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May 2, 2014

Seattle Composers Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Bill Smith, Keith Eisenbrey, John Teske, Tom Baker

 

First of all: Thank you Tom Baker for all the hard work you have done to keep this amazing project going for the last 15 years. Not only has it given me and countless others repeated opportunities to share what we have been working on with the best ears in the city, but it has been an invaluable hob-nobbery for composers and performers alike. Every time around I marvel at just how many musical planets there are to have come from. It has been a grand ride and I am honored and blest to have been a part of it.

 

And to John Teske: I am ecstatic you have accepted the curatorial position. I think you're perfect for the job. It is a beautiful thing that Tom has done here, and I look forward to many more years of fascinating evenings under your guidance.

 

Bill Smith - Assisi - Bill Smith, Brian Cobb, Jesse Canterbury

 

I'm not sure I got the name of the piece right, but it had something to do with Assisi, so I'll go with that. A loving modern re-hearkening to the jazz & pop sounds of the late 40's and early 50's: Stan Kenton, Peggy Lee, Glen Miller, all tinged with incipient bebop. It wasn't that music dressed up, but rather a translation of those sounds into a taut and robust harmonic idiom, retaining every inch of its without which it don't mean a thing swing.

 

Keith Eisenbrey - Selections from Études d'exécution imminent

 

My notes: 150 years ago Franz Liszt composed a cycle of piano etudes that demanded of the pianist a transcendent technique. For Liszt this was a powerful and incendiary aesthetic stance. But there is a complement to transcendence that I thought might be worth pursuing. And so, as a corrective to the Études d'exécution transcendante, I have been working on a cycle of Études d'exécution imminent. I have 8 so far completed to the point of minor adjustments. Tonight I will perform #s 1, 2, and 8.

 

John Teske - Topographies - Any Ensemble

 

The title, by report, is descriptive of the composer's intent in the creation and design of the scores. I understand then that the scores are like maps of a physical space to be explored, and that the performance is a journey we take through that physical space. But, perhaps driven by the suggestion of the title, and further allowed by the textural complexity of the sounds created, the received image is not foremost a sequence of events, but something more like a map itself - the whole landscape at once, sequenced from above by our hovering, flitting attention.

 

Tom Baker - Sagamihara - Tom Baker, Corrie Befort (film)

 

I saw an earlier version of this film a year ago. It consists of a series of image groups: groundskeepers raking a dirt plane, people lofting a monumental kite, drummers with masks, a young woman lying uneasily in a meadow, people working in rice paddies. The sound component is a separate image on the same plane as the visual, not an accompaniment or comment. Or it is the young woman, or it is the meadow, or it is the kite or the sky. 

 

Recorded

 

April 27, 2014

Symphony in C K111b(96) - Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Jaap Schroder, Christopher Hogwood

 

This music is very proud of its own artifice. It can't help but lift its lid now and then to show us how it works.

 

Sonata in G Op. 49 #2 - Beethoven - Wilhelm Kempff

 

This music is trying ever so hard to sit still in polite company.

 

Symphony in C minor D417 - Schubert - Vienna Philharmonic, Karl Munchinger

 

It climbs flights of stairs. It always has a goal in mind, and that goal is the ever so lovingly, ever so nostalgically, deferred cadence. Once there we embark again so that we can look back while sailing on to look back further on.

 

Symphony in B-flat (String Symphony #5) - Mendelssohn - English Bach Festival Orchestra, William Boughton

Concerto in E minor - Paganini - London Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Dutoit, Salvatore Accardo

Waltz in E-flat Op. 18 - Chopin - Peter Katin

 

A magic theater :: delight fancy free

 

Scherzo - Schumann - Peter Fankl

 

Fierce, with gritted teeth.

 

Die Loreley - Liszt - Thomas Quasthoff, Justus Zeyen

 

An opera in a song.

 

April 29, 2014

La Damnation de Faust (parts 1 and 2) - Berlioz - Orchestra & Chorus of Rome Opera, Georges Pretre, Nicolia Gedda, Marilyn Horne, Roger Soyer, Dimiter Petkov

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

April 27, 2014

Coronet 140427 and 140427A - Keith Eisenbrey

Zither 140427 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

April 28, 2014

Gradus 243 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

An expanse. At the bounds we set markers. We launch missives over the edge. We stand firm. We turn our backs. We shout to the sky. We breathe light.

 

We feed energy into a system to keep it lit.

 

May 1, 2014

Your Mother Should Know - Karen Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

A practice session for their upcoming album.

 

Upcoming

June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle