Playlist

Recorded

June 11, 2011
One: Three: Text - Benjamin Boretz

This is the recording on the Open Space disk. Although it is in fact the same session as the recording that Ben had sent me on tape back in 1985, called there Three: for Keith 1: text, they are given different dates. The instant recording is dated 1/31, the other is labeled 1/30. This is the first time I listened to them more or less back to back.

June 12, 2011
Banned Rehearsal 219 - Banned Rehearsal

Chock full of wee incidental sounds - moving, setting down, picking up, sneezing, shifting. The playing proceeds best in staccato plosives. It doesn't quite manage to hold concentration the full 45 minutes.

PCKE 000227 - Pete Comley, Keith Eisenbrey

Pete and I play bells and gongs.

Banned Rehearsal 679 - Banned Rehearsal

Steven Kennedy joins Karen, Neal, and me on a session full of guitars and amplifiers accumulating noise and color within a remarkable panmetric groove.

Figure Study 2 - Keith Eisenbrey

This is part of a project to explore and build a sense of keyboard figuration improvisationally from the bottom up. Attempting singularities and finding sequence, steering between a structural sense of form-making and sheer sensuality. Considering that, perhaps, the well-shaping of a sequence does not necessarily produce a sequence of well-shaped moments, that if the well-shaping of moments is given its due the sequence shape will take care of itself.

 June 13, 2011
Red Man Blues - Piron's New Orleans Orchestra
Bessie Couldn't Help It - Louis Armstrong and His Orchestra

I am curious how this recording was engineered as to the balance between sax choir and trumpet - did he muffle them? put them in a box to record?

I Am the True Vine - Rev. Gary Davis

From another great collection: Goodbye Babylon

June 14, 2011
Boog-It - Louis Armstrong, The Mills Brothers, Norman Brown
Alexander's Ragtime Band - Irving Berlin - Bunk Johnston
I Hadn't Anyone 'Til You - Earl Hines

June 16, 2011
The Wayward - U.S. Highball - Harry Partch

Snapshots of journeying with wordplay.

The End - Allen Ginsberg
Passio et mors domini nostri Jesu Chrisi secundum Lucam - Penderecki

At its best in its compositional imitation of the acoustic effects of cathedral architecture. I find the final big chord a disappointment. All that work and all we get is a triad ex machina?

Live

June 11, 2011
Festival de Musique - University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle
Organ Recital, featuring Stanislav Surin, Zuzana Zahradnikova, David di Fiore

Concerto in a BWV 593 (after Vivaldi) - J.S. Bach - Stanislav Surin
Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, BWV 771 - J.S. Bach - Stanislav Surin
Sonata No. 1 in d - Final - Alexandre Guilmant - Stanislav Surin

O Mensch, bewein dein Sunde Gross, BWV 622 - J.S. Bach - Zuzana Zahradnikova
Offertory on  "o fili" - Alexandre Guilmant - Zuzana Zahradnikova
March funebre et Chant seraphique - Alexandre Guilmant - Zuzana Zahradnikova

A Suite of Dances - Anonymous 16th Century - David di Fiore
Sonata on the 94th Psalm - Julius Reubke - David di Fiore
Come Sunday - Duke Ellington - David di Fiore
Etude No. 5 in c-sharp - Jeanne Demessieux - David di Fiore

This festival, at the church of which I am a member, stretched over three days. The evening prior was a choral concert in which I participated in the choir. The next day was a 2 hour service to celebrate David's 40 years of music ministry at the temple - 2 hours o'er-brimming with music. I made a decision early on not to discuss my church-music life in this blog, mostly because, due to its different social and spiritual function, I think about it differently than when I consider the aesthetic aspects of my musical life. Organ recitals, though clearly intended as an aesthetic event, often occupy an odd sort of middle ground for me, especially when presented in a worship space, and because so much of the repertoire was originally designed for worship, or was composed in consideration of the sacred.

But the instrument, when played as beautifully as it was by all concerned, does present some unique challenges to the listener, as well as unique rewards. No solo instrument can match it in dynamic, timbral, or spatial range. And the spatial aspect isn't merely the sense of from which particular direction a sound emanates, it is also and even more strongly the sense that the sounds occupy various regions in the chamber in which we listen, i.e. "That tune didn't come from over there, it is over there". Which is to say that the parts of the music become bodies in the room with us. The musical parts become concrete, other, out there. For me, this is always fascinating, and often disconcerting, almost generating a quasi fight or flight response. When a sound 'comes from' a point in space, I can accept it safely into my ear and allow its workings. When a sound has 'come into the room' with me, I'm never quite sure of my safety.