Playlist

Recorded

December 23, 2014

Annandale-on-Hudson, New York - 1983

Symphony in C Op. 32 - Rimsky-Korsakov - Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järve

Strings of noodled notes for cumulations of combinations. Old-fashioned contrapuntal framework, all motives have clear provenance, no idea not plain to the ear. If the Italian sun were ice.

Lyric Suite - Grieg - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

Operatic or cinematic scenes, always something is hidden. The music it is is never quite the music played. Empty and dark at the center, veering to the side.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 22, 2014
Banned Telepath 26 141222 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosàly-Meyer
Banned Telepath 26 141222 Somerville - Aaron Keyt
Banned Rehearsal 876 141222 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosàly-Meyer

Once again we improvise through the telepathic night.

Playlist

Live

December 13, 2014

Finnegans Wake
James Joyce
Part I, Chapter 1

Staging conceived, directed and performed by Neal Kosály-Meyer
Sets and props by Sarah Colburn
Sound by Jake Thompson
Liturgical vestment by Karen Eisenbrey
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

dark in the consciousness of dreaming

light flashes but does not shine, illuminates but remains

dark, illucid

the negative space of words imploding into the negative space of words

the spoken text unspooling into the dark consciousness of dreaming

the flashlight pointing blindly all over nowhere

relic-book of the oneiropticon wheel

spun unspooled despoiled 

in the dark remains

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 15, 2014
Gradus 256 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Nothing silences a sound quite like its repetition.

December 16, 2014
Huge Guy In The Mosh Pit - St. Rage (Karen Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer)

My amazing spouse has a short story coming out in January as one of Pankhearst Collective's Singles Club. The story features a high school garage rock band called St. Rage, in honor of a local business sign with a burned out letter. What is a rock band without songs? And if you already have a rock band, why would you not record it? So here is Your Mother Should Know posing as St. Rage, recording in our actual garage.

Playlist

Recorded

December 9, 2014
Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Händel op. 24  - Brahms - Julius Katchen

Play of plies, focus flipping through the registers. Old-fangled framework control.

Fantasy and Fugue on the Theme B-A-C-H - Liszt - Alfred Brendel

Ambiguous fragments in both pitch meaning and time span meaning. Fantasy and fugue have it out in turns and fits.

Marche Slav - Tchaikovsky - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner

Non-ironic Nationalism. Soldiering glorified, like a sonic mock battle.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 7, 2014
Zuckermann 141207 - Keith Eisenbrey

gluing the soundboard - 1985

You wouldn't think such a quiet instrument could make so much noise.

December 8, 2014
Banned Telepath 25 141208 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy
Banned Telepath 25 141208 Somerville - Aaron Keyt
Banned Rehearsal 875 141208 - all of the above

Steve was having a grand time with the washtub bass. We all work to find our putterer nature.

Playlist

Live

December 5, 2014
Triptet - minus one plus two
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Tom Baker, Greg Campbell, Stu Dempster, William O. Smith

Objects do not enter space. We near their orbits. Ellipses in ellipses. Terrain adheres to the radius. Nearing, particulars accelerate. Orbits enclose, embrace.

Recorded

December 1, 2014

Fungus on Trail of Shadows - Mt. Rainier National Park

Nocturne Op. 15 #2 - Chopin - Alfred Cortot

Filigree with aspirations to be the whole show, a separate music sufficient unto itself, foreshadows and aftshadows, drama and regret, unleashing itself recklessly in the middle parts as though it were a drug of beguilement and forgetfulness.

Symphony in B-flat "Spring" Op. 38 - Schumann - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein

Although the recording suffers somewhat from too much compression, sacrificing dynamic drama for the benefit of hearing the colors of the inner parts, it is still a lively and bright performance. I might argue for more subtly paced accents - goosing us every time gets old fast.

December 2, 2014
Die Walküre Act II - Wagner - Orchestra & Chorus of La Scala Opera, Wilhelm Furtwängler

Myth in the act of re-mythologizing itself, telling its own tale inside of itself. Seigmund's not buying it.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 30, 2014
Transverse Flute 141130 - Keith Eisenbrey

I improvised on a bamboo flute that I picked up at a street fair several years ago. Instead of 'folding' the resulting file in the way I have been (layering the second half of the session on top of the first) I stacked the whole file on top of itself 20 times, offset by 3 seconds each.

December 4, 2014
J - Keith Eisenbrey

I've been working on getting a good home recording of J for several weeks. I think I may have finally got it pretty close to what I want. When I performed it at Salon last month I mentioned also wanting to record it with the dampers lifted throughout, so I did.

Playlist

Recorded

November 23, 2014

First Burroughs - Mt. Rainier National Park - September 2014

Tu m'uccidi, o crudele - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

The second statement of anything turns empty, bitter, dry.

Konzert in D BWV 1050 - J. S. Bach - Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer

A nicely balanced recording mostly, with no part artificially pushed to the front so that there exists a reasonable stratification both of instrumental timbres and dynamics. As a happy result, we journey down into the harpsichord's realm at the solo instead of having it dumped on our heads.

Symphony in D (#15) - Haydn - The Hanover Band, Roy Goodman

This opens with what would later have been a middle movement. I love the fluid concept of what a symphony could be made of in those early days, and of how it could hang together, or not, as occasions suggest.

Symphony in D minor K74c(118) - Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood

For example, this single movement "symphony" to an oratorio . . .

