relies on vocal charisma to hypnotize. Circles around twice, no more, needs nothing so fancy as a bridge. About a girl or about music? Always a tricky question.

City Midnight Junk Strains (for Frank O'Hara) - Alan Ginsberg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

Bumps around drunk in an empty room.

I Shall Be Released - Bob Dylan [from Biograph]

Trapped by wordmeaning, more interested in rhythmplay, ripples in a pebble pinged pond.

Miama 2017 - Billy Joel [from The Essential Billy Joel]

Prog Joel. Imagines he has more range of personae than he really does.

Music with Or Without 12 Chairs - University of Washington Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble [May 1981]

The class of clowns.

Breakout - Swing Out Sister [a Rescued Record]

A totally Vegas ambitious arrangement over funky bass and tight brass.

Banned Rehearsal 251 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [March 1991]

tossing noises into a bucket of noises the cats are concerned. Amnehitabel? Concerned. Anarchy: concerned. we must be picking up from something old ugly floral drapes are mentioned 3 bags full

::] city truck outside as I listen beeping clearing sewers? [::

funmaker staccato hits magnetic ghost reel tape

Thought experiment for sound engineers: imagine the worst, the at all costs to be avoided horror of a soundquality, not just unmarketable but quick turn it off before you vomit bad soundquality. Now, imagine the most sophisticated transparent playback apparatus that money can buy reproducing exactly that same worst horror. Is there a difference? Where, exactly, would the difference lie?

improvisational composition designing with readily apparent qualities cumulating funmaker drone reminds of Frippertronics ah that Wurlitzer button that pulls the pitch down almost but not quite a half step

improvisation: the art of redeeming one's, and each other's, sudden decisions. Falling, a la Buzz L, with style

August 27, 2017

Sonic Brilliance 18- John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, John H, Aaron Keyt, Holden K, Kia M [June 1996]

intents made together in a room to hear how it goes. A theory of the man in the oat box. Must be hiding.

Banned Rehearsal 614 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 2001]

etched with care || a percussion sequence arises
what if we go with it, without regard for redemption?
deep dynamic registers linger languorously

August 29, 2017

Class Notes - Michael Dellaira [from Open Space 21]

Although: barely a minute long
Although: figuration could be any midcentury bebop wannabe piano player in late evening lounge mode
Although: all that and more or less
Rich in: melodic twists of chords
And: Nothing here is quite just one thing

Gradus 187 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 2011]

3rd A-nat from the bottom behaving as a point of reference, the high notes, all A-nats, nestled or floating in its active or imagined or remembered partials. Parent floating child; I rattle a rattle! I had forgotten. Are these hiatuses Cage silence or something else? division markers? resets? reminder? absences?

Each A-nat, being itself unhooked from pitch class inclusion renders each of its aspects unhooked to an extent from any sort of class inclusion, i.e. staccato notes don't form a class with other staccato notes, nor quiet ones with quiet ones, nor loud with loud.

2nd rung: it centers a bit higher on a still low mid A-nat.

#2Pretty4Jail - Strange Like Us [from Strange Peeps]

seething writhes around an electrohummy spacefilling wad that squeezes the vocals off to the sides. Immobile, constrained, plea though they plea.

August 30, 2017

Qui Passe for My Ladye Nevell - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

Upon these inflections of tetrachordal-metrical correlatives, the ear dances rice on drum.

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

Playful puppy. Weary hound.

How Do You Like It Blues - Art Sims and His Creole Band [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Mid 20s, getting sound into the grooves was work, or the sound makes it seem so, striving to be recorded, to achieve groove.

I'll Be A Friend to Jesus - Wade Mainer [from Goodbye Babylon]

Formulae stubbornly adhered to. The barest of variance tells.

Save It Pretty Mama - Frank Signorelli [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

In a similar spirit to Art Sims above, but more chill and relaxed about getting it into groove. And yet, very conscious of that 3' deadline at the end of the record.

Signal - Stan Getz [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Stan Getz

Precisely beveled throughout. Every join tight as tight can make it.

Chorale Variations - Stravinsky - CBC Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Festival Singers, Stravinsky [from The Original Jacket Collection]

The big magic picture book of Chorale Preludes. Each page turn renews.

Little Miss Sad One - The Fleetwoods [from The Very Best of the Fleetwoods - Come Softly To Me]

Weakened by a weak bridge, with a little cliché riff at the end of it (said bridge) as much as to say at last that's over.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 28, 2017

Banned Rehearsal 942  - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

August 19, 2017

Gradus: for Fux, Tesla, and Milo the Wrestler (318) - Neal Kosály-Meyer

breeze soughed leafy trees released pedal resonance counterpoint thrown back upon listening alone with one head nudges only from the front to take seriously roundabout by proxy but seriously invent a model of seriousness model one's own serious intent on the model of seriousness invented lying in bed as a child and playing how far away can I hear music the more distant sound

move to two notes simultaneous presentation of two one-note things sequential/cyclic presentation of two one-note things and/or joint presentation of 2 notes as a group joined

microphone hair competes with neal hair

more distant sound because the source is within another

to approach composition in microlayers by means of composition in regard of itself

with music of many more than two it is more difficult to isolate the interior strands of each single pitch they tend to glom onto each other glomgroups experimental glomming onto the mathematical quantificational underpinnings of the effectively infinite possibilities of music and of how narrow a subset we have explored

neal writes big

Recorded

The Trammps

August 20, 2017
Hold Back The Night - The Trammps [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

That sound they are all after - just so balance, just so orchestration - is a focus of collaboration. The fact they're in it for the money takes away nothing.

