December 5, 2017
UW Modern Music Ensemble, Cristina L. Valdés, Director
Brechemin Auditorium, Seattle
Tierkreis - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Caitlin Beare, Emily Acri, Chris Young, Abbey Blackwell, Hexin Qiao, Edward Cunneen
Dual-faced rather than two part, the counterpoints shadow behind as though further behind in the shadows of the shadows behind. Where is the light placed to cast these exact shadows thusly?
(Stray thoughts: rhythms of the outer (outré?) Brubeck (that is, kind of jazzy at times); Looney Tunes Back in Action (another take on the two shadowing worlds of The Tune and The Counter Tune)).
Music in Similar Motion - Phillip Glass -Caitlin Beare, Emily Acri, Chris Young, Hexin Qiao,
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| Duck Island and Duck. Green Lake, Seattle, December 9, 2017 |
How like machines we can be
if we allow it.
Nothing disturbs its shiny surface. All the parts fit. Nothing disturbs. Bots may safely sleep.
(I must admit to not being a big PG fan).
Quartet for the End of Time - Olivier Messiaen -Caitlin Beare, Emily Acri, Chris Young, Hexin Qiao
at any one time
all aim similarly
circumscription
confinement
phrased in single times
dissentless
I don't recall ever having heard this piece all the way through before. Messiaen somehow never came up for me as a student and these last 3 decades I've had so many other irons in the fire listening-wise that my experience with his music is quite limited. I was glad, at long last, to have been introduced to this piece by such a fabulous, musical, and completely engaged young crew! I love it when everybody is all in. I do indeed.
Recorded
December 3, 2017
Love Princess 1 - Isabel K, Anna K, Keith Eisenbrey [March 2006]
My 6 year-old nibling, going by Isabel at the time, wanted to make a recording so we did. The payoff? I can hear the invention of pulse and pattern in real time, the basic units of compositional form. "Do it again!" is a mythic desire. See what I'm doing this arm then this arm then this arm then this arm and the wonderful words of the names of the things that make music. Ukulele. Drum. Cymbal.
Improvisation - Paul Kikuchi [from Portable Sanctuary Vol. 1]
Signals
insect buzz flap
bbbbblapp through the air
upper edges of short waves
out at their short wave stone henge
dancing naked on the stars
Spinets undo pretense. Essentially a fancy toy piano, in careful hands entirely its own instrument with its own relation of energy input to dynamic output, box, range, quality, degree of clunk. There is a quivering in its reverberance, shaking in its boots.
December 7, 2017
The Third Pavian and The Galliarde to the Third Pavian - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]
The Pavian is, for the most part, a set of detailed solutions to the problems raised in the gap between the 1st and 2nd thing happening of anything happening. The Galliard rocks between upper and lower hemiolas. Hemiolan hula dance.
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XIX - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis
I understand there is some small controversy as to whether this incomplete quadruple fugue belongs in the set at all because it doesn't have the main fugue subject announced in Contrapunctus I. I have no particular opinion on that score, but I do note that if you fold the Contrapunctus I subject over, creasing at the 3rd note, you get the first subject of this - sort of. And parts of the other subjects also include parts of the CI subject. In the lost or unfinished portion at the end, perhaps the idea was to create that CI subject by fitting together the bits of these subjects - a new fugue arising amidst the counterpoints, a music within a music. I can't imagine it was beyond his capability.
Old Man Blues - Jimmie Blythe [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Quick alteration of just-barely-contained and not-hardly-at-all-contained.
Hard Travelin' - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]
Our internal migratory patterns. "I thought you knowed." Woody's collective I is in democratic opposition to the royal we.
Honey Don't - Carl Perkins [from Sun's Definitive Hits]
Word count economy. Leaning forward with a different bounce, but not so far from scat as all that.
Autumn - Edmund Rubbra - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from my mom's tape of April 1961]
Mood interleaved.
I'm Living in Two Worlds - Bonnie Guitar [from Dark Moon and Other Country Favorites]
Listen to her long vowel-y syllables and the rhythm of their drawings out. Rounding diphthongs in the leisurely open air.
Get It While You Can - Janis Joplin [from Pearl]
She turns on a dime to sweet
and every elsewhere in like coin
Golden Years - David Bowie [from Station to Station]
A comfy complex groove || jump cut to anguish pronouncement || then back to comfy complex.
Piano Variations - Webern - Neal Kosály [from Neal's Recital Tape May 1981]
The tape, having cooked some decades before I transferred it to digital, left ghosts of notes scattered in Webern space.
Do You Hear What I Hear - [from Hallmark's Listen to the Joy]
Those boys really worked at rounding their vowels. Completely drowned in sentimental familiarity.
In Session at the Tintinabulary
December 4, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 947 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt
We haven't played much in this configuration since the early '90s, 700 odd Banned Rehearsals ago.
December 9, 2017
Tweety Bird - Keith Eisenbrey
As Karen and I were walking around Green Lake this morning we heard this group of pootootweeters pootootweeting.
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