Sonata in A flat Op. 26 - Beethoven - Artur Schnabel

Variations that proceed by pulling back to reveal that we have held still. Each variation is of a goodly heft. Consequently the Scherzo comes across as about the same size as one of them, the Funeral March as about that same size as three of them, in A B A immobility, and the Finale likewise: about that size.

November 25, 2014
Symphony in C (String Symphony #1) - Mendelssohn - English Bach Festival Orchestra, William Boughton

Mukilteo, Washington - November 2014

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 23, 2014
Takemine 141123 - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on one of my brother's acoustic steel string guitars, on long term loan at the Tintinabulary.

November 24, 2014
Banned Telepath 24 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy
Banned Telepath 24 Somerville - Aaron Keyt
Banned Rehearsal 874 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

In the old days when when we made a telepath we had to wait for the cassette to be mailed or brought back from parts afar. Now the distant bits are in my email the next morning.

November 27, 2014
Chickens 141127 - Keith Eisenbrey

At another brother's house for Thanksgiving, I made this short recording of their four chickens clucking and erupting.

Playlist

Live

November 15, 2014
Electro-Colors
Seattle Modern Orchestra
Julia Tai, conductor
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Dérive / for six instruments - Boulez
Zeremonie for computer-realized sound - Huck Hodge
Treize couleurs du soleil couchant for five instruments - Tristan Murail
Alêtheia for ensemble - Huck Hodge

I don't like being grumpy about local music, but in spite of magnificent performances all around, and the very welcome opportunity to hear Huck's music again (easily the highlight of the evening), I found myself troubled, oppressed by what I admit is my longstanding and increasing prejudice against certain social modes that cling to concert music in general, and which, as larger performance organizations attempt to juice their image for the hipper set, increasingly pervade our thinking about what counts as worthwhile in new music. For want of a better label these are the modes of professionalism - music as career rather than adventure. Here's the thing: professionalism in musical performance practice demands music with professional qualities. It must be difficult to play. It must be significant. It must be explainable. The risks that such music is allowed are limited. Most importantly it can't risk its own subversion. And so it cranks up the volume of its own pretense until we, and it, are deafened.

November 18, 2014

A Sun Ra Centenary Special Event!
Sun Ra Tribute Band
Jones Playhouse, Seattle

The music seeps in from above and behind. It sets up shop for us, with us, as much a social entity in action as a music. When the visitation is over it seeps back out, into the surroundings among us.

Recorded

November 17, 2014
Then He Kissed Me - Moe Tucker, Sterling Morrison, Sonny Vincent, Don Fleming, John Cale

The best part of this is the intensely weird hollow-in-the-gut left-in-the-lurch emptiness that lingers after the last sound.

The Sentient Insect Variations - Island of Lost Plants - Pete Comley and Dave Fuglewicz

A film from which the visual has been leached away. The plants, or their alien chemistry, are responsible.

November 20, 2014
Namu-Amida-Butsu - Artur Avanesov - Paul Taub and Artur Avanesov

The piano, as a tam-tam, is not, at first, an accompaniment, but a geography in which flute lives.

Talking To A Wall - The Gropers - [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

Just under two minutes long, it is absolutely magnificent for the first minute-and-a-half, then, unfortunately, deflates.

Eco Slab Gong - S. Eric Scribner

A horde of land barnacles on the move. Be very afraid.

Inside the Stinger

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 16, 2014
Silvertone 141116 - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvisation on hollow-body electric guitar, through an amp with spring reverb.

Playlist

Recorded

November 11, 2014
Ramones - Ramones

My first introduction to the Ramones was sometime in 1980 or 'so, in what I recall was one of John Rahn's theory seminars at the UW. Neal had brought some records in to share. My immediate impression, simultaneous to the gutpunch sound, was that of a music stripped down to its structural components, and those stripped down to just enough to count as such. Crank up the volume and voilá! Ramones!

me, ca 1976, without hat

And so I took this opportunity of listening, perhaps for the first time, to the whole of their first album with an ear to just what music-rhetorical devices they allowed themselves. Not surprisingly, there is more here than two chords and the truth. But what did surprise me was, halfway through, as I was registering the intentional distinctness of the various devices - here's a drum solo thing (nothing in the way) :: here's a guitar solo thing (nothing in the way) :: here's a backing vocal thing (nothing in the way) :: etc. - the generally well-timed phraseology of the whole (in ample and unambiguous meter), and the power that can be born of fully inhabiting a narrow affect-space, that there popped in my head another creative musician, from another aesthetic planet entirely, whose piano sonatas especially could be potently described in the same terms: Schubert.

Not where I thought I'd end up when I sat down.

me, ca 1981, with hat

November 13, 2014
Season of Glass - Yoko Ono

Ms Ono is of course not primarily a recording artist. Or rather she is one also, but as an aspect of wider-ranging multi-medial activity. So it is probably a mistake to take Season of Glass at face-value as a pop-music-album-shaped artifact in the same way we might, for instance, take a release by a more commercially oriented singer. In other words, it has the requisite production values, but it goes somewhere askew. The songs are uncomfortable in their clothes, the sentiments just wrong for what one imagines to have been expected or hoped for by the hordes (in terms of a memorial). Instead it hovers oddly in a space between private and public. We wonder, useless, why we are here with this, as she wanders, helpless, in an unchosen public space with us.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 9, 2014
Peavey 141109 - Keith Eisenbrey

The link above will take you to the folded version of this solo improvisation. The instrument is my brother's Peavey solid-body electric guitar, currently on loan at the Tintinabulary. I recorded directly into a Zoom R24.