Untitled Track 2 - Empire Brass Quintet [from American Brass Band Journal Revisited]

The wacky bad transfer sound (from vinyl to tape how exactly?) nearly overpowers the music they thought they were making.

The Loft 2 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer, and kids at The Loft [February 1986]

This was the second of two sessions we did at a group home for middle-school aged boys who'd run afoul of one thing or another. We gave them encouraged permission to shout and shriek for 30 minutes. They manage quite energetically for quite a while before they begin to fade back, vocal production being work.

snakepit - Infamous Menagerie

If a tricked out madmax car with all its enormities were a sound.

August 22, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 427 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, John H, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 1996]

fill the tape or else.

August 23, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 613 - Pete Comley, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Isabel K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 2001]

Jug band on the porch banjo guitar frame drum washtub bass blowing things. Twined sounds at rest.

Gradus 93 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 2006]

number: countable, graspable

Rachel Harrington

the vastness will never be heard amounting to what may as well be all of what there is given our inability to grasp the ratio

to the point that hearing them playing them any one of them or set of them within a life's span spins those heard into an other sphere alters them irrevocably as observation does of anything could be so fundamentally shifting as to render our hypotheses of the remaining nature dodgy at best

Little Pink - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

This song has been knocking around for a good while to be nailed by RH.

Banned Telepath 44 Somerville - Aaron Keyt

Drumming and knocking pitch and resonance narrowly considered, then Wallace the spinet joins the discussion.

August 24, 2017
My Ladye Nevels Grownde - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

A spiderweb music :: once caught you're dead meat. Lutish sensuous delight.

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

Featuring my favorite rhythmic transformation of the subject. Why? Because it is so entirely designed not for it's own sake but so that the music springing from it can do that thing he then makes it do before he ties it up in a fancy knot.

Can't Sleep Blues - The Pebbles [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

Completely overwhelms the recording device, there is much more there than could be captured, just a hint of a pounding upon sharp unyielding skin.

Ahmad Jamal

Shoe Shine Boy - Count Basie [from The First Records He Ever Made]

bebopbigband

Up A Lazy River - Benny Goodman [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

All over the map piano backdrop to be answered :: over before you realize what they just have done to you.

Will You Still Be Mine - Ahmad Jamal [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

high and butcher knife heavy accents bright with bite.

Canticum Sacrum ad honorem Sancti Marci nomines - Stravinsky - Los Angeles Festival Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinksy

Every note tells.
In which: loins are girded.
Gaining entry ain't easy and ain't gaining either.
Each approach, though nearer, is less nearer than the last or any.


In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 21, 2017

Gradus 319 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

B[ ]ginning. Or H, I suppose.

Playlist

Live

There is no end to the tuning of guitars

March 28, 2017
Your Mother Should Know
Victory Lounge, Seattle

Neal and Karen are back in action! The set was stripped down instrumentally (that's Karen's entire kit underneath the mic stand - a bodhrán, a tambourine, and a glow-in-the dark skull shaker) but ramped up vocally. Lots of duet singing, and a strong set list with many new songs, including '68 Chevelle and Jerseyville Illinois. The only disappointments were that we couldn't stay to hear the other bands (it was a Monday night), and my recording didn't turn out well (input too hot). I'm looking forward to their next outing at the Sunset on April 18. That's a Tuesday, but I'm on vacation so I can sleep in. They'll be sharing the bill with Mud On My Bra and Strange Like Us.

Recorded

March 26, 2017
Katya Kabanova Act I - Leoš Janáček - Czeck 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

Register and voice, within the orchestration, model a consciousness from the inside, as its sensibilities and attentions shift. The structural image is like a cranky, but multiply interfolded, or perhaps like a multiply interfolded Möbius Cranky. Had I one, that would be my bardic name.

March 30, 2017
Deep Henderson - King Oliver [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

What's deep is the metric patterning at play.

Blue Rhythm - Mills Blue Rhythm Band [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Quick boom chick beat. The multiples pile up differentially on the off and on the on beats.

Hesitation Blues - Milt Brown [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Both the electric guitar and the fiddle find ways of playing each note out in the yard. The beat stays in the house.

Chu Berry

Blowin' Up A Breeze- Chu Berry [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

A terrain to slalom, skis made of clips of hockety fragments.

Junkman Rag - Luckey Roberts [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Something artesian, or nancarrowish, about the way this spews out, under pressure.

I Get A Kick Out Of You - Charlie Parker [from The Cole Porter Songbook]

CP starts out playing it straight, only falling into bebop midway through. The piano player has to dive in to pull him out and hold him up til they can get to shore.

