Playlist

Live

March 12, 2016
Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle

Mary Stuart - Donizetti

Donizetti

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

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

William Byrd

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

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

Recorded

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

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

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

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

In Session at the Tintinabulary

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

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

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

Playlist

Recorded

March 8, 2016
Rondo in D Major K. 485 - Mozart - Mitsuka Uchida

Ms. Uchida plays this so beautifully one could almost be convinced the piece was written for modern grand piano. Her touch is light, as though measured to the milligram. What gives the game away is the sheen, the lack of local presence in the tone. There is no hint of a fortepiano's clavicinian twang to draw us close.

String Quartet in F Major Op. 59 #1 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

There are so many ideas to play out that they are continually turning sharply to the side. Finding oneself back at a prior idea is like suddenly coming upon a room one had left some time ago by another door. How did I get back here?

Prelude in C-sharp minor Op. 45 - Chopin - Alfred Cortot [on 11/4/1949]

Eyes fixed dead ahead, inexorable in a focused, lyrical way.

Symphony in D minor (#4) Op. 120 - Schumann - Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, John Eliot Gardiner

A set of modest-sized orchestra pieces, thematically linked, masquerading as a symphony. This is one of those pieces that really shouldn't work as well as it so fabulously does. JEG and crew give a spirited performance.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 7, 2016
Banned Telepath 45 Seattle 160307
Banned Telepath 45 Somerville 160307
Banned Rehearsal 906 160307 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, and Neal Kosály-Meyer, in Seattle; and Aaron Keyt, in Somerville

March 10, 2016

Stadium Theater, Jerseyville, IL

Something of Mine - Vocal, Tambourine, and Acoustic Guitar Tracks - Your Mother Should Know (as St. Rage), Karen Eisenbrey and Neal Kosály-Meyer

Unfortunately there were technical difficulties with the guitar tracks, so we'll need to do those over.

Jerseyville Illinois - demo - Your Mother Should Know, Neal Kosály-Meyer, guitar and vocals

As I was starting to break down the recording equipment Neal informs us that he has a new song. I hastily put everything back and end up with a splendid acoustic demo, celebrating the very nearly random city of Jerseyville, Illinois.

An Exchange - Part the Last

Several months ago Neal and I exchanged emails about Cage. The previous installment can be found in my post of November 7, 2015. Here I choose to bring it to a close. The part of the Bard is played by me, Neal is the Wizard.

Bardic non-sequitur

What if . . .

The variety we perceive is real?

And more, that such coherence as we find is entirely of our own construction?

God creates, consciousness invents what God has always been creating.

The bard awaits the wizard’s response.

Wizard, after long distraction, after having re-read that whole thread, attempts response.

What if . . .

The variety we perceive is real?    If the variety we perceive is real, then our organs of perception must be instruments suited to their tasks.   Must admit, not certain about the origins of this what if, as I don't recall ever stating that variety is an illusion, nor do I think Cage ever said or implied anything like that.    Returning to the "child who says I love you" exchange above, what is real is that as subjects we alternate between separateness and union with our world and also with its separable components.   To thicken the plot, we probably tend to get stuck in one or the other swing of that pendulum.   The General Neurosis might be described as human beings getting stuck in separateness.   Perhaps the mystic ideal of eschewing separateness and achieving some permanent unitive state is equally neurotic.   Feels to me that letting the pendulum swing, and remembering the other end of the swing even when we're at the opposite pole--that would be optimal.

And more, that such coherence as we find is entirely of our own construction?    

Presumably "our" means "human beings' "?    That presumes a fundamental separation between us and everything else that I don't accept, or rather, again, that constitutes the General Neurosis, that thing out of which I would like to find a way.   To accept this "what if " would seem to entail seeing that separation as normal (i.e. NOT pathological, i.e., NOT the General Neurosis).   So it's a very hard "what if" for me to accept, and very hard for me to see a way that I could accept it without enormous sadness and resignation.   It feels less like accepting the situation as normal, and more like accepting that there is no way out of a terrible cage.

God creates, consciousness invents what God has always been creating.     

Curious as to how you would define the distinction between creation and invention here.   Feels to me like your formulation would imply that God and consciousness are one and the same.   I am trying of late to figure out what a non-hierarchical theology would be--an anarchical theology.   The notion of consciousness as something that is not the exclusive privilege of humans feels like a crucial part of that figuring.   So--accepting that our consciousness feels mostly like a different thing than that experienced by the non-human beings, what if that feeling is simply a pole of the pendulum's swing, and that on the other pole that differentness dissolves, though re-differentiating once more on the next swing.    Is consciousness the same thing as creating--primal creating--as listening is primal composition?    The doors of perception seem hereby to be transmuted into the doors of invention:   is this the cleansing Blake foretold, allowing us to see all things as they are, infinite?

