Playlist

Live

October 27, 2012
Fidelio - Beethoven
Seattle Opera - McCaw Hall, Seattle

In his greatest operas Mozart crafted the acts into effortless and graceful key sequences. Beethoven worked hard at it and wants you to know in your bowels that he did. Graceful they are not, but they stick.

November 2, 2012
John Olson and David Abel
Open Books, Seattle

First, an apology to Seattle Composers Salon for my absence, but I was just down the street at Open Books to hear my Portland friend David Abel read.

Seattle-based writer John Olson is new to me. Poems of plangent lists veering wildly. Hold tight to the headrhymes, pa'dner, or you'll be cogbrain splatter. One poem was about beans, or it was by the ending.

David and I met 30 years ago in the Barrytown area of New York state. His recent work explores possibilities of textual collage and systematic progression in ways that are alarmingly similar to how I find myself thinking about pattern confluence in my own composition. Was it something in the water? I look forward to the possibility of a collaboration soon.

David Abel - a few years ago

Recorded

October 28, 2012
12 Poems, op. 35 - Schumann - Ian Partridge, Jennifer Partridge

The first songs are square, almost ordinary. But the progression sinks more quickly and more deeply even than Die Winterreise, and into a far more personally anguished place.

O Lieb, so lang du lieben kannst - Liszt - Thomas Quasthoff, Justus Zeyen

In Session at The Tintinabulary

October 29, 2012
Gradus 216 - Neal Meyer

Tone blossoms: the gradual focusing of a pitch event into its resonant location, operating as a virtual crescendo.