A Choral Flourish - Vaughan-Williams - UPS Chorale, Thomas Goleeke

Somewhere in the soprano section of this is my spouse, before we were an item. It isn't really possible, given the size of the choir and the quality of the recording, but I could swear I was picking out Karen's particular ping.

A Sermon, A Narrative, and a Prayer - Stravinsky - CBC Symphony Orchestra, Igor Stravinsky, Loren Driscoll, John Horton, Shirley Verrett

I was getting a peculiar notion of those disjointed tunes, as though they were really just a few notes, straightforward and stepwise, but that each note's pitch qualia was unstable, flipping between quantum states. Observing it, it moves.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 26, 2017

Maple Leaf 170326 - Keith Eisenbrey

Spring is leaking into Seattle slowly, so I set out a device in the backyard early in the morning and listened to the tall tales the tall kale told. And crows. And a jet. And other birds. And midway through, someone singing in the distance.

Playlist

Preface

"Meaning and sound, as Nancy describes them, both share the same 'form, structure or movement': they are comprised of a series of infinite referrals, a sending-away which returns, only to be sent away again, ever anew. The return penetrates the sending, 'all simultaneously,' producing a dispersal of bounds and rebounds without end. This applies, for Nancy, equally to the actual physics of sonorous reverberation as well as to the infinite circulation of meaning and reference. Meaning and sound share the 'form, structure, or movement' of resonance." Brian Kane "On Reading Listening" - Open Space Magazine Issue 12/13 fall 2010/winter 2011

Texts

Live

Mud On My Bra!

February 24, 2017

Café Racer, Seattle

Mud On My Bra!

Merchant Mariner

The Snubs

What a great evening all around.

MOMB!'s jawdropping togetherness was a masterclass in perfect ensemble. It's more than technique, it requires a personal sympathy that can't be bought. I was seated around a corner from the stage so I couldn't see the whole band, but had a wonderful view of the drummer's expressively intelligent face, totally in it. MM spilled off the stage (seven people in a space that three makes tight). We were surprised and delighted to recognize an old friend from another part of our life playing violin. Hey there small world! TS wore masks like bandits and ripped out Black Flag-like song bursts. Good feeling all night. Thank you!

Recorded

February 19, 2017

Way Down Old Plank Road - Uncle Dave Macon [from Anthology of American Folk Music]

Attempting to answer the age old question: how many times can whoop-diddle-iddle-iddle-oo-bedop-day come up on a 3 minute banjo scrub?

Merchant Mariner - the electric ukelele player

I'll Be Satisfied - Bryant's Jubilee Quartet [from Goodbye Babylon]

An easily gracious a cappella phraseology, breath-based. The singers don't blend so much as give up just enough of themselves to allow the others space to do likewise.

Satisfied - J. E. Mainer's Mountaineers
[from Goodbye Babylon]

Same song slightly different feel. This one adds banjo and fiddle to provide a table for the singing to stand, and a commentary like wine to pace it.

The Star Spangled Banner - arranged by Stravinsky - London Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas

MTT takes a broader tempo than Stravinsky's recording does, and eschews the chorus. Revealing of some truly sweet voice leading.

A Hundred Years From Today - Sarah Vaughan, Georgie Auld and His Orchestra [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

Suave take on a Shakespearean ploy (why wait? no one will care what you did). You can hear the expression of her eyes in the tang of her voice.

My Heart Belongs To Daddy - Charlie Parker [from Cole Porter Songbook]

And here you can hear the words CP is singing with his axe. He plays like a singer. Must have been listening to Sarah.

Lonely Avenue - Ray Charles [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Arranged wth a capital A. RC sings like an instrument, articulating time spans with pitch-words.

The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh) - The Tokens [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock &

The Snubs in masked action

Soul]

So close to yodeling you can smell the cowpoke camp smoke.

(I Know) I'm Losing You - The Temptations [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Putting it all together, strands wound strong as rope.

Baba O'Riley - the Who [from Who's Next]

New toys! Not just the synths but also the whole stadium filling hugeness of it. And yet the final instrumental could be a hoedown from anytime.

Frankie and Johnnie, Twenty Froggies Go To School - Margaret Kummett [from Art Rosenbaum's The Art of Field Recording Volume 1]

Which is the more accurate memory device? Recordings or brains? When an elder pulls out songs sung in childhood the memory has been ripened, fermented, purified.

I Fall Down - U2 [from October]

A confessional. There is a hint of Ray Charles (see above) in the way he fits words to a note-y tune, almost like a mallet instrument here and there.

Note to reader: Cue up all of the above on whatever song performing software you have. You won't be sorry.

Banned Sectional 20 KEE NWM - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer, January 1986

Using cheap consumer stereo gear to turn half the little house in Greenwood into a mailbox. Neal, still relatively new to Finnegans Wake, reads from it lickety split, on psalm tones. (Joyce: comic vocabulist, propounds an Eruditerad.) I am playing the mailbox room, at the end making a train with windups and feedback whistle. One of my finer moments if I do say so myself.

February 20, 2017

Fired Up - Moe Tucker, Lou Reed, Daniel Hutchens, Sonny Vincent, Brian Ritchie [from I Feel So Far Away - Moe Tucker Anthology 1974 - 1998]

What's left of the bare outline of song structure is pounded into submission, a massy pulp.

