Preface
Texts
Live
March 12, 2026
Seattle Modern Orchestra - Relational Spaces: Immersive Sound
Raisbeck
Auditorium, Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University
Rachel
Reyes, Rachel Yoder, Bonnie Whiting, Cristina Valdés, Michael Nicolella,
Pala Garcia, Jordan Voelker, John Popham, Bryan Kolk, Marcin Paçzkowski
Situation VI - Happenings - Anahita Abbasi
whisper
twisting
metallic
distanced sounds
fragility
extended tech: normativity
the orchestra is for making sounds with
aside from functional hierarchy
Ways of Resisting - Arun Chandra
a world of notes and pitches
and narrative
protest song
from
the rear chorus
(Contro-)Clessidra I-IV - Jérémy Jolley
a creatured place
principled antagonism
negotiating peril
sound
as impact first
street crowd
magma intrusion
might be
undersea
{NB: I'll grossly overstate my impression here, in order to make it clear to myself. Each of the musics presented here is ingredient obsessed, rather than relationally obsessed - as though the idea of composing with pitches related horizontally and vertically (melody and harmony) has been philosophized beyond the pale of immediate attention. It's probably there, but doesn't seem to matter much on any scale. The music becomes a list of sound-events, the more uniquely produced the sounds are the better they frustrate attention as to how their particular qualities construct anything with anything outside of their sounding moment. I'll cop to being a pitch-happy post-Fuxian curmudgeon on this point, so as to out my bias. That said, these pieces were all quite interesting, and Jérémy's piece in particular was ambitious and impressive, clearly a work upon which great pains were taken. And of course everything was played superbly.}
Recorded
 |
| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Sonata in F Major, Kk. 316 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
novelty ex nihilo
little fancinesses
playfully secreted
Bunte Blätter: Albumblätter, Op. 99 #5 - Robert Schumann - Florian Uhlig
a doodley grotesquery
Album d'un voyageur, S. 156/R. 8, Book I, "Impressions et Poesies": I. Lyon - Franz Liszt - Ashley Wass
grandeur and ceremony
the regiments pass in review
closeups of the
faces
of the regimented marchers
furious acclamation
hats
and kerchiefs waved aloft
what about Lyon
was so warlike?
or
was it an imagined history
on the flickering ear
from a
dreamy age
4 Piéces: III Nuances, Op. 56 #3 - Alexander Scriabin - Dmitri Alexeev
polymetric
within interwoven measures
polymeter
where the notes all line up
and pulse is clear
Slow and Easy Man - Bessie Smith [from Empty Bed Blues]
unconditional devotion
Rock Island Line - Stan Freberg [from The Very Best of Stan Freberg]
producer character
master heckler
...it matters to the sheep
How About Me? - Ella Fitzgerald [from Love Songs: The Best of the Verve Song Book]
she sings with steady strength
through to the end of the last word
of every breath
It Could Happen To You - Bill Evans [from Some Other Time / The Lost Session from the Black Forest]
on a rhythm trip
playful coda
Harmony - Elton John [from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road]
the story doesn't need to make sense
best if it doesn't
big finish for the big album
Because The Night Belong to Lovers - Bruce Springsteen [from Live at the Roxy]
nothing doing
not worth doing
over and over
up a key
Little Red Corvette - Prince [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
sex braggart at heart
Dream of Life - Patti Smith [from Patti Smith]
greeting card poem speaking
 |
| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Parts - Fastbacks [from Zucker]
let's pretend
we're
the power
of the sounds we make
and not
the amplifier sales force
To Have And Not To Hold - Madonna [from Ray of Light]
holding her pitches close together
tight groups
narrow ambitus
gets skippy for the second stanza type
repeat last line
to signal transition
to the third stanza
type
and coda feeling?
fall into the accompaniment to fade
Holdin' On - Aretha Franklin [from So Damn Happy]
introduction
to the regions of her tessitura
exhortation
Jericho - Peter Fedofsky [from Situtations]
room sound mismatch
seams show
they are holograms to each other
Measures - The Botherations [from The Botherations]
voice
as an attitude mask
through which to speak
from
beneath
Chase Music - Tom Swafford [from Violin Improvisations]
theater of the bow
amplifier of gesture
the plot might be anything
just so
that the gestural theater comes
alive
Soundform - S. Eric Scribner [from Adjacencies]
the membrane
between the mechanically made sounds
and the
electronically made sounds
and its billows and swells
like
but unlike
that membrane
between the varieties of
mechanically made sounds
not just
another kind of instrument
but
another kind of soundboard
indirect mechanism
The Boy in The Boat - Charlie Johnson's Paradise 10 [from Really The Blues]
Mickey Mouse sound track
without the Mickey Mouse picture show
Betty Boop pursed lips
visible
in the sound of the horns
Workin' For The Man - Roy Orbison [from For The Lonely]
somewhere in the vicinity of icky peculiar
Karen Tape Track 2 - Karen Meyer, Marilyn Meyer, Neal Meyer, William Meyer, Yvonne Meyer [August, 1963]
Karen is heard having a bath
on the faraway island
nine days old
sister
eating that sugar
off the floor
in her bare
feet
 |
| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
that astonishing touch
dance with firm steps
Take Me To The Mardi Gras - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]
twangy and humid
with street band
White Lines (Don't Do It) - Grandmaster and Melle Mel [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
it's all drums
If It Ain't Ruff - N.W.A. [from Straight Outta Compton]
syllable drumming
Miracle Goodnight - David Bowie [from Black Tie White Noise]
a little tin toy David Bowie
on a carousel
Love Me One More Time - James King [from Bed By The Window]
begging forgiveness
(a primer on how to do it)
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded August 25-27, 2015]
the process of overdubbing
imparts a time fracture
 |
| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Truman - Rachel Harrington [from City of Refuge]
oh
that Truman
the Spirit Lake Truman
of course
Track 3 - Pouch [recorded live at Victory Lounge, Seattle, July 6, 2013]
conforming to
and sticking with
a common beat
is a social
activity
an image of agreement and unanimity
The Mother - Brandi Carlyle [from By The Way, I Forgive You]
human interest
feel good story
Windham - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [october 22, 2023]
distance and respect
Viola Lee Blues - Cannon's Jug Stompers [from Really The Blues]
sing away at ones troubles
in good company
porch comfort
Looking For A Boy - Sarah Vaughan [from Sarah Vaughan Sings George Gershwin]
introducing herself
to the theater audience
through her
predicament
banal
but cleverly spoken
One After 909 (complete) - The Beatles [from Anthology]
part of the fun
is in the economy of the language
Call Me Lightning - The Who [from Magic Bus]
either this was poorly transferred at some point
or the recorded sound
was always just atrocious
muddy and unstable and distant
Forever Young - Bob Dylan [from Biograph]
blessings upon
Variations on a Theme of Carter - Ira Taxin - Claudia Stevens
dramatic pianism
Beyond The Wheel - Soundgarden [from Ultramega OK]
camp horror show
Cold Mountain Songs: Dark and Eery - Robert Morris - Margaret Kampmeier, Deborah Norin-Kuehn [from Open Space 30]
nothing adheres here
images all unstuck
Oh Yes - Whitney Houston [from My Love Is Your Love]
counting the ways she flatters him
sultry like and all
Splashing 2 - Greg Sinibaldi [from Nuclear Frog Pond]
a contrapuntal poem
in notes
that suit their instruments
Kill Kill Kill - Antique Scream [from Antique Scream]
on the metal end of things
camp masculinity
Banned From The Fest - Jaguar Shark [from Red Vinyl split w/ Peterman]
must have been recorded live
certainly all at once
 |
| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Comin' On/For Bradford - Taylor Ho Bynum, Mark Dresser [from THB Bootlegs Volume 4]
this meter is a gardens
with paths
and arbors
and hills
and arching footbridges
painted red
Lightness and Endearment - Tom Baker Quartet [from Begin Again]
out for a pleasant stroll
congenial companions
Christ, The Teacher - Rev. E. S. (Shy) Moore [from Goodbye, Babylon]
not sung
not spoken
proclamated
cried
song follows
to bring us
to a celebration
of the
proclamation
Chinese Love Poems - Peggy Lee [from Sea Shells]
this album
is like an assortment of books
and knick-knacks
in a guest bedroom
of a summer house
Don't Say Goodnight and Mean Goodbye - The Shirelles [from The Shirelles Anthology]
under the porchlight
New Orleans - The Kingsmen [from The Very Best of The Kingsmen]
surfing the big muddy
Toucher - Vinko Golbukar [from Perishable Structures]
talking with ones drums
a quasi gestural communication
Variation - Joel Chadabe - Claudia Stevens
with each splash
a significant point
to pull
or manipulate
it from
a control handle
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - U2 [from Rattle and Hum]
self produced triumph album
in service of adulation fantasy
borrowed gospel glory
Berceuse from The Firebird - Empire Brass Quintet [from Class Brass On The Edge]
the difficulty of arranging this for brass
is calibrating the respective
weights of the lines
Hungarianella - Brave Combo [from Box of Ghosts]
music from the exotic near distance
P.R. - Goodness [from Goodness: 1995-1998]
discipline erupts out of preparation
exit by spaceship
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night (050510 Final) - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [recorded May 10, 2005]
using a systematic relation of vertical intervals to metrical position
 |
| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
the attraction of a novel twist
fades upon cyclic repetition
the
idea is
to erase any time sense
outside of the time sense
persisting
within the song
the walls are close
Bounton Elks - Peterman [from Red Vinyl split w/ Jaguar Shark]
epistle in rhyme
awakening
scrawl poem
On The Stone Pitch - Josef K [from Found On The Stone Path]
why do I mistrust this magic?
something canned about the chords
why would revelation
sound like something familiar
used
familiarly
though spaciously
Liszt's Gretchen's Apotheosis
on a loop
one damned enlightenment after another
light circus
Banned Rehearsal 1086 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [October 23, 2023]
music at a hush
as activities individuate orchestrationally
sounds
slip through instruments
around the room
individuation
coalescing
in waves
the rolling orb asks
and answers
without inquiry
masters of specificity
Weeping Blues - Horsey's Hot 5 [from That Devilin' Tune]
imitates
a performance
of a stage act
blues number
hats and canes and all
Swanny River Rock (Talkin' 'Bout That River) - Ray Charles [from Yes, Indeed!]
great snare drum sound back there
Pigtown Fling - News Tolman [from The Art of Field Recording]
a flute of some sort
fife?
The Ballad of Davy Crocket - Louis Armstrong [from Disney Songs The Satchmo Way]
greatest state in the land, of the free
{NB
note the comma he sneaks in there}
hokey hero
for Mouseketeers
shave and a haircut six bits
Suite for Violin and American Gamelan - Lou Harrison - Boston Modern Orchestra Project
its inexorableness catches up to you
no purchased enlightenment in these
halls
ascend out of earsight
a dance
garden song
with
lute or lyric
another dance
with clomping heels
 |
| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Bleed For Me - Dead Kennedys [from Nancy's Mix]
the target aim of vitriol
blunted
by performative attitude
Euromad - T Bone Burnett [from The Talking Animals]
too much track seclusion
Laroque Gailliarde - The Baltimore Consort [from La Rocque'N'Roll]
polyphonic dance
The Children's Garden - Tingstad & Rubel [from American Acoustic]
wholly idealized village life
from never ever anywherever
Hobbit
happiness
Track 7 [from Eisenbrey 2003]
flute and two strings
play variations on a theme by Mozart
violin
and viola if I mistake not
there's the minore obbligatore
Broken-Hearted Girl - Beyoncé [from I Am...Sasha Fierce]
the singer persona
is trapped in a Möbius mood
Hey Yesterday/Love Blackmail - Your Mother Should Know [recorded live at Victory Lounge, July 6, 2013]
thirteen years ago
imagine that!
 |
| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
a performed attitude such as this
is a costume
a put-on character
Selkies - Steve Layton [from No Mind]
an illustrated book of sounds
drawn on the pages made of sounds
we hear
what
we would see
The Mooche - Duke Ellington [from Ken Burns Jazz]
the extremities
of these swoops down
form a melody of themselves
The Hazy Yon - Norman Monash [from Songs of the Pogo]
a lullabyebye
Hora Decubitus - Charles Mingus [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]
groups that breathe as one
a united front of horn blasters
Midnight Hour - ? and The Mysterians [from The Best of ? and The Mysterians]
sex brag to the guys he hangs with
Last 2 Songs - Lockrem Johnson - Keith Eisenbrey, Susan Payne O'Brien [recorded live March 16, 2024]
each includes long stretches of quasi-recitative
nicely sung Susan!
Porcupine - Echo & The Bunnymen [from Porcupine]
secure
as it waddles through the post industrial wasted lands
new song vibe
new teaching
or does its insistence
give away
the game?
You're A Customer - EPMD [from Strictly Business]
rhythm of echoed word bits
meter splash
Concerto in D Major - Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Itzhak Perlman [from The Art of Itzhak Perlman]
peak nostalgia
wishes it were in the back when
with every moment
of its being
Tunebird
in his Tunebird paradise
look Ma
its a cadenza I'm doing
see
I'm doing it
dramatic sweep of moor and sky
ah domestic bliss
begs for tears
we'll finish with a vigorous country dance
shall
we?
like we did
back in the village
and
a triumphal entry
of Tunebird
tweetering away
in
his gilded cage
 |
| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
comes on like its telling us a story
must be a ballad
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night (050510B) - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [recorded May 10, 2005]
this little invention
began with a pattern of coupled fourths
on
the title words
spun a tune out from it
and amused myself
with making a bass line
out of a two-voiced accompaniment
Ring of Fire - Vince Mira [from The Cash Cabin Sessions]
such a focused voice
there is no waste to it
Track 2 - Old Man Williamson [recorded live at the Victory Lounge, July 6, 2013]
going for the grizzled
Turn Up The Thermostat - The Bombpops [from Dear Beer]
growing up in suburbia
minor domestic power play
Sinfonia 9 (midi) - Keith Eisenbrey [October 26, 2023]
taking pains with simultaneities
and their intervals
two allowed:
0 and 4
I Heard The Voice Of Jesus Say - Biddleville Quintet [from Really The Blues]
rope strong
tune
of voices
in harmonies
that pull
taut
and support
their brethren
Outta My Mind - Dean Martin [a Rescued Record]
latter day crooner on vinyl
Alabama - John Coltrane [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]
solemn words
over a thrumming seethe
we turn back to each other
but our thoughts are drawn back
1983...(A Merman I Should Turn To Be) - The Jimi Hendrix Experience [from Electric Ladyland]
were Pink Floyd's Syd and Jimi listening to each other?
 |
| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Liebeslied - Benjamin Boretz - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded October 3, 2024]
study in the relation
between sonorous continuity
and rhetorical
continuity
that is
the connections of sound to sound
and
sense to sense
Symphony #5 - "Mt. Saint Helens" - Alan Hovhannes - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz
formerly admired
for its elegant symmetry
so
we'll have ten
minutes of stepwise glow
best to recall what is depicted
rather
than the qualities of its depiction
and here's Spirit Lake
all done up
like a calligraphied and
illustrated poem
moodism
the problematics
of a depicted mood
are
in how to escape
and now
the moment we've all been waiting
for the big bang itself
martial kettle drums
and billows of ashen tam tams
exhausting iteself
and we view the picturesque aftermath
new life dancing wigglingly
then we'll sing a dull hymn
Just Rhymin' With Biz (feat. Biz Markle) - Big Daddy Kane [from Long Live The Kane]
and playing with an echo
turn on the beta (max?)
Ride On, King Jesus - Robert Shaw Festival Singers [from Amazing Grace]
closely canoned
Liberation - Outkast [from Aquemini]
sung not rapped
choral harmonies
followed by a prose poem
 |
| Skyline Trail, Mt. Rainier National Park |
Construction 4 - Christian Asplund [from Brainstun]
a spell
on softly bowed strings
bass and viola?
Raga Kirwani - Keharwa/Cha Cha Cha To Ny Mozambique - Anjuman [from Rumba Meets Raga]
pitch set cyclic
position within the cycle
is the sine qua non of
intelligibility
the cycle
ever circles
a decorated cup rim
an ornamented border
articulating a boundary
Grown Up Things - Shelby Earl [from Swift Arrows]
heart to heart
big cycles of little cycles
In My Mouth - Black Dresses [from Wasteisolation]
file corruption
not all there
Long Ago And Oh So Far Away - Star Anna [from Love Shades, streamed February 14, 2023]
the dogs sing in the background
In Session at The Tintinabulary
March 8, 2026
China - Keith Eisenbrey
March 9, 2026
Banned Rehearsal 1146 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy
Drops
Music of Aaron Keyt - Part 2
This collection is composed of two large sets of short pieces: 40 Hymn Arrangements (2019) and Joshua Tree Preludes (2021). I recorded the hymn arrangements on clavichord in 2024, and the preludes on piano in 2022.
recordings of my compositions (and more!) can be found at keitheisenbrey.bandcamp.com - free to download or stream