The bard awaits the wizard’s response.

wizard out.

Playlist

Live

My journal notes from Salon

March 4, 2016
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle (guest host: James (Jim) Holt)

Jeremiah Lawson - Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp Major (acoustic guitar)

Part of what an instrument is is the relation between the size of its box and the intricacy of its articulatory potential.

Nicole Truesdell - Western States Pictorial and Crossing Parallel Lines (piano and toy piano)

Within the hesitations (between phrases, between lines, between instruments) a lively voice plays hide and seek.

Sean Osborn - selection from Four Moods for Two Bass Clarinets

Delightful play on how many of anything we might count that there are, drifting at last into the realm of the unnumbered.

Neil Welch and Marcin Pączkowski

Saxojalopies galumphing downhill at high speed, parts flying in all directions. Eloquent craziness.

Altogether another fabulous night at Seattle Composers' Salon, every piece a delight.

Recorded

February 28, 2016
Good For Northin' Joe - Lena Horne [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Lena takes great care with the progress of her vowels, active to the end.

The Frim Fram Sauce - Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, with Billy Butterfield, George Koenig, Bill Stegmeyer, Jack Greenberg, Artie Drelinger, Milton Chatz, Joe Bushkin, Danny Perri, Harman 'Trigger' Alpert, Cozy Cole [from Louis Armstrong and Guest Stars]

Almost in stripper tempo, the lyrics are an excuse for a couple of vocal show-offs.

Let Your Daddy Ride - John Lee Hooker [from The Legendary Modern Recordings 1948-1954]

All the sound is stuck tight to a chunky driving beat, like rust on an old spike.

I Wanna Play House With You - Elvis Presley [from First Live Recordings]

He leans his voice out over the top of the beat, the shoulders of it are out in front, pushed from below.

The Wanderer - Dion [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

There is hardly a bit of sound in this mix that wouldn't be perfectly clear on a cheap transistor radio.

? and The Mysterians

96 Tears - ? and the Mysterians [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

? rides his voice from high in the back of the mouth, rolling up over the top.

Trans (Uraufführung) - Stockhausen - Sinfonie-Orchester des Südwestfunks, Ernest Bour

Choirs of instruments gnawing at the core, avoiding the Loom Monster and the Stompers - all the hazards of a gnawer's life. Something huge spins beneath the surface. Now briefly we are outside, where the spinning can't be felt (but still the Monster looms). The gnawing is getting somewhere.

At the end there are episodes of silence in the score and applause (and boobirds?) erupt into it, followed by shushushushing. As these episodes recur the shushing and the applause and boobirds play a social (or anti) coercion game with each other. I love how suddenly the music is in a room with people, people with attitudes.

Didjeridervish - 1976 - Stuart Dempster [from In the Great Abbey of Clement VI]

Stu is the larynx, the abbey is the giant's mouth, a sounding organ.

Elephant Talk - King Crimson [from Discipline]

Prog Rock, the music that arose when the musicians started hanging with the guys in the booth.

Three Rhapsodies - Elaine Barkin - Sue-Ellen Hershmann-Tcherepnin, Susan Gall, Ian Greitzer [from Open Space 16]

A wire sculpture, huge as an ocean liner, in which we the life-raft wander, weightless, narrowly lit.

March 1, 2016
Three2 - Cage - Greg Campbell, Dale Speicher, Denali Williams [from Seattle Percussion Collective]

A score is a lens of/for people's proclivities, a wedge prying open a space for use.

Sonic Brilliance 13 - [February 1996 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Holden K, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Kia M]

In the 90's we had small children, and Sonic Brilliance was their improv session before the adults did their thing.

Your 3 Minute Mardi Gras - Christopher DeLaurenti

There is more than an undercurrent of violence in this sound. Breathless staccato jabbing.

Stormy - The Invisible Eyes [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

The surface has been scraped, roughened, smeared - just so.

Steps - Joan Tower - Melvin Chen [from Milton Babbitt: a Composers' Memorial]

Restless birds roost and rise across the marsh. The camera pans slowly.

Amy - Amy Denio [recording of her presentation at Seattle Composers' Salon of January 2016]

Her pieces: Three Times Seventeen Equals Fifty One and Recipe for Disaster. Complete with the introduction and questions. Even more fun the second time around.

March 3, 2016
Se tu fuggi, io non resto - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

We are not the speaker who does not rest, we are the attempt to flee.

Ich bin in mir vergnügt BWV 204 - J.S. Bach - Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, Helmut Rilling

The artificiality of the operatic model (recitatives and arias, etc.) is a firm bind, subtle pushes against its constraints tell more than they would in a less conventional style. Some truly fancy singing.