Banned Rehearsal 419 (Speakeasy Set #) - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer, March 1996

A roar gathers slowly in the high places. Bit of a blast fest at the sound-work shop. Hammering a plate of noise into shape (see MT, above). Big fat blobular trio of sax cornet electric guitar naked obesity || shh it's almost sleeping || Armor On! Now hold still! War Drums. Overpower the recording equipment (not a bad plan of attack). The pluckystrings help clean up what's left of the oily mess. Alarms sound, they're marching back to ecstatic dance village. It goes on too long several times over, each time worth the effort of going on too long again.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 (050517A) - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

Recorded by Doug Haire at Jack Straw as part of the 2005 sessions in which we recorded all of my then existing Gathered Songs. This one seems stronger to me every time I hear it. A set of double variations, or perhaps of angled adumbrations on a lyrical habitat.

February 21, 2017

Roll Call - Aaron Keyt

Lift the rocks, show all that lurks there. Kick-ass untamable acidspitting malevolent staring glimeyes and unearthly Tierschrei. A curated bestiary. What DIY can lead to, given an actual aural sensibility. This is about as fabulously raw an hour of sound as I can remember.

Too Slow - Newton Armstrong - Mark Knoop [from Milton Babbitt, a Composers' Memorial]

A solid body called into presence by the gentlest of indications. here. here. and here.

Ivan Arteaga & Keith Eisenbrey 160202 A - Ivan Arteaga, Keith Eisenbrey, February 2016

We tell tales at each other.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 20, 2017

Gradus 307 170220 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

What if there were a way, equally methodical, of working through all the rhythmic/metric/dynamic/agogic combinations as well?

February 23, 2017

Your Mother Should Know Acoustic Demos - Karen Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Although they haven't been out and about for a while they have been working on songs old and new. Time to set up some microphones and record an acoustic demo of a bunch of songs. For the big boxed set.

Playlist

Recorded

November 26, 2016
Sonata in A, Op. 101 - Beethoven - Artur Schnabel

There are no straight paths. Grumbly trills. The pianos of Beethoven's day possessed a wider assortment of tone colors from top to bottom. Moving material into a different register didn't simply change the pitch level, it also changed the color of the sound. B doesn't rely on this bare effect, but also composes his own color shifts at every level of detail, putting his thumb on the scale, as it were, so we don't miss the point. This is part of why these pieces seem to shift so easily onto modern instruments with their more even tone-quality from top to bottom.

Barcorolle in F-sharp minor, Op. 60 - Chopin - Alfred Cortot [recorded on July 5, 1933]

Chopin loved finding deliciously odd pivot points for his multi-step modulations. Changing keys is a dance move.

Some Of These Days - Sophie Tucker [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Her voice is simply too big for the recording technology available at the time.

Shake It and Break It - Ladd's Black Aces [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Some fancy stop time shenanigans in there.

November 29, 2016

Sippie Wallace

Jack O' Diamonds - Louis Armstrong, Sippie Wallace, Hersal Thomas [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

According to the notes I have, this piece was recorded on the day my dad was born: March 1, 1926. Heavy beat, but touched lightly, in an instant, like perfectly synchronized eye blinks.

God's Getting Worried - Virginia Dandies [from Goodbye Babylon]

About (y)our wicked ways.

Romeo et Juliette Cinquieme Tableaux - Prokofiev - Orchestre du Theatre Bolchoi de Moscou, Algis Juraitis

The topsy-turvy world of R&J is a dramatic composer's dream, just begging for extremes.

Portrait of a Guinea Farm - Claude Thornhill [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This is a very strange thing indeed - somewhere between a tone poem, a novelty song, and a fugue.

December 1, 2016
We're Through - Sarah Vaughan, Dicky Well's Big Seven [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

Trying to arrange the cushions of consolation just so. It's so hard!

The Rake's Progress Act III - Stravinsky - Orchestra of St. Luke's, Robert Craft, Jayne West, Jon Garrison, Arthur Woodley, John Cheek, Shirley Love, Wendy White, Melvin Lowery, Jeffrey Johnson, Gregg Smith Singers

Pulling the rug out from under is standard operating procedure. This is theater in all its artificial glory, perfectly believable even with artifice tipping its hand at every moment. Ties everything up and puts a bow on it.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 28, 2016
Banned Telepath 50 161128 Anchorage
Banned Telepath 50 161128 Seattle
Banned Rehearsal 923 161128 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steven Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer (Seattle); Aaron Keyt (Anchorage)

Playlist

Live

November 12, 2016
The Campbell Brothers
University Temple United Methodist Church

This evening of friendly bluegrass-infused music was given as a benefit for the alley ministries of University Temple United Methodist Church. My long-time partner in the tenor section Dave Campbell was joined by his brother Rick Campbell - both switching variously among guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandola, and mandocello - and by Paul Elliott and Pete Goodall (on fiddle and bass respectively) for a mix of old songs and new, including covers by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. As seems to be typical with bluegrass, displays of instrumental virtuosity are interwoven with bouts of competitive self-deprecation, raised to nearly a blood sport. Many thanks to all concerned. I understand the concert raised nearly $1000!

