Playlist

Live

February 15, 2015
Canals of Venice
The Musicquarium Lounge, Seattle

After a fine dinner at The Brooklyn we crossed the street to hear Canals returning to this upscale joint. They have gained yet another player - a multi-instrumentalist who adds oboe, banjo, mandolin, bass, and yet more vocal sounds to their already varied mix. They are fast assembling a mini orchestra of Stravinskian quirkiness.

Recorded

February 16, 2015
Quartet in A (#1) op. 4 - Alexander Zemlinsky - LaSalle Quartet

Staying upright on treacherous footing, but not always gracefully. If the parts are packed tightly enough the whole mightn't collapse.

February 19, 2015
Symphony in G (#4) - Mahler - Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

The sleigh-bells here are desultory, like the grim "hoorah!" that punctuates The Threepenny Opera. The wandering counterpoints seize at any passing catastrophe. If we weren't there before, the last pianissimo bass plunk at the end of the first movement tumbles us over the edge of daylight into a gothic fairy-tale world. Elisabeth Schwarzkopf reigns as Queen Irony, dripping blood and knives, a vamp macabre singing kiddy songs.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 15, 2015
Stories for Esther - Patti Simon

Our neighbor asked if I would record her reading some stories for her granddaughter - a fun little project.

Mitchell 150215
Mitchell 150215 folded
Mitchell 150215 folded rubbed
Peavey 150215
Peavey 150215 folded
Peavey 150215 folded rubbed - Keith Eisenbrey

I made a bunch of noise for the holiday weekend, on an acoustic steel string with a pickup and on a solid body electric - running both through an amplifier with spring reverb.

February 16, 2015
Banned Telepath 29 150216 Seattle
Banned Telepath 29 150216 Somerville
Banned Rehearsal 879 150216 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, and Neal Kosály-Meyer (in Seattle): and Aaron Keyt (in Somerville)

Aaron sends a message from snowed-in Somerville to nearly vernal Seattle.

Playlist

Live

January 5, 2015

Jimu Makurumbandi

Jimu and Anesu
University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

Our friends from Zimbabwe are off for Norway and gave our church a wonderful little concert as a farewell. They perform intricate arrangements of traditional and quasi-traditional songs accompanied on kora, mbiru, djembe, and shaker. An hour and a half is too little time, but we heard some wonderful sounds from a place where music seems to still be people-sized, easily at home with folks rather than held close by an industry of experts. We will miss them much.

January 9, 2015
Seattle Composers Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Ivan Arteaga

Ensemble: 3 string basses and 4 saxophones. A solid sound from which globules emerge and swerve, splinter and glint.

Cole Bratcher

Ensemble: voice and piano. A song steeped in the excruciating intimacy of an old family letter.

Fungus on the Trail of Shadows, Longmire, Washington

Neil Welch

Plays solo saxophone. Explores the lyrical possibilities of sounds that hover between timbre and chord.

Matthew James Briggs

Frog sounds imported from a Bali rice field anchored in our space by precisely rung notes on the piano, high and low.

Recorded

January 4, 2015
Symphony in F minor (#1) - Shostakovich - L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Walter Weller

Every statement is coloristically qualified, instrumentally specific.

Sun Treader - Carl Ruggles - Buffalo Philharmonic, Michael Tilson Thomas

All singularities brachiate in grains and veins of quartz. The question attempts to drown itself in its own reiterations.

String Quartet #4 - Zemlinksy - LaSalle Quartet

Fighting an incline of its own devising, every growth a decay.

January 6, 2015
Symphony #1 - David Diamond - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz

Industrious agents, working in a space removed, build motor segments from narrow populations of durations. Relations flash across the surface.

Symphony #5 - Martinu - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Vaclav Neumann

We creep back into the disconcerting day, into the glory of the new normal. Our hope is examined in the harsh light of war. We make what we can of it.

I discover that the last time I listened to this piece was also on a January 6, back in 2003. In  my journal I find: "Each idea has an ubiquitous shadow."

Sonata #1 - John Verrall - Kimberly Davenport

Up- or other-rooted architecture. Feast macabre. Great effort is made to be what one always was, though nothing is left unwarped. Ravel re-inventing himself from recalcitrant scraps.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

Janaury 4, 2015
Coronet 150104
Coronet 150104 Folded
Coronet 150104 Folded Rubbed - Keith Eisenbrey

I started another cycle of instrumental improvisations and attendant digital manipulation on the bass guitar I have on long-term loan from Steve Kennedy. Folded means I cut the sound file in half and layered the second half over the first. Rubbed means I took the folded file and ran it through a digital effect to see what would come out the other end. I'm still not sure about the results, so I'll just share the folded version.