Playlist

Recorded

June 23, 2015
Concerto in B-flat (#6) K. 238 - Mozart - English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner, Malcolm Bilson

Would-be continuities are dissected into independently variable discrete parts, the persona of the soloist never merging with the music of the solo, never becoming a character with whom we identify, remaining always a stage prestidigitator, delighting but not until later . . .

Sonata in E-flat (#13) Op. 27 #1 - Beethoven - Artur Schnabel

. . . crossing the line between him and us, between him and the music performed, where we inhabit and are inhabited, coerced into cooperative collective mutual cross-carnation, remaining firmly in a room with stage and magician, but one whose transformations are no longer upon cards and flowers and silk scarves, but are self-directed, self-inflicted, until . . .

Nocturne in E-flat Op. 9 #2 - Chopin - Alfred Cortot (19.III.1929)

. . . the stage vanishes and we three are alone . . .

Overture, Scherzo, and Finale - Schumann - Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, John Eliot Gardiner

. . . with our questions, our precarious balance irremediably warped by an addling irrational narration, each statement imbued with toxic whirl of doubt and desire where in reflexive self-defense . . .

June 25, 2015
Die Walküre, Act III - Wagner - Wilhelm Furtwängler

. . . the stage re-appears on our infinite interior, an incarnated myth playing out at length, retrieving from the wrack of our confusion a deluded and histrionic image of mortality.

In Session at the Tintinabulary


June 21, 2015
Trio 150621 - Keith Eisenbrey
Moving on now from dubbed duets to dubbed trios. There will be a bunch of these or there won't. To start with: autoharp, anklung, and Coronet electric bass.

The autoharp is my mom's. My recollection is that we either bought it in the 60's at Montgomery Ward's, or that it had been stored under their bed from before time began for me - or both of the above. It was one of my favorite playthings growing up. My technique hasn't changed much since I was six.

The angklung was a birthday or Christmas present from my brother. I'm guessing this was in the '90s (Karen says maybe late '80s), but a careful listening of the entire Banned Rehearsal corpus could probably pinpoint the date.

The bass is on long-term loan from Steve Kennedy. Early in its tenure at the Tintinabulary I stepped on it and broke the faceplate. One of Neal's friends at EMP replaced the faceplate with a piece of old vinyl record. It looks fabulous. I have been unable to figure out what actual make it might have been so I refer to it by the label on the record: Coronet.

June 22, 2015
Banned Rehearsal 888 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt
Enjoying August in June we played on the porch of our house (as Karen says) "on a farm in a forest in a city by the sea."

June 24, 2015
The Representatives Demo - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Neal has yet another new project to throw songs at. We did a quick&dirty session to document seven songs so that the projected band might learn them.

Playlist

Live

June 19, 2015

Gradus (269) for Fux, Tesla, and Milo the Wrestler - Neal Kosály-Meyer
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

each ovoid mark was made to memorialize a played note, relative size representing locally perceived dynamic of attack. the vertical marks are the boundaries between rungs. Neal's score for the evening is printed below. Stop by in a week or so and the graphic won't collide with the side bar.

Recorded

June 16, 2015
Guitar Hell - Incredibly Strange Guitar - Pete Comley

Post Fripp, post progpunk (with undertones of Charles Dodge), all mastered with that FarTooClose® digital feel. Picaresque, but complicated by sudden interruptions. Getting his jollies with wrecked up sound.

On September 23, 2002, I wrote: "aside from being generally entertaining, what's fun about this is the flatfooted gadgetry of it. All segues are transparently what they are - no fooling here. It just is garbage."

Invention in C Minor - Billy Joel

Utterly unremarkable.

Vampire Mustache - Steaming Wolf Penis [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

Its bald assertion of presence is as though it were clinging by fingernail to the edge of a precipice.

Donne III.19 -  Benjamin Boretz

as gently done as begun

an eternal residue suspended in an interior, limitless space.

June 17, 2015
Felicissomo sono - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

the commentary seeps in the window opened between D and E-flat.

Konzert in D Major BWV 1050 - Bach - Festival Strings Lucerne, Rudolf Baumgartner, Aurele Nicolete, Josef Suk, Christiane Jaccottet

Processes ripen to states. From states emerge processes.

Keyboard Sonata in C Wq. 48 #5 - CPE Bach - Miklos Spanyi
Keyboard Sonata in D Hob. XIV:5 - Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 14, 2015
Duet 150614 - Keith Eisenbrey
Going into this session I was uncertain what I wanted to pair with clavichord. Among the most intriguing possibilities were washtub bass and tin whistle. In the end I did my best to play both at the same time.

June 15, 2015
Gradus 268 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

June 19, 2015
Chapel Elevator 150619 - Keith Eisenbrey


I had a free moment before Neal's Gradus performance to record the sound of Seattle's most sonorously engaging elevator rides.

Playlist

Recorded

June 6, 2015

Preludes and Fugues (selections) - Shostakovich - Shostakovich

Rather than being at one with, and ever-creating, the tonal world in which they exist and persist, these float precariously, as on a boat perched on an obliquely gravitic tide. The sea lists around us, emptier now than in the ever-referenced past.

Blue Suede Shoes - Carl Perkins [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Each part alike aware of its balance and bounce.

Come On - Chuck Berry [from The Best of Chuck Berry]

Rock solid everything but guitar, which blows like the wind all over wheresoever.

When a Man Loves a Woman - Percy Sledge [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

How he wished he never loved thee, let him count the ways.

String Quartet #3 - Elliott Carter - Julliard String Quartet

A rain forest seen in all its particulars, from all frames of reference, at all removes, in each scale of magnitude.

Night Moves - Bob Seger [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

One of those cleverly disruptive lexical shifts that is more effective than it ought to be, as moves moves from noun to verb, as night moves from adjective to noun, the syntax of each word lurching to the left, as the song's voice moves from active ("working on my night moves") to lyric imagery ("the night moves").

Go Wild In The Country - Bow Wow Wow

a calibrated whine/tantrum.

Word Up - Cameo [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Clarity preserved by tying up all the resonances in tight little bunches, shrink-wrapped.

June 9, 2015
Syrens - St. Elmo's Choir

An album of sea-shanties (mostly I think of English origin) arranged for female voices. Reminiscent in a way of the more famous Bulgarian folk songs that made such a splash a few decades back.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 7, 2015
Duet 150607 - Keith Eisenbrey

I improvised on toy steel drum and then on wooden transverse flute.

June 8, 2015
Banned Rehearsal 887 - Pete Comley, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


Our first porch session of the summer, recorded using a four-track zoom, two channels aimed at the porch, the others aimed into the neighborhood.

Playlist

Recorded

June 4, 2015

Concerto in G Major - Ravel - Paris National Orchestra, Paul Paray, Monique Haas

Each movement a different take on motoric rhythm. The first starts slap in the middle of what it had been doing for some time (see Stravinsky, below). The second, lovely to die for, a slow waltz slipping awry. Full of tunes that fit fitfully in their ostensible meter.

Quartet #4 - Schoenberg - The Vienna String Quartet

Amazingly alive, melodically, in all its parts. Each moment in each voice unquestionably about something. Each moment an adjective, so thickly woven together that the token subject, the something, is irrecoverable.

Sonatina for Piano - Nancarrow [from Lost Works Last Works]

It occurs to me that two or three sufficiently nimble pianists could pull this off pretty well. Would the loss of its mechanical precision be a mortal blow?

Scherzo a la Russe (symphonic version) - Stravinsky - London Symphony Orchestra, Michael Tilson Thomas

Stravinsky's gambits: The reveals, both sudden and gradual; the veer; the back to business. Lively tunes that wander through the parts of his rhythmic mechanisms. Once it has wound itself up to celebratory heights it stops as though the tape ran out too early.

In Session at the Tintinabulary


May 31, 2015
Duet 150531 - Keith Eisenbrey
An improvisation on 8 pitch (western diatonic tuning, more or less) angklung and steel string acoustic guitar.

June 1, 2015
Gradus 267 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

A tone of complex timbre will divide, branch, bend: become refracted by its passage through time's prism. Careful balance will bring out the stepwise motion of B-natural to C-sharp, with the B arising from the E-natural 19 semi-tones below. The subtle, unplayed, G-sharp 19 semi-tones above the C-sharp fills in a lovely E Major triad with added sixth.