Recorded

November 13, 2016
Hubcap - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Fragmentary and unfinished - in a strong, Schumannesque way. 3 parts are repeated, with a coda of back-around-to-the-top-again to hint at cycles and cycles.

me in the 90's

Doomsome Otherings (edit from a reading) - Keith Eisenbrey - Seattle Creative Orchestra, Roger
Nelson

Through most of the 90's I was working in a self-consciously neo-classical style, with strong echoes of Arthur Berger and 50's era Benjamin Boretz or Elaine Barkin. Doomsome Otherings (my alternate rendering of "Canonic Variations") was originally written as a viola and piano duo in 1994, riffing on what was probably a mis-hearing of the variations in Prokofiev's Piano Concerto in C Major (#3). What I thought I heard were bits of earlier variations plugged into place in the middles of later variations. So I constructed a set of five variations (or a theme and four variations, depending on how you look at it) into each variation of which, at a set place within its schema, is inserted a bit of the surface style of the variation 3 places in front. The harmonic structure of the whole set proceeds more or less independently by a schema I couldn't explain to you anymore because I can't remember it. I believe it had something to do with transformations of pentachords in two strands proceeding at different rates. I made several unsuccessful efforts to hire players to record it for me, so when the Washington Composers' Forum held a contest for orchestral readings in 2000 I decided to orchestrate it. It's probably just as hard to play as an orchestral piece as it is for viola and piano, but Roger Nelson and crew valiantly pushed through. Many thanks to Christopher Shainin for editing the various starts and stops into a single whole. I'm still pretty pleased with the piece. Any hard-core violists out there?

Don't Care If I Die - The Earaches [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

anger at existence.

Floorplan - Youth Rescue Mission [from Youth Rescue Mission]

Warm string kodakmoment sound, but flatfooted and begrieved - there are actual living spirits in that quiet shady street!

November 14, 2016
Cançoes Profundas - Steve Peters - Steve Peters, Rafael Carvalho, Lesli Dalaba, Beth Fleenor, Paul Kikuchi, Joshua Parmenter, Naomi Siegel, Greg Sinibaldi

Now that's what I call a baptism! Extreme inundation. You, pilgrim, have been duly dunked.

forth comes human-babble

tongues of deep :: we mimic, talk back

a cathedral a bell we stand inside

clapper voices

the sky a bell we stand under

clapper drums

distillation of ocean roll and roar

water to water :: an island enclosed

clock tick or windroar as time

alternates crisscross in the ether

thin signals from shore

shipcalls shorecalls birdcalls whalecalls

geography as memory :: memory as geography

(Thanks for the CD, Steve!)

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

These gears are in such a tight space they really should seize up. But these cogs are subtly twisted. Creation as machine.

Sonata in B minor Hob XVI:32 - Haydn - Anton Nel

Delicacy and fineness of feeling achieving a state of decadence.

November 16, 2016
Die Zauberflöte Act I - Mozart - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Bohm

Of all Mozart's well-known operas I struggle with this one the most. Sometimes I can convince myself it all hangs together, but most of the time I can't. I was doing somewhat better this time, considering it as a parable of repression and resistance, patri- and matri-archy, animal human and civilized human. What is missing entirely are the characters that seem to have stepped living and breathing out of the past. These figures were 2D then and are still so. He could sure write a stunning tune or two though.

Sonata in A Op. 101 (#28) - Beethoven - Wilhelm Kempff

My favorite part: how those repeated chords stretch out at angry angles to any world the ostensible beat might inhabit.

Barcorolle in F-sharp Op. 60 - Chopin - Vladimir Ashkenazy

Bachlike, the melody falls to the ground in parts, spreading a single beat (from a phrase-functional standpoint) out over several measures. From theme to theme is a journey and a struggle. Before the new is achieved the old must be dismantled, and the new must be strapped together from the old's parts.

November 17, 2016
King of the Bungaloos- Gene Greene [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

It is difficult to separate the musical value from the icky. On the one hand the proto-scat, in-your-face onslaught of nonsense packs a punch, but in the context it comes across as yet another infantalization of African-American experience and aspiration. In the end all I can cling to is my extreme discomfort and dismay.

Harlem Strut - James P. Johnson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

JPJ struts out a whole song and dance routine, complete with band and backup singers. In a way he does for Vaudeville what Liszt's transcriptions did for Beethoven symphonies.

Georgia Grind - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five - Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, Lil Armstrong, Johnny St. Cyr

Finds multiple x-tuple subdivisions of the shifting meter, each on, and creating, its own rhythmic plane. We have our work cut out for us, holding it all together. Those cats blowing on stage aren't letting on how they do it.

My Pretty Girl - Fletcher Henderson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

A similar effect to GG above, but with whole instrumental groups playing at angles to each other, rather than individual soloists.

Romeo et Juliette, Quatrieme Tableaux - Prokofiev - Orchestre du Theatre Bolchoi de Moscou, Algis Juraitis

I couldn't help but wonder how amazingly diverse "symphonic form" would be if we all took this deeply imagined and delightfully bizarre sequence as permission and model. Such fun! The guitar standing in the corner happily reverberates the up-in-the-air ending.