November 10, 2014
Banned Telepath 23 141110 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer
{Banned Telepath 23 141110 Somerville} - Aaron Keyt
Banned Rehearsal 873 141110 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

The Banned Telepath project began in August of 1984, not quite two months after Banned Rehearsal itself. One weekend Neal was going to be out of town, and rather than have a by-week we decided to make tapes concurrently (more or less) and mix them together later. The project persisted through the 80's during our educationally-induced diaspora. The last telepath before the instant was made in Seattle on December 29, 1989, intended for Banned Rehearsal #200. For one reason or another the far-flung members never got around to making their side. We remain hopeful this will happen someday. In the early days the mixing was done using three tape decks and 2-to-1 patch cords. Lately, as I transferred all my tapes to digital media I was able to re-mix these with an ear to a more balanced result. As we enter another temporary displacement of personnel we can look forward to more of these. Here, the Boston component was delivered in pieces, by email, and assembled at the Tintinabulary. I arbitrarily clunked it down more or less in the middle of the longer Seattle helping.

Playlist

Live

November 1, 2014
Don Giovanni - Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle

Listen again to the opening chords, how the bass emerges, swallowing. The entire argument of the opera played out in a few seconds.

Carbon Glacier, Mt. Rainier National Park - 1976

November 7, 2014
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Jacob Zimmerman - selections from a larger set of duets

Jacob was joined by Christian Pincock and Jeff Draper (is that right?) in three duets involving combinations of tenor sax, trombone, and a tray full of electronics featuring a hot pink telephone handset. Each duet proceeded as a series of discrete event-moments of carefully varied length, each event-moment a lively duality within itself - like a first-species counterpoint of timbre-complexes.

S. Eric Scribner - selections from a larger set of compositions involving field recordings and found
objects.

I was involved as a performer for Steve's pieces so I don't have a good read on how these came across. Only one of the three selections (the middle one) had a written score, essentially just outlining the density of things to do. The two others consisted of the instructions "kind of noisy" (the first one) and "sustained sounds" (the third one).

Nat Evans - a study using field recordings from The Tortoise

Layers of desert wind, horse-bells and cow-bells (Mahler's last sounds?), deep gongs. Images of movement within stillness and stillness within movement, all of it palpably ancient.

Keith Eisenbrey - J - a solo piano piece written in remembrance of the late J. K. Randall.

I wrote this piece in the Chapel Performance Space last September, while listening to Neil Welch remember the victims of the Cafe Racer shooting. The recording is available on my soundcloud site.

Recorded

November 1, 2014
Two Episodes from Faust - Liszt - Rotterdams Philharmonisch Orkest, James Conlon

This is the stage scenery in which one imagines operatic action taking place. Particular drama needs to be supplied by the audience's sensibility. There is nothing given but an ambiguous trajectory.

November 3, 2014
Schicksalslied - Brahms - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Claudio Abbado, Ambrosian Chorus, John McCarthy

What has been prepared slips to the side. What persists is interrupted, deflected. What we build, dauntless, evaporates.

Variations on a Rococo Theme op. 37 - Tchaikovsky - Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, Yan-Pascal Tortelier, Paul Tortelier
Sonata-Fantasie in G-sharp minor - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

If this were a film the camera would always be in motion, circular, dancing around its subject.

Symphony in C-minor (#1) - Bruckner - Kölner Rundfunk-Sinfonie-Orchester, Gunter Wand

Like Berlioz, Bruckner has a characteristic flavor of non sequitur. Where Berlioz will drop in just exactly the wrong affect (and then demonstrate that it was exactly correct) Bruckner goes for registration or scale, lurching us forward in time or plummeting us from tiny to vast, or vaporizing the solid rock we were clinging to, leaving us utterly without being.

November 4, 2014
Love Songs After Foster - The Gregg Smith Singers, The New York Vocal Arts Ensemble

Comfort music then: cleaned up for parlor use, non-threatening - possibly even worse now: the nonironic ironic nonironic.

Concerto in C minor (#2) - Rachmaninoff - Philadelphia Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski, Serge Rachmaninoff

Imperialism's fatal nostalgia for its own sweet fictions.

The Ragtime Dance - Scott Joplin - William Albright
Finale aus der III Sinfonie - Louis Vierne - Stanislav Surin

Sound fills space from all sides, dissociating what we are hearing from any possibility that a single person could be responsible for it all.

Renard - Stravinsky - Columbia Chamber Ensemble, Igor Stravinsky

The first, and perhaps only, punk rock opera. Brutally perfect.

6 Songs op. 14 - Webern - Heather Harper
Concerto #1 - Bartok - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini
String Quartet - Ruth Crawford Seeger - Pellegrini Quartet

a thorny hedge

a hashing out in court of law

a discussion in the back rows

in the trees just past firelight undulating

November 5, 2014
Psalm - David Diamond - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

A neo-classical mind struggles with the facts of violence.

Melancholy Baby/Rhythm Riff/Nice Work If You Can Get It - Thelonius Monk [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Naked City - Raymond Scott [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The sound is a stunner: a nearly shrill violin, a baritone sax up from miles deep.

