Playlist

Live

Poised

February 22, 2013
Banned Rehearsal - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Banned Rehearsals 831 and 832

We have played in public, doing more or less what we do, six times now. The first three shows came early and in quick succession: January 18, 1985, (Banned Rehearsal 23 The Fishcritic); July 13, 1985, (Banned Rehearsal 43 A Short and Simple Concert); and January 9, 1986, (Banned Rehearsal 63 Three Compositions No Breaks, with Sudden Songs); all at Brechemin Auditorium in the UW School of Music. Another 10 years passed before the next two performances: March 27, 1996 (Banned Rehearsals 418 and 419 at Speakeasy Cafe in Belltown, Seattle); and January 11, 1997 (Banned Rehearsal 440, back at Brechemin).

Last evening's performance in the Chapel, a wonderful space with a fabulous wooden floor, felt really good. We enjoyed bringing some of our noisemakers to a new acoustic, and we look forward to playing out again soon.

Recorded

February 16, 2013
That Was The Year That Was - Tom Lehrer

"We'll try to stay serene and calm / When Alabama gets the bomb!"

February 17, 2013
Banned Sectional 1 AKNWM - (May 1985, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer)

Two pianos recorded on a boombox in a practice room at the UW. Every time a loud sound is produced the compressor in the box pulls the input levels way down. Every time there is a lull the compressor allows the input, with its ominous 60-cycle hum, to fill the vacancy. It turns the resulting tape into a theater of desperation: sound must be made or this space will be fill with choking hum.

PCKEE 001111 (my recording) - Pete Comley, Keith Eisenbrey

Last week I listened to Pete's recording - this is my recording of the first 20 minutes of the same session. Comes across as though it were a room.

Banned Rehearsal 590 - (November 2000, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Isabel Kosály-Meyer, Neal Meyer)

This tape takes its time finding a focus. After about 10 or 15 minutes it is solid.

February 18, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 591 - (December 2000, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Isabel Kosály-Meyer, Neal Meyer)

Delicate and transparent from the start, emphasizing metallics: bells, wires, cans, lids, and tam tam. It remains small thin and slow in ferocious consistency. Built nearly entirely of singularities and fixations, scratching only the surface of the quiet.

Februay 19, 2013
14 Songs - Kent Jeppeson
Blood and Fire, Hallelujah! canned bit - Keith Eisenbrey

February 20, 2013
Blood and Fire, Hallelujah! (100914) - Keith Eisenbrey

This was my home test of improvising along with the canned bit. Looking back on the whole project I think that the stuff coming out of the speakers is the strongest and most fully realized part of the piece. The piano improvisation, though it was in the conception from the very start, ends up sounding like an unnecessary add-on. That may be less of a problem in a live performance, where the presence of an actual person on the stage carries its own theatrical weight. As a recorded item though it falls flat.

February 21, 2013
Sonata in F - Sylvius Leopold Weiss - Lutz Kirchhoff
Portals - Carl Ruggles - Buffalo Philharmonic, Michael Tilson Thomas

Mineral homogeneity. Brittle. Cold. Ancient.

Angels (version for trumpets & trombones) - Carl Ruggles - Studio Brass Ensemble

Not monumental - mythic, but not that exactly either. More like the bedrock out of which the myth emerged.

Evocations - Carl Ruggles - John Kirkpatrick

Any pianistic figuration fancier than necessity is brutally eschewed. Its sensuality is pointedly ignored. It is the image of a mechanism evoking music-meaning data, the image of a thing to be analytically considered.

In Session at The Tintinabulary

February 18, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 830 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

This in from Steve: "One member of my little plethora of 'beat slicing' programs made 893 samples out of session 830 in a vain attempt to find a pattern. Ha!"

Later: "heretofore unknown software features department: when our 893 samples were imported into another program a 'groove' created by the beat slicing program generated 192 'patterns' of various subsets of the 893 samples at '70 bpm' which can then be arranged on a timeline."

Cool!

Upcoming

Saturday May 4, 2013 at 8:00 PM
Keith Eisenbrey and Neal Meyer at The Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Music for solo piano:
Eisenbrey: Welcome to my planet. I come in peace.
Meyer: Cage - Solo for Piano