Tryin' to Be True -Modern Mountaineers [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The only way to tap the beat of the whole is to join in as an independent player, because that's exactly what each of them is doing. You just got to dance and that's that.

Ballin' The Jack- Art Hodes [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Deep focus on all of the above.

The Rake's Progress, Act II - Stravinsky - Orchestra of St. Luke's, Robert Craft, Jayne West, Jon Garrison, Arthur Woodley, John Cheek, Shirley Love, Wendy White, Melvin Lowery, Jeffrey Johnson, Gregg Smith Singers

An opera infesting a symphonic narrative. Or: a narrative symphony dancing with an opera. I love how at one point the harmony resolves to an old-fashioned perfectly balanced triad, followed immediately by the words "I wish I were happy!"

stray notes:

The first female words of the act: "How strange".

Into the idealistic heart a knife thrusts and twists. (Why nobody really likes satire, as in "likes").

The orchestra interludes work like a curtain: it does not change and it tells you nothing.

Zeitmasse - Stockhausen - Arthur Gleghorn, Donald Muggeridge, Donald Leake, Donald Christlieb, William Ulyate

3D space created on a 2D surface by careful use of perspective alone.

November 18, 2016
Double Concerto  - Elliott Carter - Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Arthur Weisberg, Paul Jacobs, Gilbert Kalish

Bicameral. Two concertos partially conjoined - but not at the soloists.

We Could Be Happy - The Cryan Shames [a Rescued Record]

Just darling! Like the Fleetwoods if they were all guys.

Pillow of Winds - Pink Floyd [from Meddle]

More warm glow music with slidy bass.

Montreux/Berlin Concerts, Cut 7 - Anthony Braxton - The Berlin New Music Group, Gerald Humel, Anthony Braxton, George Lewis

As though AB and GL were clambering to the top of EC's DC (see above), all its clatter and spite. At the top they share some sounds. The ground softens, the trees green themselves and darken. A harp closes the book. At the very end of the track, just before the applause is faded out, somebody on stage (AB? GH?) says "Somehow we got through!"

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 14, 2016
Banned Rehearsal 922 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer


Includes birthday greetings to Anchorage Aaron.

November 15, 2016
Slow Blues - Keith Eisenbrey

I have been revisiting my 1999 solo piano piece Slow Blues. The recordings I made shortly after its completion are all about 30 minutes long. I feel it moving along a bit faster now that I have gotten better acquainted with it, and this version, though still 'slow', clocks in at a bit under 18 minutes. I am taking my original dynamics and pedal marks to be suggestive guidelines rather than prescriptions. Partly this is because my current piano (an 1890 8' Chickering) responds differently than the one I had then (a 1975 6' Yamaha). For any composer-tech types out there who are interested, this is the first piece I wrote that used each mod-17 M-transform in sequence, (M0, M1, M2 . . . M16, M0) as the structural basis for a whole piece. It also takes a significant lurch out of the neo-classical, or, perhaps, slips suddenly through a crack in the floor.

Playlist

Preface

"Permission to entertain alternative experiences is neither granted nor denied."
J. K. Randall "Concerning Birds by JKR and AM:" - Open Space Magazine Issue 11 Fall 2009

Texts

Live

November 5, 2016

Darrell's Tavern, Shoreline

Deadrones

strangely joyless, as though playing for their own heads

Power Skeleton

How can you not have fun if you wear a cat mask?

The Sun Giants

Has all the parts of a standard 4-piece, drums, bass, lead and rhythm guitars w/vocals. But here it's all about the bass and her wicked quick fingers.

Recorded

November 5, 2016
Variations for Piano op. 27 - Webern - Charles Rosen

It stands right up to your eyeballs, studying your every blink.

Melancholy Baby - Earl Hines [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Something about the sforzando pokes into new registers that comes across as distinctly Webernian. Well yes, see above. By the end he's got that tune dancing quickstep backwards across the tables in 8-inch heels.

'Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do - George Lewis and The Original Zenith Brass Band [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Here's the shot: a circular bar, the camera aimed inward on an extracircumferential track whipping around, projected several frames per second too fast, multiple bartenders mixing drinks rapid fire, all the while juggling flaming swords.

November 6, 2016
The Rake's Progress Act I - Stravinsky - Orchestra of St. Luke's, Robert Craft, Jayne West, Jon Garrison, Arthur Woodley, John Cheek, Shirley Love, Wendy White, Melvin Lowery, Jeffrey Johnson, Gregg Smith Singers

Each ointment has its particular fly in't. Technicolor sound and stage apparatus plainly in view. It almost wears a neon sign: Caution! Ironic Remove At Work!

November 8, 2016
I'm Not A Juvenile Delinquent - Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Rides happily through the clumsy engineering on stupid charm alone. I love the variations played on where exactly in the measure "No I'm not a juvenile" enters. All those "no no no no no no no's" were oddly timely.

Stand By Me - Ben E. King [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

As was this. But: Triangle! Sandblock!