Women In My Life  - John Lee Hooker

The guitar sound pulled fat and the stomp stomp stomp stomped with some crazy palmwine mojo, this is in no meter known to any but JLH.

Klavierstück XI - Stockhausen - Aloys Kontarsky
One Little Star - The Fleetwoods

Self-absorbed, cushioned, protected, oblivious.

Quartet in F minor (#11) - Shostakovich - Fitzwilliam String Quartet

As though from in hiding. Music for narrow dark passages.

The Lovers - Samuel Barber - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Schenck, Dale Duesing

The odd politics of inflating personal intimacy into the realm of corporate expression. Or perhaps merely the high-falutin' counterpart of The Fleetwoods' eternal adolescence.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 2, 2014
Samick - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on a miniature electric guitar.

November 3, 2014
Gradus 255 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Recorded

Happy Halloween!

October 28, 2014
Symphony in B-flat, Op. 38 "Spring" - Schumann - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

This is a frustrating performance of what can be a magnificent piece. Too slow, too unremittingly legato, too blended and bland a sound - heaven forbid an oboe should sound noticeably different from a flute! It is as though a choice had been made for each passage as to what counts as the main line, and everything else is sent to a muddy purgatory. This is death for a piece that really lives in the articulation and commentary of the insurrectionist inner voices and counter-melodies. What could be radical becomes merely serious and stolid.

October 30, 2014
Die Walküre, Act II - Wagner - Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, Karl Böhm, James King, Leonie Rysanek, Gerd Nienstedt, Birgit Nilsson, Theo Adam, Annelies Burmeister, Danica Mastilovic, Helga Dernesch, Gertraud Hopf, Sieglinde Wagner, Liane Synek, Elisabeth Schartel, Sona Cervena

As the trap springs each of the four major characters makes a choice between two of their opposite gender: Sieglinde between Hunding and Siegmund; Siegmund between Sieglinde and Brünnhilde; Wotan between Brünnhilde and Fricka; and Brünnhilde between Wotan and Siegmund. The act starts and ends in hyper-emotional disarray, but at the quiet center it is Wotan muttering to himself (in the person of Brünnhilde) that provides the dramatic fulcrum.

Winter gathering

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 25, 2014
Mitchell 141025 - Keith Eisenbrey

I improvised on acoustic steel-string guitar, recording through a pick-up directly into a Zoom D24. I have been "folding" my improvisations overlaying the second half over the first, which is what you will hear by following the link. I've also been experimenting a little, resulting in this.

October 27, 2014
Banned Rehearsal 872 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosàly-Meyer

When we started Neal had not yet arrived and there was the possibility that Aaron would be making a companion tape in Boston. If the latter had occurred (it didn't) this would have been Banned Telepath 23 Seattle, the first "Telepath" since 1989. If Neal had not arrived (he did) this would have been Assembly Rechoired 56, the first since last year.

Playlist

Recorded

October 21, 2014

Madrona in Maple Leaf - this morning

Quartet in G, D887 - Schubert - New Hungarian Quartet

The tonality is in question from the get-go. It must be found, achieved, earned. Home is not where we start from. The musical material is particular in its manner of being incomplete. The phrase meter is askew. Front and center is the poignancy of inadequate response and the thin line between the quotidian and violence.

5 Mazurkas, Op. 7 - Chopin - Vladimir Ashkenazy

Line drawings.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 19, 2014
Franciscan 141019 - Keith Eisenbrey

I improvise on nylon string guitar.

Maple leaf under the madrona - this morning

October 20, 2014
Gradus 254 - Neal Kosàly-Meyer

A three note figure opens. The next note doesn't repeat, but pulls one of the original notes forward, establishes its updownleftright attitude in space. In order to compose like this in anything longer than rightnowrealtime would require a phenomenal memory of exactly how any Particular Configuration of Tones and Dynamics would warp any other PCOTAD - or a mind-boggling fine-tuned notation system. But the point of doing so would be alien to the point of this music. Here it isn't the careful weaving of relations and meaning into complexity and subtlety, but the sensitivity of each moment's present choice.

Part 2 is about reduction, or pruning.

Playlist

Live

October 17, 2014
Sun Giants, Power Skeleton, Ancient Warlocks
Darrell's Tavern, Shoreline

plastic glow skull - and it makes noise!

The tiny hollow moment just before the heavy downbeat determines its exact character - its bounce, heft, and chutzpah. Sun Giants (bass, drums, and guitar/vocals) aims the rest of the rhythm at getting that hollow moment exactly right.

There are quite a few more little effects devices in Power Skeleton than people. They are also distinguished by having two drummers and by their assertion that they never play the same song twice. They use rock rhythm centered improvisation as an alternative method of determining time with amplified particulars.

I think my ears have finally recovered from Ancient Warlock's massive sound. Inside the collisions of feedbacks twisting through the space a further music emerges - as ephemeral and lyrical as the explicit music is granitic. The guys on stage, playing their instruments through their stacks of amps, create a sound, and that sound plays a music on the shape and substance of the space. We're in the thick.

Recorded

October 13, 2014
Imagine - John Lennon

Essentially an album of slightly tidied demos (just add some strings and it will sound OK) with one strong song (I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier Mama I Don't Wanna Die), otherwise populated by an uncomfortable mix of idealism, bitterness, alienation, and the bad taste to air dirty laundry in public. 

Six Fantasies on a Poem by Thomas Campion - Paul Lansky

The smooth gradations of the early 17th Century pulled apart fantasy by fantasy. A concerto for modified voice and its pre- and re- verberations.

October 14, 2014
See Jungle! (Jungle Boy) - Bow Wow Wow

Part of the '80's reset of rock&roll: back to fun, back to competence, back to the self-obsessed myopia of teendom.

Eye Music - Stuart Dempster and William O. Smith [from Perspectives of New Music, vol. 24 #2]

Stu and Bill seem to be playing the audience response as much as trombone and clarinet, the sound and rhythm of collective laughter being an integral part of how the episode goes as music.

Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse - Stan Brakhage

What is seen only when eyes are closed: inverted color schemes, oddly drifting weightless formations. Flashes (we blink) - flow (our eyes attempt to track what moves with our tracking). Not dreamlike, but the visual matrix from which dreams are configured.

Guitar Hell - Fragmented Brain Solos - Pete Comley

The sound is squeezed out through filters like pastry dough. The lyricism is reminiscent of Fripp, but with a distinct narrative flow. No objects are created, instead trajectories are followed.

Mike Marlin

Banjoology - Mike Marlin

A scrapbook of sounds without any pretense of song-hood. Completely endearing. I had the distinct pleasure of improvising with Mike several times. Here's hoping he comes back to Seattle someday!

The Kinks Say Fuck You - Pulses [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

A tightly packed and weighty solid, fit for throwing.

Four Songs - Spinning Whips

This was a small-issue CD I picked up when we heard them play at the Columbia City Theater several years ago. Their fat guitar sounds have more than a proggy hint of King Crimson.

October 16, 2014
Correte, amanti, a prova - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

Conversational flow, from glib and quick of wit to focused and precise. One moment we are listening to three or four sides of a conversation. Suddenly we are the object of singular attention.

Konzert in F Major, BWV 1046 - J. S. Bach - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan

The placid and broad are played up to such an extent that the whole thing falls asleep.

Sonata in D Major, Wq. 137 - C. P. E. Bach - Charles Medlam, William Hunt, Richard Eggar
Quartet in C Major, Op. 1 #6 Hob.III:6 - Haydn

They sure loved their Menuets back then.

Symphony in F Major K112(112) - Mozart
Sonata in A-flat major, Op. 26 - Beethoven

Part of what distinguished Beethoven's piano writing is the degree to which the accompanimental figurations take on a life of their own, demanding their own resolutions and workings out - as though they are musical material as much as the tune is. In this early work the relations among the parts are still relatively polite.

October 17, 2014
Symphony in C minor (String Symphony #4) - Mendelssohn

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 13, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 871 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosàly-Meyer

October 16, 2014

As Yet Unnamed Song - Keith Eisenbrey

Recorded drums, bass, guitar, and vocal tracks. Discarded the guitar and vocals.

October 17, 2014

As Yet Unnamed Song - Keith Eisenbrey

Tried again for guitar and vocals. I'm happier with it but want to sit on it for a few weeks.

Fox Spit 141017 - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvisation on acoustic steel string guitar.

Playlist

Live

October 4, 2014

Macefield Music Festival (day 2)

Fauna Shade - KEXP Mainstage

A young 3-piece band from Everett opened the festivities with an effects-heavy 60's stoner vibe. I thought the vocalist had a nice but under-utilized upper range. Time to branch out from sounding like music they like to finding out what music they might be.

Solvents - Conor Byrne Pub

Roots-rock from Port Townsend. The amplified violin works well as a stand-in for both lead guitar and harmony vocals.

Dead Man - Sunset Tavern

Fabulous two-man sit-down geetar blues.

The Swearengens - Conor Byrne Pub

The drummer of this country band had the most infectiously joyous ear-to-ear grin, and the swing dancers on the floor in front of the stage were lots of fun. Country moshing.

The Maldives - KEXP Mainstage

We caught just the last two songs.

The Posies - KEXP Mainstage

A little drone with red and green lights hovered over the audience. This veteran band still jumps around like teenagers.

Carolyn Mark - Macefield Market

We caught the last half of Carolyn's set. Folk-rock I guess, or maybe hillbilly blues pop, if they have hillbillies in B.C. Loved the slap bass.

Ryan Caraveo  - Tractor Tavern
Ra Scion - Tractor Tavern

We were pretty tired so we sat down by the bar for a beer and heard the last part of one set and the first part of another. My response to hip-hop is still somewhere between "mystified" and "puzzled", but eventually I may find a way in. Another first for us: a bouncer's forced ejection of an over-inebriated barfly.

Recorded

October 7, 2014
Piano Sonata - Elliott Carter - Paul Jacobs

Marbles and dominoes spilled out onto the floor. It is clear these twists are made of notes. In general the fast parts are the weakest, sounding like many another neo-classic noodlist, but the more spare moments are treacherous. Watch your step if you have bare feet!

Duo for Cello and Piano - Arthur Berger - Joel Krasnik, Gilbert Kalish

Arthur Berger

As if drafts of itself were remembering each other back through erasures and offsets and arrows or were held in 3D by a translucent prismatic gel, palimpsestually cross-referencing the Immediate.

Kleines Lied - Paul Dessau - Indian Springs School Chamber Choir, Tim Thomas, Diane McNaron

October 8, 2014
Nocturnal - Edgard Varése

Varése before his brow so beetled o'er

Isolation. Connections (dis).