Keyboard Sonata in A Major Wq. 54.6 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

Plain Jane configurations spoiled, almost perverted,  in interesting ways. The parts of sequences diverge subtly.

Quartet in F Major Op. 17 #2 Hob. III:26 - Haydn - Tatrai Quartet

Insurrection slipping unseen between the gaps.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 28, 2016
Autoheterophony 160228 We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder - Keith Eisenbrey

Fourth in this series, exploring the songs I learned in church as a kid.

February 29, 2016
Gradus 285 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

February 20, 2016

Rambunctious 2.0 - Spectrum Dance Theater - Cornish Playhouse, Seattle
Simple Measures: Brittany Boulding, violin; Liza Zurlinden, violin; Mara Gearman, viola; Rajan Krishnaswami, cello and artistic director; Judith Cohen, piano

At the Octoroon Balls - String Quartet No. 1 - Wynton Marsalis
Layered Text Samples - Pamela Z
Spirit Songs for Cello and Piano - T.J. Anderson
And the Movement of the Tongue for String Quartet with tape - Pamela Z

Of course there were dances too, and if, like me, you're interested in finding your way into an understanding with dance, Donald Byrd's SDT is an excellent place to do it. It's difficult for me to understand a theater in which the music is at the service of something else, and so I regret more than I should the compromises deemed necessary to forefront the dance: primarily amplification and the side-staging of the ensemble. Nevertheless, the company uses live music, and for that I am truly grateful.

Wynton Marsalis's String Quartet No. 1 is a hugely sprawling, immensely lyrical work with room to spare for long spun solos and crunchy heterophony - a sure way to my heart these days.

Pamela Z's works both use studio/computer-reassembled collages of text sound, with a sense of humor joyously reminiscent of Charles Amirkhanian and a wonder and poignancy all her own.

T.J. Anderson's Spirit Songs lost the most, I think, for being amplified, and disappeared behind the dance (which, for the record, I thought was superb and moving) more than the other works on the program. I would need to get another crack at it, without distraction, to get a shareable sense of it.

Recorded

RS raises his right eyebrow, I can raise my left!

February 23, 2016
Carmina Burana - Carl Orff - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw, Judith Blegen, Hakan Hagegard, William Brown, Atlanta Boy Choir

Carmina's life as a wildly popular set piece has largely overshadowed its life as a piece of music. It is difficult to hear behind the 10,000 action film previews that have glommed onto it. I like to hear it as a sequence of abutting bits, each bit tempo-ed and metric-ed and timed to a fare-thee-well. Nothing bleeds into what follows, each is a shiny surface, glazed stone. Les Noces it is not, but it ain't hay neither.

I have been told that I am a cousin (of some several degrees and some several removes) of the late Robert Shaw, and I couldn't help feeling a bit of family pride in the clarity of performance and balanced presence of this fabulous recording.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 21, 2016
Autoheterophony 160221 Kum Ba Yah - Keith Eisenbrey

Sunday school songs, camp songs - kiddie hymns. These are my musical beginnings, known even before I knew myself. This project is an attempt to start coming to terms with that more directly. The process is very simple. I sing the song eight times, each successive time while listening to a rough mix of the previous tracks, and each successive time allowing more and more freedom of variation in melody and rhythm. When completed I mix them together, add reverb to suit, and that's it.

February 22, 2016
Banned Telepath 44 Seattle 160222
Banned Telepath 44 Somerville 160222
Banned Rehearsal 905 160222 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer, in Seattle; Aaron Keyt in Somerville

If I were to consider Banned Rehearsal as a goal-oriented project, and to consider where we are now to be nearer that goal than where we started, (both very big fat ifs, each more like an ifsissississimo than a mezzo if), then we are headed to a place where the sound of us is indistinguishable from the sound of people bumping around in a room full of noisy toys. We have become, or perhaps always have been, a complex slow motion rattle.

Playlist

Live

February 18, 2016

Wally Shoup, Greg Campbell, Greg Kelley
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Triangular and biangular alliances, overt and surreptitious. Once the flywheel wheels the flywheel controls. the spinning doohickey looks like something to grace the head of a blue meanie as it begins to blossom. Each of them is a fully formed chamber ensemble in his own sound, together they are a dense trio of ensembles. I was exhausted and almost didn't get there, but I'm awful glad we pulled it together.

Wally and I go back a long way, having first met in the early '80s at Bard College. He was a visiting performer, and I was a grad student. Here is an old old tape, with Karen, Wally, and me, joined by Karen's dad Bill Meyer, who dropped by and picked up a bugle.

Recorded

February 15, 2016
Alexander's Ragtime Band - Collins and Harlan [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Raggin' The Scale - Fred Van Eps [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Trois Petite Pieces Montees - Satie - Ensemble "Die Reihe", Friedrich Cerha

Nothing exists but what is allowed, the transcendent other has evaporated into the never was.

