Playlist

Live

May 20, 2017
The Magic Flute
Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle

When it comes right down to it, I've probably spent more time trying to make something of TMF than Mozart did. And after all that it isn't much more than a very pretty picture book - sex education in a patriarchy.

May 26, 2017
Beverly Crusher
Dead Bars
BOAT
Ramona
Barboza, Seattle

What a wonderful evening for people watching downstairs at Barboza! Karen and I, after a lovely dinner at the Tin Table, (up a venerable flight of steps on the second floor of the Odd Fellow Building, one of the few unmistakably grown-up places to be at that end of the hill) staked a place to sit beyond the bar from the stage. We could see both stage and crowd, the scene at the bar, and through two round windows the faces of the newly arriving coming down the stairs. Fine cinema in the play of the small groups of friends mixing. All the young people so beautiful, so awkward. I got to thinking about how Seattleites dress up to go anywhere. For a punk show on the hill you've got to look just right, but that just right also has to look like you just grabbed something out of a drawer.

The bands acquitted themselves well: BC nailed the tempo shifts from song to song (have they heard the Seeger String Quartet?); DB is ever a joy, bubbling with good feeling; B was a like a history lesson, in a really good way - the influences were there, shades of sounds from all over, integrated with great care; R, I want to say sounded like the 80's, but like the actual lived-in 80's, not the "the-80's-are-in-again" 80's.  One of those nights when the party on the stage and in the room are one.

Recorded

David Gilmour

May 21, 2017
Jean Genie - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Structure bit: how the little rave-up in front of the last chorus sets up the long rave-up-from-below that ends it.

Money - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

A little something for all those guitar aficionados out there, Gilmour laying it out real pretty.

Banned Rehearsal 62B - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]

The next day we were performing at Brechemin, and this was the rehearsal for the 2nd part of the show, consisting of 'sudden songs'. That particular project was at an awkward stage, since they weren't part of the regular sessions anymore and we felt that we were performing something from the past instead of something we were doing then. The last 20 minutes or so of the tape are taken up by some collective soul-searching, which is most of the reason I'm not posting this one on soundcloud.

Immediate Impound Zone - Infamous Menagerie

Heldenalto fronts a glorious noise.

May 23, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 422 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 1996]

Holding a 40 foot long drowsy dragon puppet aloft. Its parts are not solidly connected to each other, so pushing the whole anywhere is cumbersome. Intricate negotiations until it gels and a long winding down.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

This was the last take we did at Jack Straw in May of 2005.

Gradus 91 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2006]

Water dripping in a dark cavern. Silence as discipline, as the act of listening without acting, expounding non-speaking.

May 24, 2017
Missing The Trail - Brian Cobb [from Campfire Songs] - Craig Garretson

Panic! Every strange detail could be an attack.

Banned Telepath 43 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy [February 2016]

Part of what became Banned Rehearsal 903. Scribbling tiny notes on tiny papers.

May 25, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus IX - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

The slower second fugue makes explicit what we always guessed was going on inside the whole time.

Quartet in D, opus 76 #5 Hob.III:79 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

This is intense. One could imagine the late Beethoven quartets as an attempt to do something even half as fine. An insider's music, convulsive, grabs body-mind and wrests it aloud.

Blackville - Hazel Meyers [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

The implicit top-down hierarchy of concert music gets a (deserved) bum rap for its stratification of labor (conductor is in charge, players do what they're told / master and slave). But this more demotic music developed its own hierarchy of function. Rhythm supports melody, everybody knows their place.

I Can't Get Mississippi Off My Mind - The Dorsey Brothers [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Arrangement as an assertion of control, chaotic forces kept on a leash. Hard high hat cut off.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 22, 2017

Banned Rehearsal 935 170522 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

May 13, 2017

Gamelan Pacifica presents

Lou Harrison at 100 Years:

The Seattle Connection

featuring Gamelan Pacifica and Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet

directed by Jarrad Powell

with guests:

Heather Bentley, viola and violin

Jennifer Caine Provine, violin

Paul Taub, flute

Bonnie Whiting, percussion

Maria Scherer Wilson, cello

Wayward Music Series, Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

May Rain (1941)

Gending Park Chokro (1976)

Threnody for Carlos Chavez (1978)

Pathetan Wantah, laras pelog pathet lima (in remembrance of Lou)

Ladrang Epikuros (1981-82)

Air in G Minor (1947)

Končerto por la Violono kun Perkuta Orkestro (1959-1940)

timbre

mix at

certain edge

of the set of overtones

that particular sort of

slowing down we do at

ends - coded differently

as a structural cue

it turns everything

into a microtonal

landscape

the parts rely on each

other not just to

keep together but

to be what they

are within what

they are singing

a particular

way with the

sensibility of

how things wander

off

it is extraordinary how something so ordinary could be so extraordinary

drone

membrane of a soap-bubble lake

flute swallow-fleet

rippling swift across

Recorded

May 14, 2017

We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

What we want to hear from the cool: "Join the party!"

Banned Rehearsal 245 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [January 1991]

Jump right in. magnetic tape echo spiral residue reconfigurable membrane morphing drum we can
hear our bodies moving by their occlusion of sound. Hangs in there for a good long time not being music. Try different settings! Fluid transit intention. Now we're plucking and plunking.

My Stuff - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Female point of view as such, in contradistinction to the more typical pop-sensibility: What from a male point of view the male would love to believe is the female point of view, but probably isn't, at least not straight out, without the slow poison.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

The third take from the Jack Straw recording session of May 2005. The reverb, strangely, confines the music, envelopes it, gives it skin and face.

327 - Black Horse [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

In what social context is this appropriate? War? Riot? Steam Letting? The danger of raw emotional evacuation is that the steaming turd has a social effect, and it accumulates.

Isaiah 60:1-5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

A recording we made at home in January of last year. What gives the composer in me pleasure is how the accompaniment spotlights the voice, following it closely, like an aura, a glow.

Paradox Bagatelles - Craig Pepples - Sascia Pellegrini

each atom spaced so as to reveal aspects of itself that would otherhow not make impact :: these atoms are all and each clearly about the thing they are all and each saying, spoken clearly :: the sense in which they are a plural of bagatelles is that those animals, those bagatelles, must be all in the sequence, lumpily interspersed, grazing.

May 16, 2017

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus IX - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Long tones are short-term drones. A florid fugue plays the surface of a sedate fugue.

Quartet in C Major, Opus 76 #3 Hob. III:77 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

Kept safely deep within this very model of a repertoire string quartet (all to be admired and copied): worries, hesitations, concerns. The finale, party crashing, wandered in from some minor key quartet.

String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

Scraps of bits, unaware they are part of any sort of design. Commentary and disagreement. Full of sudden shifts, shortcut modulations, make do with where we have gotten to [in order] to get where we must go. Nothing else quite enflames the soundbox like scribble-bowing, glowing hot.

May 17, 2017

Deep Henderson - Charlie Straight [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Fat precision. Like a sloppy drunk clearing a pool table to the last spinning ball. No sophistication, but deep for sure.

Easy Come, Easy Go Love - Sunny Clapp [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Crammed (frat boy phone booth). More fat precision.

Crying Holy Unto The Lord - The Blue Chips [from Goodbye Babylon]

Appropriation of the profane by the sacred, or invasion of the sacred by the profane?

Get Ready for Christmas Day - Rev. J. M. Gates [from Goodbye Babylon]

Digging through the rhythm of language into the substrate of melody - it breaks off just before ignition.

Boyd Raeburn

Over The Rainbow - Boyd Raeburn [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Runs through more presets than a casio. Every possible arrangement of the tune in quick succession.

It Could Happen To You - Bud Powell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Same deal as above, but all by his lonesome. (Chopin!)

My Heart Belongs To Daddy - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

The image of: independence from the beat, as though just talking, except that it never wavers from being exactly where it needs to be. She may be hiding behind the male point of view's desire for what they want the female point of view to be, but she does it while openly dripping the fatal drops into your drink.

Hello Mary Lou - Ricky Nelson [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Star Vocal! Hear it Here! (a blended orchestration of echo effects) Repeat with instruments.

One Of Us Must Know - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Excuses, excuses.

Vincent - Don MacLean [from American Pie]

Well Don, I'm sorry, but "snowy linen land" is just puke-worthy. Wodehouse had your number decades ago (see "pale parabola of joy".)

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 15, 2017

Gradus 310 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Quasi-similar motion (pitch-class nearness by shortest route) as countermotion. Take that, MF! 

Playlist

Recorded

May 9, 2017
The Stampede - Fletcher Henderson [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

The rhythm of our focus is composed into the arrangement - long solos, quick breaks, choruses flipping from instrument group to instrument group (changing channels).

A Lazy Farmer Boy - Buster Carter and Preston Young [from Anthology of American Folk Music]

Drawing attention to our internal presumptions of imminent profanity by the oh so clever near misses. An old trick, still works.

Two Old Maids - Billy Mitchell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Among many, another low point in public discourse about sexual orientation: deriding the other as an obscenity.

When Was Jesus Born? - Heavenly Gospel Singers [from Goodbye Babylon]

Mel Powell

Rehearsed so as to sound invented on the spot, but is caught going round and round until it doesn't.

Lover Man - Mel Powell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

French film noir score, a tone poem with hints of Ellington, Gershwin, or Paul Whiteman.

The Happening - Paul Gonsalvez [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Nothing fancy in the arrangement, just solo over accompaniment.

Easy Living - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

Wish fulfillment for the 50's man.

February Piece 1961 - Cornelius Cardew - John Tilbury

Cornelius Cardew

I kept thinking how melodious this was, though made of sharp edged sweepings.

Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

As in Paul Gonsalvez above, nothing really but poetvoice solo above an accompaniment. Our focus is not to waver.

May 11, 2017
Till Tomorrow - Don MacLean [from American Pie]

Not a horrible song, but would benefit greatly by stripping off the strings and stuff, dialing back the reverb.

Suffragette City - David Bowie [from Changes One]

This plays a kind of strip tease with itself, shedding song parts along the way until it's nothing more than its own hook.

AKU (midi) - Keith Eisenbrey


In 2004 I made this midi version of my 1981 synclavier piece. There are a couple three glitches in the sound - alas, I no longer have that midi box to try and fix it. This version preserves the pitch and time schemes, instrument differentiation, and, at times, the curiously uneven way the sound hangs in the room - move your head ever so slightly and the sound shifts dramatically. Something about standing waves, I presume. It loses some of the subtle envelope and overtone differentials that were in the original (though they didn't really come across all that well anyhow). And I suppose the moment in the original where the sci-fi tanks blast through the church walls is (unfortunately) rather more elegant and nuanced here. The balance is not optimal, but it does gain some sparseness and clarity.

Its internal sense of what it becomes as it goes along is cumulative, like the Sibelius of Tapiola, but a better way to put it is that, it isn't entirely unlike that. It is this aspect of it that I, as its composer, find most gratifying.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 8, 2017
Banned Telepath 55 170508 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Rumor has been floated that Aaron will send some sound from Anchorage, so the full version of Banned Rehearsal 934 will have to wait. Our local sound is here for all it's worth.

Playlist

Preface

"So when I ask myself a question about thinking about music it devolves naturally into questions about the relationship between understanding and experiencing: not questions, for me, of either/or, but of hierarchy, of the direction of implication, and, to put it crassly, the most basic questions of personal goals and values. Are the ontologies of understanding-structures intercompatible with the ontologies of experiencing-episodes? Are they contingent upon one another, mutually, or in either direction? In another register, I may ask: is aesthetic perception distinct from extra-aesthetic perception, that is, from what I might call analytic perception?" Benjamin Boretz "fourth and long in Baltimore" Open Space Magazine Issue 12/13 fall 2010/winter 2011

Texts

Live

May 5, 2017

Seattle Composers' Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

John Kammerer and Rebeka Ko

New Music for marimba + electronics

They partly construct and partly conjure a wall-less but circumambulatable space. Oh so many crannies, meadows, brooks, and glens to explore!

Patrick O'Keefe

Morning Stroll - Emerald City Saxophone Quartet: Barbara Hubers-Drake, soprano; Molly Pond, alto; Harold Rosenkrans, tenor; Jim Glass, baritone

Patrick tells that this piece is about distractions from a stroll. Personally I think that's backwards. For me this was about scattershot distractions surprising themselves in discovering that it is a strolly sort of thing they are doing.

Jeremiah Lawson
Guitar Sonata in A major

A tender memory of a ragtime intimacy.

(On piano the energy of playing notes is vertical to the string - at an arced near-right angle.The face of the sound comes to us reflected off the lid, we hear it as though in a mirror. But here the energy of playing notes is horizontal to the string - across them at a near-horizontal. The sound comes to us directly from the soundboard. We hear its face directly.)

John Teske
ad;sr (vectorscores) - Neil Welch, Evan Woodle, William Hayes

(a short segment of a long space)

read-

ing

a-

long

read-

ing

a

long

road

read

a

long-

ing

read

a

long-

ing

road

Recorded

May 1, 2017

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus 8 - J. S. Bach - Zoltán Kocsis

A triple fugue attempts escape velocity through stretto alone.

String Quartet in B-flat Major, opus 76 #4 - Haydn - Amadeus-Quartet

We are addressed as colleagues and familiars.

May 2, 2017
String Quartet in C-sharp minor, op 131 - Beethoven - Quartetto Italiano

This recording was ripped from 1970's vinyl. (The past and its thwipdips.)

wafting smoke falling silk

the camera pans up to fade

the memory of a quartet

broken linear dreamlogic

the past is the price paid for this moment

it earns its odd threads

by sacrificing so many other paths