Night Time - The Strangeloves [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

stomp stomp stomp stomp shoved around by a just loud enough bass guitar.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 5, 2014
Deagan 141005 - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on xylophone.

October 6, 2014
Gradus 253 - Neal Kosàly-Meyer

each moment a join
each join a token
each token a still point

Playlist

Live

September 27, 2014

Dead Bars 
Kraken Bar and Lounge, Seattle

In mid-dues, like a marathon runner at mile 8, still having a blast but shedding inefficiencies, getting that look in their eyes, finding their groove for how to do this thing.

I'm sorry we couldn't stay for the other bands.

October 2, 2014
Broken Bow Ensemble
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

min - John Teske

The species of motion (contrary, similar, oblique) duly debunked. Method: moments are concatenated clouds, not reducible to individual pitch-qualia. Neural maps, mapped to orchestral complexes. About, though not constructed of, differentiation of voice, note, color, person.

October 3, 2014

Macefield Music Festival (day 1)

Boss Martians - KEXP Mainstage (parking lot of Hattie's Hat Restaurant)

We caught the last half of this set as they were playing a cover of Ricky Nelson's  Hello Mary Lou. I don't believe I heard enough of them to really get a bead on what they are, though first impressions are of a competent surf-rock cover band (with some original stuff?) riding a sound that hints of digging Crocodile Rock as much as I do.

The Sonics - KEXP Mainstage

By the time the old guys got on stage the sky was dark and a halfmoon hung high over the building next door. Their presence gave a sense of family reunion to the whole festival - the grandparents and their myriad progeny. They held tight to the strength of their signature rip-tide sound, from the opening "Hey hey hey hey hey Cinderella!" to the final "She's a witch!" Larry Parypa's guitar playing is as ferociously effective as ever, and Gerry Roslie, though occasionally forgetful of a line or two, still flips easily from warble to field shout. The voice of a 20 year-old from a mop of grey with granny glasses.

Inly - The Sunset Tavern

We got to the venue in time for their last song - an a capella duet. It was like arriving at a potluck too late for anything but a 1/4 piece of pie. We'll need to find them again sometime.

Star Anna - The Sunset Tavern

Star doesn't sing the blues. The blues inhabit Star, and she sings.

We were beat and I didn't want to think about anything else, so we went home.

Recorded

September 30, 2014
Concerto No. 2 - Bartok - BBC Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis, Stephen Bishop

The mix is a bit piano-heavy, but the performance is invigoratingly reckless from all parties, entrances spilling over each other like greedy shoppers over a clearance rack.

Cancao do Marinheiro - Heitor Villa-Lobos - New York Chamber Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, Robert Bonfiglio

This is from a weird album of music for solo harmonica and orchestra by Villa-Lobos that was given to me at some point. Some of the song arrangements work better than others. This one is pretty fabulous, with high string tones messing around with the harmonica's upper partials.

Nague - Machito and his Afro Cubans [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Klangfarben-meter, prestissimo. Sixteen maximally differentiated moments within each fly-by-quick measure, always in perfect control.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 29, 2014
Banned Rehearsal 870 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt,  Neal Kosály-Meyer

Check it out.

Playlist

Recorded

 

September 24, 2014

Central Park In The Dark - Ives - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein

 

Such tunes as there are appear like ghastly voices, disembodied, unaffecting their surrounds.

 

Daphnis et Chloe - Ravel - Orchestre de Paris, Jean Martinon

 

Even the shadows are resplendent and glow. Violence is vanquished by balance, mathematics, proportion. Harmony is defused. Drama relies on accelerating crescendi and textural pullbacks.
 

Our Planet

September 25, 2014

The Planets - Holst - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein

 

An attempt to understand horror by placing it within a system, a character within a pantheon, one among the several aspects of the Man.

 

Frankie and Johnny - Al Bernard

 

An arch performance of a quintessential American song - simultaneously rooted in particulars and expansively mythic.

 

Lyric Suite - Berg - Galimir String Quartet

 

Here the 12-tone method is a means of control over a hyper-varied landscape. The method is a focus, but it isn't the object of focus.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

September 21, 2014

Holmes Harbor 140921 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Recorded at dawn September 21, 2014, at the south end of Holmes Harbor, on Whidbey Island. Some traffic in the distance, but also gulls, ducks, and the quiet tickery noise a damp barnacly beach makes at dawn.

 

Fryingpan Glacier from Second Burroughs, Mt. Rainier National Park

September 22, 2014

Second Burroughs 140922 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Between the wind noise that even a wool sock wrapped around the Zoom couldn't keep out is the sound of water gushing out from under the Fryingpan Glacier several miles away.

 

First Burroughs Trail 140922 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Likewise, but the somewhat louder sound of the White River deep in the gulf below.

 

Gradus 252 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

Of prime compositional concern is the nature of change that the fact of being subsequent inflicts upon the present.

Playlist

Recorded

 

September 14, 2014

Variations on a Schumann Theme op. 23 - Brahms - Sharon Gunderson, Jo Ann Smith

 

Appropriate for polite company - only enough Sturm und Drang to peg its time period.

 

Quartet in E minor op. 30 - Tchaikovsky - Copenhagen String Quartet

Tchaikovsky

 

The episodes allow their own existence to mature before allowing movement away. Nested doors open to new episodes. Concert Music Form at the height of ossification.

 

September 17, 2014

Graduale 'Locus iste'  - Bruckner - Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Eugen Jochum

 

Of the vertical extension of soul and its fleshly contingency.

 

Carnival - Dvorak - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Vaclav Neumann

 

By the book - for use at the beginning of a generic symphony concert.

Scriabin

5 Preludes op. 15 - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

 

Ornamented impassioned immobility.

 

September 18, 2014

Suite #2 - Rachmaninoff - John Ogdon, Brenda Lucas

 

A bit of a yawn despite some valiant playing.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

September 14, 2014

Crestline 140914 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Continuing my improvisation project, and folding the second half of the session over the first. The Crestline is a tenor banjo that found its way to me about 25 years ago.

 

September 15, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 869 - Pete Comley, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

 

The whole gang came over to wish Aaron a happy journey. Pete brought a box of toys.

Playlist

Live

September 12, 2014

Neil Welch, with John Teske and Ivan Arteaga

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

One of the cognitive snags for which we might blame written-down music is the stubborn idea that notes are atomic and irreducible. Tunes, figures, chords, and prolongations are all built from individual notes - as Fux intended. Midi, for all its twisted usefulness, wallows in this error. For at least the last 150 years musicians have made various attempts to challenge, or at least critique, this (see my notes on Liszt that follow), and Neil's compositional and performance stance is firmly in that tradition. His strategy is to discover or allow or tease notes or figures, or hybrid scraps or specters of what might have once been notes or figures, out of dynamic resonance systems broadcast through a tenor sax into the audiosphere by confluences of breath, mouth-shape, embouchure, tonguing, and finger-key wiggles. In short, the erstwhile atoms emerge as sparks from a flaming body, epiphenomena to the main show.

 

The evening was dominated by Neil's devastating performance of his recent A Response to the Wednesday Morning Shooting at Café Racer. Heart-felt does not even begin to describe. Also on the program, John Teske and Ivan Arteaga, on upright bass and alto sax respectively, explored the apparently vast and teeming territory just prior to pianissimo.

Recorded

September 7, 2014

Sonata in G op. 78 - Schubert - Vladimir Ashkenazy

 

VA makes a great case for a first movement tempo so slow it barely moves and for taking the repeat. The sheer expanse lifts us out of flesh.  The moments of wrath require adequate space for their resonance to breathe in or they would be petty, hurried, merely hemi-demi-semi-divine.

 

Waltz in A minor Op. 34 #2 - Chopin - Peter Katin

 

the memory of a hope of a dance

 

Symphony in B-flat "Spring" - Schumann - Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, John Elliot Gardiner

 

Between the opening fanfare call of horns and trumpets on forte D-naturals, unrevealed as yet as the key's median - though hinted in measure 2's B-flat, C, D! - and the response in full triadic orchestral glory, spanning 4 octaves plus, there is no apparent harmonic movement. But a terrible and intoxicating energy is unleashed that drives unrestrained to the end. Has there been an orchestral work this exhilarating since?

Liszt

September 9, 2014

Études d'exécution transcendante - Liszt - Claudio Arrau

 

The self wrestles with the atom, each singular audible blasted and split. Atlas bursting his globe.

September 10, 2014

Die Walküre Act 1 - Wagner - Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala, Furtwangler

 

I was following along with the score this time, attending the rate at which the printed key-signatures change. The first two scenes hang out stolidly near D minor and C minor respectively, and not surprisingly there is,  toward the end, a rapid acceleration as the tonality wobbles and spins before it finally collides into G Major.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

September 7, 2014

Coronet 140907 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

The current version of my improvisation project is to record a session on some instrument or other every week and then fold it, which is to say I layer the second half over the first half. This week's session was on an electric bass of unknown make. A recent repair replaced the face-plate with part of an old vinyl record. Coronet is the label.

 

September 8, 2014

Gradus 251 - Neal Meyer

 

September 13, 2014

J - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Although I'm on a sabbatical from composition, I had an idea yesterday that needed working out. While listening last night to Neil Welch's performance in response the Café Racer shootings I started thinking about the late J. K. Randall and writing this piece.

Playlist

Live

 

September 4, 2014

Canals of Venice

The Spencer Glenn Band

Your Mother Should Know

Rendezvous - Seattle

Canals of Venice

 

The orchestration of Canals of Venice is gelling nicely. They were shy their trumpet player, which is a shame, but the gluey duo string harmony of viola and cello is an effective foil to Rob and Emily's duo of vocal timbres. That and all the parts, or each separately, can operate as adjuncts to the deliciously subtle drums. Both Rob and Emily have strong stage presences and are blessed with complementary levels of garrulousness. In short, a tremendously interesting and musically ambitious band that is fun to hear and re-hear.

 

The Spencer Glenn Band

The Spencer Glenn Band checks in as among the most exquisitely balanced ensembles I've heard in awhile. Spencer has a lovely light tenor that floats easily into falsetto, a bit (but just a bit) as though Simon could lift into Garfunkle and ease back. The arrangements are delicate and tight, free of showboating, everybody playing the song, rather than their axe.

 

Playing last, late on a Thursday night, the crowd had thinned out considerably by the time Neal & Karen took the stage. The set has been stripped down to just the rockers and moved along at a lively clip. Those who had to leave missed a honey.

Your Mother Should Know

 

And I would like to give kudos to Zach, the stage-manager and sound-person. He took great care that everybody sounded good, and did a fine job of both being clearly in charge and making everyone feel welcome. If the ghost that haunts the venue would like to return the two kick-drum feet that dropped into the void (one on the way in, one on the way out) Karen would be most appreciative.

 

September 5, 2014

Seattle Composers Salon

Angelique Poteat

Jessika Kenney

Jim Knapp

Paul Gillespie

 

From Subterranea - Poteat

 

where we start is our stability and our return

where we go is tied to where we start

we return tied - elastic

 

Didn't catch the name - Kenney

 

whisper presence among voice

rooted :: up- or re- ??

circuit ritual a canon unwinding into

presence whisper air

 

Two Tunes  - Jim Knapp

 

The strength (and weakness) of jazz is one and the same with the strength (and weakness) of Bach: It is a language for solving problems posed, and it is always possible to find a way out from within itself, but the out it finds is illusory, a trick of mind, since it is still itself. I didn't catch the pianist's name, but he was fabulous.

 

Woodwind Trio - Gillespie

 

If this were a short story the words would be small, the sentences brisk, and the plot cabalistic.

 

Recorded

 

September 2, 2014

O tenebroso giorno - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

 

Each line, or set of lines, is set in an increasing complexity of imitative overlay, elision, and interfolding. Thoughts thicken, turn, and feed upon themselves. It ends because things end, but there is no resolution.

 

Konzert in G BWV 1048 - J.S. Bach - Festival Strings Lucerne, Rudolf Baumgartner

 

Pericope and Sermon. All derives from one, over and again. The universe is floriated, not cross-associated, not integrated.

 

Sonata in A Wq. 48 #6 - C.P.E. Bach - Bob von Asperen

 

Larded with discursive footnotes and comments. Worldly, scholarly, glossed and cross-bred.

 

September 3, 2014

Quartet in B-flat Op. 1 #1, Haydn - Tatrai Quartet

 

Solid. No nonsense here.

 

Symphony in D K111a(120) - Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood, Jaap Schroder

 

Complete in its knowledge of what an orchestra is for, but doesn't have a clue as to what it might be capable of.

 

Sonata in C-sharp minor Op. 27 #2 - Beethoven - Gieseking

 

Just how little resonance can one get away with? Studied hesitation to clarify the melody, restrained throughout - except for a moment or three in the last movement when the earth shakes.

 

Symphony in D (String Symphony #2) - Mendelssohn - English Bach Festival Orchestra, William Boughton

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

September 1, 2014

Zuckermann 140901 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

An improvisation on clavichord.

 

Gradus 250 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

A session cut short by a family emergency, happily it all ended well.

Playlist

Upcoming This Week

 

Thursday, September 4, 2014 9pm

Your Mother Should Know

The Spencer Glenn Band

Canals of Venice

Rendezvous, Seattle

 

Recorded

 

August 26, 2014

Percussion Symphony - Charles Wuorinen - New Jersey Percussion Ensemble, Raymond DesRoches

 

There are very few pieces of recorded music I feel are better served on headphones than through speakers. This may be one of them, simply because the volume needs to be cranked so high to bring the quiet stretches up from inaudible that the loud bits make me nervous for my speakers, not to mention my neighbors. Live, I presume, the effect would be magnificent - thunderous to intimate whisper.

 

The Flowers of Romance - Public Image Ltd.

 

Fastidious insistence on deliberate drabness. Upside-down sound design. Eno's flip side.

 

Casio Improvisation No. 1 - Larry Solomon

 

Cross-rhythms of frantic birdhoot in viscous undulation. Starlings flock through honey.

 

August 28, 2014

Two3 No. 5 - John Cage - Stefan Hussong, Hiroyuki Okano

 

All cues to pitch-centered listening activated in order to be thwarted.

 

Deceived By Starlight - Roger Zahab - Dale Speicher

 

steady yearning unwavers

firm vigorous resolves

shrugging off magic if possible (or)

 

Tango Orientale - Ole Saxe - Karen Bentley-Pollick, Ivan Sokolov

 

Never gives up its dance.

 

Midnight at the Apollo 13 - Gas Huffer [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

 

This is not about being new, it is about being plugged in to a source.

 

In The Pines - No Man's String Band

 

Sthrum-heavy plain song straight play.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

August 24, 2014

Transverse Flute 140824

 

August 25, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 868 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

 

One last time on the porch for the Summer. (we presume).

 

August 29, 2014

Walk Home (parts 1 and 2) - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Last year I walked home from work (about 7 miles) one evening, meeting Karen at the half-way point for supper. This time I decided to record the experience. I tucked a miniature recorder into the right side pocket of my backpack, padding it with a wool sock, and off I went. I turned it off when I got to the restaurant and started it again when we left. The first part, from the Columbia Center at 5th and Columbia, north on 5th Avenue, right on Stewart, left on Eastlake is mostly traffic noise and a few glimpses of conversation. The second part, across the University Bridge, right on Campus Parkway, left on the Ave, right on NE 75th, left on 20th, left on 88th to home, includes my conversation with Karen, the subject of which is partly the remarkable coincidence of our chance dinner companions at Little Water Cantina. We were sharing our table with a young couple and as we talked it eventually came out that they were also Karen and Keith. We showed each other our IDs to prove we weren't pulling legs. On top of that, they had gotten married in Ship Bottom, New Jersey, which is the one place on the shore I've actually been to.