Lamb's Blood Has Washed Me Clean - Rev. F. W. McGee Jubilee Singers [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]
Carinosa - Django Reinhardt [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

In Session at Tintinabulary

February 14, 2016
Autoheterophony 160214 This Little Light Of Mine - Keith Eisenbrey

My second foray into a hymnody project. No mystery how it is done: I record myself singing the song 8 times, allowing wild variations and harmony. Mix and play with the reverb to suit. Post.

February 15, 2016
Gradus 284 160215 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

What can be revealed by narrow predictability? What is obscured by a more brightly lit variety?

How is the obligation to be present to an utterance more pressing than the obligation to be present to one's self?

Our naked feeble grip grasps sentinal notes.

Playlist

Recorded

February 11, 2016
Prelude in C-sharp minor Op. 45 - Chopin - Claudio Arrau

A song washing away in the rain.

Symphony in D minor Op. 120 - Schumann - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Wilhelm Furtwängler

This is no polite, avuncular Schumann. This dude's out for blood, and we are caught circling through his mansion.

Busoni, working on virtuoso hair from the get go

Variations on "Kommt ein Vogel geflogen K422" - Busoni - Harden Wolf

A demonstration of the state-of-the-art science of keyboard configuration. The melody always appears clearly, as in some sophisticated version of elf-on-the-shelf.

Six Quartets Op. 112 - Brahms - Gächinger Kantorei, Helmut Rilling

Even as these tail off in successive miniaturization, they become more densely packed. One imagines them finally squeezing through a needle's eye and becoming a Webern part-song a decade or two hence.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 6, 2016
Autoheterophony 160206 Jesus Loves Me - Keith Eisenbrey

I've been thinking about the background influences of my musical thinking, the musics from which I was never entirely weaned. My first inclination was to go for the oldest hymns I could find, in one of the host of old hymnals that seem to find me, but decided instead to start with those that, personally, go back the furthest. This is the first foray.

February 8, 2016

Banned Telepath 43 Seattle 160208
Banned Telepath 43 Somerville 160208
Banned Rehearsal 904 160208 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, and Steve Kennedy, in Seattle; and Aaron Keyt in Somerville

Early in Banned Rehearsal history we found ourselves in an argument, played out in session after session, about whether we were recording improvisations or making tapes. Having eventualy lost most of the heavy-handed rhetorical aspects of both camps, the subtle textures of doing both at once, and yet still arguing about it, in session after session, keep me in the room again and again, session after session.

Playlist

Live

January 30, 2016
The Marriage of Figaro - Mozart
Seattle Opera - McCaw Hall

The stage set was cleverly designed, visually attractive, but not so fussy as to be distracting. The most interesting decision was to place Barbarina's cavatina about the pin at the edge of the stage, in front of the tall woodish panel wall that served as a curtain. Like setting Christ on a mountaintop, it forces attention: this is what it is all about - a lost trifle. Ironic, poignant, barbed. Something like the effect of the Holy Fool's plaint anchoring Boris Godunov.

Recorded

January 31, 2016
Merce grido piangendo - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

Utterance is never simple, always at least a skein. The co-sounding harmonies are a metaphor of inflection, of placement of voice within the mouth. That particular upward chromatic shift is an eyebrow raised, a dubious query.

Fürchte dich nicht, ich bin bei dir BWV 228 - J.S. Bach - Concentus Musicus Wien, Bachchor Stockholm, Nikolaus Harnoncourt

The actual earth has dropped down half a frame and we hear the angelic chorale floating above. Meanwhile we mortals go chugging about our business.

Keyboard sonata in F Wq. 54 #1 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

Single notes poke in here and there, laugh-in style. Toward the end of the 1st movement the harmony slows to an almost Beethovenian stillness.

Quartet in E op. 17 #1 Hob. III:25 - Haydn - Tatrai Quartet

A thought experiment: extract just the resolutions of each cadence and play only those, in sequence, in time. Then ask what the shape of each preceding and succeeding phrase does to change the sense of how that cadence sounds.

February 3, 2016
String Quartet in D K. 499 - Mozart - Juilliard String Quartet

It is lucid even when it gets gnarly.

February 4, 2016
String Quartet in F op. 59 #1 (#7) - Beethoven - Budapest Quartet

Entering the dark, overwhelming.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 1, 2016
Gradus 283 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

February 2, 2016
Ivan Arteaga and Keith Eisenbrey 160202 A
Ivan Arteaga and Keith Eisenbrey 160202 B
Ivan Arteaga and Keith Eisenbrey 160202 C

Ivan brought his alto sax and clarinet over to meet my piano. I for my part had a blast.