Playlist

Recorded

 

March 23, 2014

Symphony in E-flat - Edward Elgar - Giuseppe Sinopoli

 

triumphal moment follows

elegant threads to cottage doors

from victory in a bright clime

 

(but now we're at this elegant ball!)

 

reservoirs of stolid resolve.

alternatives activate deflection,

potentiates hyperextension

 

(and that is why we safely sleep.)

 

Renard The Fox - Stravinsky - Orchestre de L'Opera National De Paris, James Conlon

 

A tight rein on the affect - a quicktime staccato - allows an extraordinary precision of meter and timbre. The more bare-bones styles of rock and roll work this same trick on occasion.

 

March 24, 2014

Carl Ruggles

Angels (for 6 trumpets) - Carl Ruggles - Studio Brass Ensemble

 

A former eternity, staring.

 

March 25, 2014

Lyric Suite - Alban Berg - LaSalle Quartet

 

Our footing is insecure. We can use contour similarity as an earguide, but sequential figures tend to reconfigure themselves en route. In the absolute middle of the piece it drifts away and that's it.

 

Concerto in D - Maurice Ravel - Paris National Orchestra, Paul Paray, Monique Haas

 

Episodes in an arrival, from beyond a hill, of something huge.

 

Jeu de Cartes - Stravinsky - London Symphony Orchestra - Colin Davis

 

At it's best when it becomes so self-involved it forgets to please.

 

March 27, 2014

Sinfonietta  - Walter Piston - New York Chamber Symphony of the 92nd Street Y, Gerard Schwarz

 

Always on firm thematic ground, it moves like a snake in seamless glides, and always keeps its head down. The middle movement crawls inside.

Kid Ory

 

1919 Rag - Kid Ory [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

 

Fabulous, but old-fashioned. The song structure is clearly audible inside the hoopla.

 

Formel - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Sinfonie-Orchester des Sudwestfunks, Karlheinz Stockhausen

 

Deeply concerned with its own rhetoric, with how it explicates itself. The strongest sense in which it is a piece comes from its single-minded approach to tipping its own hand.

 

Need Your Love So Bad - Little Willie John [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

 

guitarist to die for.

Ram-Bunk-Shush - The Ventures [from Walk Don't Run]

Cecil Taylor

Enter Evening - Cecil Taylor [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

 

Simultaneously articulate on multiple planes.

Slipped, Tripped and Fell In Love - Ann Peebles [from Original Funk Soul Sister The Best of Ann Peebles]

 

The title could be a romantic comedy, but the song itself is deliciously bitter.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

March 23, 2014

Crestline 140323 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

(tenor banjo)

 

March 24, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 855 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

Upcoming

 

April 12, 2014 - 8 PM 

A Cat's Life Returns Again - a recital by Keith Eisenbrey, piano, with special guest Olivia Sterne, narrator

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Attitude - Doug Palmer

Greek Nickel 2 - J. K. Randall

Sonata (2012) - Aaron Keyt

A Cat's Life, a little opera for solo piano (1990) - Keith Eisenbrey

 

June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Playlist

Live

March 22, 2014
Any Ensemble
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Topology - Andrew Smith

A tetrapuntal projection of shaped space. In the corners in front of us two electric guitars played repeated single tones in something like cross rhythms of mutually adjusted independence. Over the course of the hour they changed pitch and tempo 20 times or so, at more or less coordinated points, each time taking a moment to reorient their attitude to each other, as people deep in conversation do. In the corners behind us two electric guitars played long tones without distinct attack points, not constant, but a continually renewed presence, like spillover ambience from the front. What was on the left was cloven from what was on the right. What was in front was functionally distinct from what was in the back. As the harmonies and relative tempo structures shifted over time, this sonographic space warped, thickened, blossomed, rippled, tilted, quivered. A peripatetic violist appeared here, aimed this way, now here aimed that way. The actual fact of his physical relation to any of us at any particular time was not nearly so precise as his location within the evoked space in sound. Blown away.

Topographies - John Teske

Sounds are individuals within populations. Long tones tend away from emphasizing their initiation, pointing toward their respective apogeal episodes. Short tones bloop and pop in the randomish rhythm of volcanic mudpots, or fields of spurting geoducks. Ship masts at harbor rock in slow motion. Rational value is void at water's edge.

Recorded

March 16, 2014
Symphony avec orgue - Camille Saint-Saëns - Orchestre symphonique de Montreal, Charles Dutoit

Or: Farmer Hogget ascends to heaven.

From the middle of the 19th through the early part of the 20th centuries the symphony was often a vehicle for nationalist aspiration. Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Franck, and the later generation of Sibelius, Nielsen, Elgar, and hosts of others (each with copious asterisks) were playing to pride of country. It is this notion of what a symphony is about that lends such overwrought nostalgia to Rachmaninov, such naïve pathos to the later American symphonists such as Hanson, Copland, and Diamond, and such a sharp satirical thrust to Shostakovich. So what exactly is so French about Saint-Saëns' 3rd? I would point to the graceful melodic lines that spread over the meter - it may be 'in four' or 'in three' but it is the whole phrase that is the building block.

In Nature's Realm - Antonin Dvořák - London Symphony Orchestra, István Kertész
Graduale 'Christus factus est pro nobis' - Anton Bruckner - Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks, Eugen Jochum

March 17, 2014
Quartet in A - Max Reger - Reger Quartet

As much contrapuntal clockwork ferocity as can be crammed into the space allotted. So tightly wound it seems to fall apart from the inside.

Pohjola's Daughter - Jean Sibelius - London Symphony Orchestra - Robert Kajanus

After a clear, directly linear opening that moves from dark to light, the narrative becomes obscure and convoluted. Love the ending. Kajanus owns this stuff.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 17, 2014
Gradus 241 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

First part: holding a resonance together long enough to cause the transformation of its innards.
Second part: making up for the minimally thicker global texture by slowing and thinning the presentation. Moving into thinking about the colors of specific combinations of notes and how those colors shift, and away from the more sensually lush lofting of resonant results.

Upcoming

 

April 12, 2014 - 8 PM 

A Cat's Life Returns Again - a recital by Keith Eisenbrey, piano, with special guest Olivia Sterne, narrator

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Attitude - Doug Palmer

Greek Nickel 2 - J. K. Randall

Sonata (2012) - Aaron Keyt

A Cat's Life, a little opera for solo piano (1990) - Keith Eisenbrey

 

June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Playlist

Recorded

March 9, 2014

Etude in A-flat, Op. 25 #1 - Chopin - Alfred Cortot

 

weightless, faerie

 

Overture, Scherzo, and Finale, op. 52 - Schumann - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

 

phrases with hinges, sequences slipping cogs

 

Sonetto de Petrarco No. 104 - Liszt - Vladimir Horowitz

 

seizing stillness, staring straight

 

Scherzo in E-flat minor, op. 4 - Brahms - Yefim Bronfman

 

scary story but reliable :: delicate, witty :: ssbr :: dreamy, ardent :: ssbr

 

Selections from Die Walküre - Wagner - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

 

such long lines to hang from

 

near Burns, Oregon, 1990

March 11, 2014

Concerto in A - Liszt - Musica Orchestra Vienna, Michael Gielen, Alfred Brendel

 

going nowhere. disinclined to allow alternatives to going nowhere.

NB: of all the pieces I listened to this week, I keep coming back to think about this one.

 

Night on Bare Mountain - Mussorgsky - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner

 

Fritz&crew take this at a helluva clip.

 

Jeux d'enfants - Bizet - Arthur Gold, Robert Fizdale

 

idealized play (no bickering), before the fall from prettified fairytale into myth

 

March 13, 2014

Symphony in C minor, op. 68 - Brahms - Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Charles Mackeras

 

triumph of the sensible - though it's fun to hear the snarl of open horns and the differentiation of entrances among the string sections various strings. I probably listened to this piece too often as a teenager to be able to hear it properly anymore.

 

Guide Right - John Philip Sousa - Philip Jones Ensemble, Elgar Howarth

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

March 8, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 854 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

Upcoming

 

April 12, 2014 - 8 PM 

A Cat's Life Returns Again - a recital by Keith Eisenbrey, piano, with special guest Olivia Sterne, narrator

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Attitude - Doug Palmer

Greek Nickel 2 - J. K. Randall

Sonata (2012) - Aaron Keyt

A Cat's Life, a little opera for solo piano (1990) - Keith Eisenbrey

 

June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

 

Playlist

Live

 

March 1, 2014

Deeply Lodged: Three World Premieres by Seattle Composer Tom Baker

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

Songs of Sleep and Dreams - Cherie Hughes, soprano; Brian Chin, trumpet; Ben Thomas, percussion

 

The gravity of the ensemble centers on the trumpet, with commenting accompaniment by song and percussion. That said, the center shifts easily, weightlessly, with exquisite care.

 

Invisible Cities (String Quartet No. 1) - Corigliano Quartet: Michael Lim & Elisa Barston, violins; Melia Watras, viola; Eric Gaenslen, cello

 

skittering smattering seeps chill, damp

lurks like crystal fungus shimmer

glimmer :: substance instance essence insistence endurance evanescence

 

Deeply Lodged - Cristina Valdés, piano; Jesse Canterbury, clarinet; Paul Taub, flute

 

Piano solo, winds on the far sides, silent until long forgotten. But there they have been, abiding long within resonance's decay, not prolonging the sound, but indexing the extent of its vanishing, caught on the sides of our precipice, centuries after disaster.

 

March 6, 2014

Empty Words / Song Books / Fontana Radif / Complete Human

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Compositions by John Cage and Jessika Kenney, performed by Jessika Kenney, voice and electronics; Neal Kosály-Meyer, voice; Jake Thompson, electronics.

 

By Part 4 of Empty Words we are reduced to phonemes, and our attention is centered on the mouth, its shapes and actions. The more typically complete linguistic mode of the Song Books, and of Kenney's original works, bears a similar relation to this attentional mode as does her final circumambulation of the space to the studied stillness pervading the remainder - and likewise, it in no way negates, and in no way is not permeated by, that stillness.

 

Cage: Language not elevated by song, but cast off, reduced, sliced away, partitioned.

 

The Whole:

Not proceeding at a glacial pace.

Not proceeding at all.

Rather, occurring.

 

The electronic manipulation minutely affixes our distance from the person sitting on the stage in front of us, as though voice were puppet, and apparatus a magic stage with a plastic relation to our skulls.

 

March 7, 2014

Seattle Composers Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

Sonata - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey, piano

 

A hard-edged, unapologetic, neo-classical foray, modeled from movement to movement with various schemes on Haydn's Sonata in E, Hob.XVI:31. The most interesting aspect that shines through as a property of both is the peculiarity with which one phrase moves to the next - never exactly graceful or lyrical: more spidery, subtle, insurrectionary.

 

Northern Lights, and Three Stories - Clement Reid

 

Something about the pianistic writing reminded me of Greg Short - always solidly traditional in voice, but never shy about robust dissonance when called for. These pieces, like Greg at his best, were colorful neo-Romantic tone-poems, and probably, like Greg at his usual, wickedly difficult. I'm rather pleased to see that this thread of Seattle tradition is alive and well.

 

Left Hand Piano Piece and Did Everybody Get a Balloon? - Jay Hamilton

 

Leave it to Jay to blast pretense out of the room. Deeply cleansing after a long week. Thank you!

 

Recorded

 

March 1, 2014

Symphony in B-flat, D. 485 - Schubert - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Böhm

 

Phrases begin multiply and end multiply, like books stacked in precise abandon. Underneath it all an unnamable coiled energy lurks, seething out just seldom enough to convince us it might not be there.

 

Sonata in A-flat, Op. 110 - Beethoven - Vladimir Feltsman

 

The patterns of shifting figurations, the moment to moment variation, the way scenes shift as though the ground is giving way, all conspire to articulate, in excruciating detail, a fractured underlying continuity. The surreal begins here.

 

Polonaise in B-flat minor - Chopin - Peter Katin

 

I probably shouldn't have tried to listen to anything immediately after late Beethoven, though this is lovely. Many years ago I was active in a music forum on CompuServe, as was the superb English pianist Peter Katin. At a time of temporary economic tightness on my end Maestro Katin was kind enough to give me a copy of his newly recorded CD of the complete Waltzes and Polonaises, for which I am ever so grateful.

 

March 3, 2014

Papillons, op. 2 - Schumann - Wilhelm Kempff

 

I once referred to Schumann's "dance-addled whimsy", of which I suppose this is the poster child. A set of variations on the theme of metrical fluidity.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

March 3, 2014

Figure Study 9 - Keith Eisenbrey

Gradus 240 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

Upcoming

 

April 12, 2014 - 8 PM 

A Cat's Life Returns Again - a recital by Keith Eisenbrey, piano, with special guest Olivia Sterne, narrator

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Attitude - Doug Palmer

Greek Nickel 2 - J. K. Randall

Sonata (2012) - Aaron Keyt

A Cat's Life, a little opera for solo piano (1990) - Keith Eisenbrey

 

June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Playlist

Upcoming This Week

 

Seattle Composers Salon

Saturday, March 7, 2014 at 8pm

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

Featured composers:

Clement Reid

Coreena

Aaron Keyt

Jay Hamilton

 

I will be performing Aaron Keyt's Sonata (2012) for solo piano - a Haydn sonata skewed inside out, rejiggered upside down, and refracted on an oblique plane.

 

Recorded

 

February 23, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 57 (Telepath 5 Mix) - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Karen Meyer, Neal Meyer - December 1985

 

The Telepath projects have, if you'll pardon the pun, mixed results. In this instance, the variety of recording procedures among the input tapes turns the output into an interesting dialogue about transparence and opacity, their strongly segmented structures of protracted static episodes combine to tell a tale in postures of room size, and the joint effect of three noisy heaters provides a solid standing ground. One of the winners.

 

Extracts 12 - Keith Eisenbrey - December 2010

 

The last iteration in my study of Scriabin's Prelude op. 74 #4. For details concerning this project see last week's post.

 

Banned Rehearsal 60 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer - December 1985

 

Vocalization, guitar thwangk and tongue drum. Little room is left, the sounds each fill their space, butt up against each other. Mass ukulele. Some songs: Sunday in the Metropolis espresso shops are closed / need a new pair of shoes but the shoe stores are all closed / head is splitting Sunday in the Metropolis / fogged in airplane goes round and round can't get to the ground / airplane food don't taste good :: If I started singing about a lizard on a tree / would you pull that robe away / would you set me free? :: Ain' No Easy Woman.

 

Figure Study 6 - Keith Eisenbrey - December 2010

 

A solo piano improvisation. The occasional close temporal proximity of incidents doesn't change the overall extreme slowness of the pace. The point here is to hold steady, like a mountain.

 

Banned Rehearsal 61 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Karen Meyer, Neal Meyer - December 1985

 

Starts quietly with wind instruments and other sustainers. So thin it is hard to believe there are five people in the room. For 40 minutes this is not about its tapeness, it is simply a recording of an improvisation session. The point of the session was us, not the result. The moment the microphone is addressed the spell is broken.



 

End and Begin

Maple Leaf, Seattle - February 2014

 

At this point a word of explanation will be useful for my readers, who may have noticed a preponderance of music from 1985 and 2010 in recent postings. Since my early twenties I have kept a database of the recorded music in my collection. It started on notecards, moved to a program written by my brother Paul, then for many years in Paradox, and finally now in Access. As the size of the collection increased I developed a method of choosing the next selection for listening. This essentially involves moving progressively and repeatedly through time, in an increment of 50 years. In other words, I would listen to something from 1750, then from 1800, then from 1850, etc., repeat until that cycle was exhausted, then step up to 1751, 1801, 1851, and so on. At the beginning of 2009, I decided to switch to an increment of 5 years, and since that time I have been listening to that segment of my collection stemming from years ending in "0" or "5". Banned Rehearsal was especially prolific in 1985, and there were also, apparently, a great many selections in 2010, so as I got to the end of the list these years remained. Now it is time to move on to years ending in "1" and "6". At this time there are nearly two thousand selections in that group, so I'll be at it for a while. There is some wonderful music out there. Enjoy!

 

February 26, 2014

Missa pro defunctis a 5 - Palestrina - Chanticleer, Joseph Jennings

 

Within a circumscribed world, placement and attitude gain subtle precision. Spinning out, starting over, starting spinning, over, out.

 

"T'amo, mia vita!" - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

 

Liquid time, wrapping around to look back.

 

Konzert in B, BWV 1051 - J.S. Bach - Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan

 

Repeated beginnings echo and fall away, ever-flowing weaves articulated only ever-so-gently by cadence.

 

Februray 27, 2014

Sonata in C, Wq. 48 #5 - C.P.E. Bach - Bob Von Asperen

 

As though multiple bits of several sonatas provide platforms for sudden articulations - always about the new place it is going to or is suddenly being or is poised from which to leap.

 

Variations canoniques sur le chant de Noel: Vom Himmel hoch, da komm' ich her, BWV 769 - J.S. Bach - Michel Chapuis

 

Each polyphonically active state is complete and worked out, each voice spinning cooperatively - how they fit more than how they go along. No loose ends here.

 

Quartet in G, Op. 1 #4 Hob. III:4 - Haydn - Tatrai Quartet

 

In C.P.E. Bach the role played by invertible counterpoint as a driver of formal trajectory is still huge. In that he was his father's son. Here that role has been effaced by the play of musical phrases with their metrical balance and intricate tonal relations. A new regime.

 

Symphony in D, K. 32 - Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood

 

An insinuating charm within the splash and fuss.

 

Sonata in G, Op. 49 #2 - Beethoven - Emil Gilels

 

Intensely understated, making exactly no more of it than it itself is.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

February 23, 2014

Takemine 140223 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Improvisation on solo acoustic guitar.

 

Sylvania 140223 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

I finger drummed on a spent incandescent bulb. Lux defunctis.

 

Upcoming

 

April 12, 2014 - 8 PM 

A Cat's Life Returns Again - a recital by Keith Eisenbrey, piano, with special guest Olivia Sterne, narrator

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Attitude - Doug Palmer

Greek Nickel 2 - J. K. Randall

Sonata (2012) - Aaron Keyt

A Cat's Life, a little opera for solo piano (1990) - Keith Eisenbrey

 

June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle