Playlist

Live

October 4, 2014

Macefield Music Festival (day 2)

Fauna Shade - KEXP Mainstage

A young 3-piece band from Everett opened the festivities with an effects-heavy 60's stoner vibe. I thought the vocalist had a nice but under-utilized upper range. Time to branch out from sounding like music they like to finding out what music they might be.

Solvents - Conor Byrne Pub

Roots-rock from Port Townsend. The amplified violin works well as a stand-in for both lead guitar and harmony vocals.

Dead Man - Sunset Tavern

Fabulous two-man sit-down geetar blues.

The Swearengens - Conor Byrne Pub

The drummer of this country band had the most infectiously joyous ear-to-ear grin, and the swing dancers on the floor in front of the stage were lots of fun. Country moshing.

The Maldives - KEXP Mainstage

We caught just the last two songs.

The Posies - KEXP Mainstage

A little drone with red and green lights hovered over the audience. This veteran band still jumps around like teenagers.

Carolyn Mark - Macefield Market

We caught the last half of Carolyn's set. Folk-rock I guess, or maybe hillbilly blues pop, if they have hillbillies in B.C. Loved the slap bass.

Ryan Caraveo  - Tractor Tavern
Ra Scion - Tractor Tavern

We were pretty tired so we sat down by the bar for a beer and heard the last part of one set and the first part of another. My response to hip-hop is still somewhere between "mystified" and "puzzled", but eventually I may find a way in. Another first for us: a bouncer's forced ejection of an over-inebriated barfly.

Recorded

October 7, 2014
Piano Sonata - Elliott Carter - Paul Jacobs

Marbles and dominoes spilled out onto the floor. It is clear these twists are made of notes. In general the fast parts are the weakest, sounding like many another neo-classic noodlist, but the more spare moments are treacherous. Watch your step if you have bare feet!

Duo for Cello and Piano - Arthur Berger - Joel Krasnik, Gilbert Kalish

Arthur Berger

As if drafts of itself were remembering each other back through erasures and offsets and arrows or were held in 3D by a translucent prismatic gel, palimpsestually cross-referencing the Immediate.

Kleines Lied - Paul Dessau - Indian Springs School Chamber Choir, Tim Thomas, Diane McNaron

October 8, 2014
Nocturnal - Edgard Varése

Varése before his brow so beetled o'er

Isolation. Connections (dis).


Night Time - The Strangeloves [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

stomp stomp stomp stomp shoved around by a just loud enough bass guitar.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 5, 2014
Deagan 141005 - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on xylophone.

October 6, 2014
Gradus 253 - Neal Kosàly-Meyer

each moment a join
each join a token
each token a still point

Playlist

Live

March 9, 2013
La Bohème - Giacomo Puccini
Seattle Opera, McCaw Hall, Seattle

Puccini is hit or miss for me. La Bohème is one of the winners. As in Madama Butterfly, the story is human sized and the characters are as believable as those of late Mozart. But even more, I love the mix and trajectory of the different voices, from comic male quartet to intimate duet to raucus café and back again to the voices of Act 1 transmuted in sorrow. Act 3 (called Act 2 in the Seattle performance) is about as nice a dramatic composition as one could ask for.

Recorded

March 10, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 690 - (October 2005, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer)

A dog-whistle-high piercing pianissimo-to-mezzo forte feedback whine persists obstinately, flirting with discomfort. A percussion layer continues imperturbably, shifting color matter of factly, but otherwise immovably doing. A third layer interrupts or intercedes with radio scratch or guitar. Oddly it is the intercession that comes across as the context, the eventscape, within which the more continuous beings abide.

Banned Rehearsal 780 - (September 2010, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer)

Five years later, starting in combo mode of piano, drum, and cornet, I hear much the same character mix as in #690. It even ends with a high long-held harmonica, still and quiet, serendipitously reminiscent of the start of the earlier session just heard.

March 11, 2013
Blood/Candy - The Posies

The entire album could be heard as a set of loving recompositions of Savoy Truffle and Bohemian Rhapsody. The quicksilver arrangements hint at a Tatumesque sense that numerous songs lurk just below the surface and pop in whenever a crack opens up.

March 12, 2013
Suite in B flat Major - Sylvius Leopold Weiss - Lutz Kirchhof
Canon on "To Alexis" - Schumann - Peter Frankl
Tango - Stravinsky - Columbia Jazz Band, Igor Stravinsky

On the surface this performance comes across flat-footed and inelegant. But the square approach to rhythm throws the intricate particularities of the orchestration design into high relief.

March 14, 2013
Ebony Concerto - Stravinsky - Columbia Jazz Band, Igor Stravinsky, Benny Goodman

The science of chord voicing, both vertical and horizontal, aided and abetted by the in-your-face presence engineered into the recording. The grain of the HiFi sound approaches the surreal quality of the too-deep-too-bright focus of Bambi. I am torn between not wanting to hear page turns that perfectly imaged, and digging it.

First Part at Ken Kesey's With Hell's Angels - Allen Ginsberg

A short poem that lives for its final lines. "And 4 police cars parked outside the painted / gate, red lights revolving in the leaves."

Jig Medley - John W. Summers [from Art Rosenbaum's The Art of Field Recording volume 1]

In Session At The Tintinabulary

March 11, 2013
Gradus 222 - Neal Meyer

Upcoming

Saturday May 4, 2013 at 8:00 PM
Keith Eisenbrey and Neal Meyer at The Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Music for solo piano:
Eisenbrey: Welcome to my planet. I come in peace.
Meyer: Cage - Solo for Piano