Adieu - Karlheinz Stockhausen - London Sinfonietta

I still remember Benjamin Boretz's comment about this: "when he runs out of ideas he lets Krenek write a measure" (paraphrase from a conversation in about 1983) - both funny and dead on as to how the affective disjuncture feels going down.

November 10, 2016
Evil Woman - The Electric Light Orchestra [Rescued Record]

Since the hook is pretty much all one can hear clearly as words, the song comes across as, effectively, a pure expression of misogyny. Yes I can look up the lyrics (I did), and yes it falls in a long tradition of vindictive breakup songs from all skews of gender and orientation, but really, the only thing that gets through is the bald brainwashing repetition: "Evil Woman Evil Woman Evil Woman . . ." Sorry guys, it's just icky.

The Montreux Berlin Concerts Cuts 5 and 6 - Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, Dave Holland, Barry Altschul

Partly a celebration of flights of improvisatory fancy, partly an indulgence of collective intricacy - precisely executed fugal scribbling.

Indiscipline - King Crimson [from Discipline]

A music reporting back on the reaction of its perpetrator. "I like it! I wish you were here to see it!"

Live To Tell - Madonna - [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

I was amused to discover that I could sing along with her in her own register - and my upper range isn't all that high.

Breed - Nirvana [from Nevermind]

Love the way KC's vocals imitate the guitar's downstrokes in a kind of record stuck record stuck power play. Stravinskian, perhaps.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 7, 2016
Gradus 302 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Preface

"Phenomenology takes it upon itself to describe the appearance of phenomena and to do so on an originary background which has to be established in a theoretical manner (or perhaps, in a sense, as some sort of a fiction) as soon as we feel its presence behind all concepts. This pure presence, [. . .] far from being just a mere base or a unified and inert undercoat, is on the contrary a product of a preexisting, if not always identifiable, sensory mobility. In other words it is a given, not in the sense of a gift which somehow was previously given to us, but as the "givenness" of something which has always been in existence. Before we can even begin the process of distinguishing ourselves from the world, the famous Husserlian "there is" (es gibt) of the world - of which we became part of by birth - is a given. Our consciousness, incapable of making distinctions or judging, is given to us at the same time as the world; the world shaken by rhythms and movements of the originary, which are incessantly composed, decomposed, and recomposed before they become stabilized in a synthesis of sensory elements, so that ultimately, under the influence of the formation of categories of judgment, they may be arranged under the concept of an object." Marie-Claude Lambotte "the movement of the "originary" in art", translated by Dorota Czerner, The Open Space Magazine Issue 11 Fall 2009

Texts

Recorded

September 25, 2016

Märchenbilder Op. 113 - Schumann - Gérard Caussé, Jean Hubeau

It is exactly when Schumann seems to be falling back on direct repeats and square rhythms that he goes most splendidly askew. In a Boretzian locution, these are program musics, the subjects of which are 'folk songs arranged for concert performance'.

Nijinsky

Petrouchka - Stravinsky - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

Not the music to accompany a dance of a puppet show, but a puppet show in its own right. The mythic and the orchestral puppet show face each other across the chasm of the dancers bodies. For instance: the opening, where our attention is being pulled from here to there, from this sight to that sight, as though by strings. Not quite coercion, but not quite seduction either. We discover ourselves to be witnesses. The murder occurs while we are there.

Sounds of Africa - Eubie Blake [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Part of the deep undercoat for Art Tatum and Cecil Taylor.

September 27, 2016

Heebie Jeebies - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five - Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, Lil Armstrong, Johnny St. Cyr

Louis digs his voice out from deep in his chest.

Travelin' Railroad Man Blues - Alabama Sheiks [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This is me. This is my calling card, this my placard.

Romeo et Juliette Deuxieme Tablaeau - Prokofiev - Orchestre du Theatre Bolchoi de Moscou, Algis Juraitis

Grand Russian Ballet of the Tchaikovsky stripe, flagrantly flirting with the resurrection of Empire.

September 29, 2016

Take The "A" Train - Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - Rex Stewart, Wallace Jones, Ray Nance, Lawrence Brown, Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton, Juan Tizol, Otto Hardwick, Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard, Ben Webster, Harry Camey, Fred Guy, Jimmy Blanton, Sonny Greer [from Ken Burns Jazz]

A thought experiment: Listen to this as though the rhythm section were silent and it becomes deliciously disjointed.

Who Put The Benzedrine . . . - Harry Gibson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

. . . in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine? In celebration of somebody's awakening.

Black and Blue - Dickey Wells [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

A soliloquy. Sometimes he looks in your eye. Sometimes his eyes drop to the floor as he mutters under his breath.

Too Marvelous For Words - Art Tatum [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

This is not a pitch/rhythm space into which one enters lightly. The song is captured at exactly the moment of critical fracture, bursting from within.

The Marcels

Blue Moon - The Marcels [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Doo-wop is, in its inception, an imitation of instrumental music, but one that allows an interplay of attitudes toward that imitated music in the multiplicity of texts involved: lyrical, nonsensical, onomatopoeical. It's a bit like those old polyphonic works in which each part is in a different language. The song that floats on top isn't the show, it's just the excuse.

Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Arrangement by whoeverwasthereatthetime. Bob in full-on Revival Preacher mode.

Half Moon - Janis Joplin [from Pearl]

Love the yodel lift at the ends of phrases, and how carefully it is paced.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 24, 2016

Corollaries (Down's Up) 160924

Corollaries (Down's Down) 160924

Corollaries (Up's Down)  160924 - Keith Eisenbrey

The house was pretty quiet on Saturday so I recorded the other three Corollaries. Lately I have been considering my attitude toward notes as tokens or atoms of musical thinking. Among other things, this particular project has focused instead on the intervals, and on the gaps between notes in general, as the location of intentional design. In other words, rather than composing patterns of pitch in which the intervals, though considered, are subsidiary, I composed patterns of intervals in which the pitches, as it were, fall where they may.

September 26, 2016

Banned Rehearsal 919 160926 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

introducing our new friend, Excelsior!

More need not be said. We have a new friend. "Oh the glory glory glory on the horizon!" (Shelby Earl).

Playlist

Live

September 2, 2016
Seattle Composer's Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Ian McNight
Airship Pirate!

Narrative, like a slide show, or like a viewmaster card with music.

Carson Farley
Contrasts

Wandering within a container. Dreamy.

Jessi Harvey
Pieces of the Puzzle

A struggling and a wrestling.

Sheila Bristow
Two Songs: Leap Into Love and The Finding

An attractive lyricality, reminiscent of late Griffes.

Recorded

August 28, 2016
Polonaise-Fantasie in A-flat Major, Op. 61 - Chopin - Artur Rubinstein

Cherkassky

Each of the opening arpeggios is like a finger brushing the reverberation of its three preceding chord-strokes - as though their reverberations were harps - as though the piece were creating within its space, from within the substance of its notes, instruments and players.

Fantasiestücke Op. 111 - Schumann - Shura Cherkassky

In which meter is re-conceptualized as entirely plastic, like heat-pliant steel, but weightless.

Petrouchka - Stravinsky - London Philharmonic Orchestra, Bernard Haitink

The circus is a metaphor of the universe, or an excuse to trot out the musical fauna for display and study - of how and of what it is made. The grim oppositions of every kind of material: Outside/Inside :: Puppet/Master :: Circus/Theater :: Audience/Dancers. The gloriously polyphonous thrum. He even gets his big tune in there as a distraction to be suddenly interrupted by the interior drums let loose. I love the desultory tambourine bang just after the fatal thrust. Et tu, Igor?

August 30, 2016
I'll Be Good But I'll Be Lonesome - Southern Negro Quartet [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The best way to get a good recorded sound in the early days was to compose around the limitations of the tech. Still is.

Johnny Dodds

Oriental Strut - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five - Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, Lil Armstrong, Johnny St. Cyr

Each successive chorus a careful notch less restrained.

Creole Rhapsody - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra - Freddie Jenkins, Arthur Whetsol, Cootie Williams, Lawrence Brown, Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton, Juan Tizol, Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Harry Camey, Fred Guy, Wellman Braud, Sonny Greer [from Ken Burns Jazz]

That the legitimacy and prestige sought so strenuously, of which this music is so clearly deserving, was never achieved in the legitimate and prestigious world is not simply a matter of DE not being white and/or dead, though it is surely due muchly to that, but is also a clear indication that legitimacy and prestige were never real to begin with. (Which may have been his point all along).

August 31, 2016
Peter and the Wolf - Prokofiev - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, David Bowie

The quintessential free-range kid. I love how the introduction of the characters one by one (masquerading as an introduction of the orchestra) is echoed at the end by the parade of all at once, and how incrementally the story emerges in tandem with the incrementally complex orchestration. SP isn't just telling a story, and isn't just demonstrating an orchestra, he is also explaining his musical thinking. Bowie nails it.

Swingmatism - Jay McShann [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Two heads collide: a sly one and a cockeyed crazy one.

Pete's Lonesome Blues - Pete Johnson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

I got to thinking: As we listen through the imperfections of the recording tech do we filter out the noise or do we fill in the sound's envelope with the music we invent as having been heard?

Salt Your Pillow Down - Dickie Jones and Benny Leaders [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Got your big fat tube-amp guitar sound down solid.

Curtis Lee

Roll Over Beethoven - Chuck Berry [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart Of Rock & Soul]

The lyrics are a red herring. The action is in the rhyme between voice and guitar, leaning forward off the beat.

Pretty Little Angel Eyes - Curtis Lee [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart Of Rock & Soul]

Competitive do-wop-she-bop. Beat that!

September 1, 2016
And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma - Harry Partch - Gate 5 Ensemble

Charisma trying on outfit after outfit. Constant motion without arrival. Fascination without obligation.

In Session At The Tintinabulary

Dad's 1957 Nash Ambassador - Whidbey Island 1964 (we're building a cabin)

August 27, 2016
Shucking Corn 160827 - Keith Eisenbrey  


Although it is clearly just that, shucking corn, it also sounds, at times, like muppets making out in the back seat of dad's Nash.


August 29, 2016
Banned Rehearsal 917 160829 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer