Playlist

Recorded

August 13, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XIV - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Two roles: fast note role / slow note role. The voices switch. The action is all in the handoff.

Schöpfungsmesse - Haydn - English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner, Monteverdi Choir, Ruth Ziesak, Bernarda Fink, Christoph Pregardien, Oliver Widner, Susanna Spicer, Peter Butterfield

Within the larger ritual of any mass are subrituals of affect: where the fugues are; the play of solos, ensembles, and chorus; what sort of music the et incarnatus is; how to set up and word paint the et resurrectus. Haydn had this stuff down cold and played for keeps. It is this example, no doubt, that kept Beethoven looking over his shoulder.

August 15, 2017

Count Basie, most righteous hat

He Likes It Slow - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five with Butterbeans and Susie [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

Yep. It's about sex.

Business in F - Gene Kardos [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This one too, but on top of the fine playing is a subtly organized harmonic rhythm.

Lady Be Good - Count Basie [from The First Records He Ever Made]

Suggests the tune, then riffs on the suggestions as though they had been the song all along.

Lady MacGowran's Dream - Woody Herman [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Prog jazz? Classy and upscale at least, nothing jolts. A table in this joint will set you back friend.

Denial - Miles Davis [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

No past for lingering, no time for it. This boat moves.

C.T.A. - Art Pepper [from Playboys]

Harry Partch, as a beat

Sound so dry and studio controlled it's as though there is no room in which this music sounds. Kind of creepy.

Water! Water! - an Intermission with Prologues and Epilogues - Harry Partch - Gate 5 Ensemble, John Garvey

It strikes me that HP is, as a theater composer, heavily invested in the Wagnerian ideal. The music and the theatricality are irretrievably intertwined zusammenkunstwerklich. That and he clearly wants this music to transform you, radicalize you. He fairly shouts it. He offers music criticism in the form of music theater. The subject matter is everything classical, everything of which he is ostensibly not in favor. And it's fabulous too.


Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Playing the jongleur, quite well too.

Echoes - Pink Floyd [from Meddle]

The anthem that could have been subsides into bluesy noodles, not unpleasantly, but it strikes me now as distinctly less weird than it did back in the day. Boys taking their gear out for a jam.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 14, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 941 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer