Playlist

Recorded

December 22, 2018
King Arthur Act 5 - Henry Purcell - Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet

The birth of the distinction between high art and low art can be blamed on the concept of Royalty and Nobility. The idea of Learned Court or Church Music, as an economy, allowed only the Learned to be written out, writing being the only means of preservation outside of oral tradition. The demotic appears in written form only through imitation by the learned and otherwise is left to its own devices, its praxis handed down personally - a process that did not stop at the courthouse or churchhouse doors. It remained there also, as always.

Nänie Op. 82 - Johannes Brahms - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw

consistently engaging as a play of sound colors
nice orchestration!!
a symphonic movement with one of Brahms' few harp parts
about as fine a piece as any other of his

December 26, 2018
Grandpa's Spells - Jelly Roll Morton - George Mitchell, Edward 'Kid' Ory, Omer Simeon, Johnny St. Cyr, John Lindsay, Andrew Hilaire [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Arrangement is,
as composition is,
a tool for timbral amplification

Adagio for Strings - Samuel Barber - Berliner Philharmoniker, Semyon Bychkov

poignant incomplete, enclosed

All The Things You Are - Art Pepper [from The Way It Was]

never losing cool in the spotlight
easy to hear
how the pairs
join

Let The Good Times Roll - The Sonics [from Boom]

a winning combo of messy reverb and narrow bandwidth

Crepuscle With Nellie (take 3) - Thelonius Monk - Thelonius Monk, Al McKibbon, Art Blakey [recorded in London on November 15, 1971]

cyclily it goes
slow and heavy round
and round and round

Eliza (Interlude) - Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [December 1981]

three short movements for spinet and (trombone or tenor tuba?)
clever and brief
but not horrible either

Breakout - Swing Out Sister [a Rescued Record]

synthy machine backed
born to be bland

December 27, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 277 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [November 1991]

guitar, autoharp, ocarina
homespun sound with infant and fuss and very faintly if I am not mistaken a radio station brought in on the waves of electric chance

violin and hand drum shiny bright with bell duet
for violin squak and infant squall

deep dynamic focus from mezzo forte on down to where the airwaves shine dimly

öbjét d'kítsch

special brand young parent sleepiness yawn

lesson:
No session or sequence of sessions is important as to where the project might be going
they are only important in the sense that they and their kind exist within the corpus
the junkyard's accumulation is the key, not the particular trajectory of accumulating
history is not as granular nor as linear as we would care to think

this music is very close, near, to our ears, inhabiting its space precisely
its space is its and none others

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 25, 2018
Fox Spit 181225 - Keith Eisenbrey

After the guests all left
a scribbled bit on the guitar my brother Paul made.

Playlist

Live

December 15, 2018

Neal Kosály-Meyer recites Finnegans Wake Part 1 Chapter 5
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

what have we here
a book
what we have here

these paper wounds
we start proper

worthily, Neal is gaining an audience for this crazy project
it is quite the thing to experience
acted but acting not
spoken but sung
a musical reciter at top of game

Recorded

December 16, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 276 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [November 1991]

Listening is thinking

thinking listening

language hegemonizes mind
so too does music

language and music engage in mutual hegemonization
language seeks to control
because it, language, is control

music seeks to permeate
so peaceful a lullaby

we busy ourselves rearranging sonic devices
drumming to serve for work song
dulcimer bridges a gap between koto and banjo
(but then the autoharp?)
lyre and lute pipe and drum
a gentle concerto for mountain dulcimer and autoharp untuned

John the impaler of snails
John the emboweler of otters
minor masterworks of the limerick art, by Aaron

recorded in The Spaceship Tintinabulary on its generation long journey to The Center of the Unknown Universe

a bell is a cymbal with pious pretensions
toy piano toy accordion toy drum
trio contrapuntesque

My Northwest Home - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

more string play

December 18, 2018
24 Preludes 1-4 - Ken Benshoof - Keith Eisenbrey [June 2006]

My performance here focuses on the piano thinking rather than on the genre thinking, in order to make plain what is optional in the notation.

Spokane - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

She does not rhyme "gold watch and chain" with "Spokane" (because it doesn't!)
She rhymes it with rain.

I fall in love with the fancy duo guitar stuff. Her personal geography takes care with its syllables.

Riverview Park Playfields - Keith Eisenbrey [May 2016]

We were camped then in West Seattle while our bathroom was being redone. We took a walk through a nearby park and birdsong. We cross a street at a crosswalk.

foot step rhythm like bubbling sauce
kneading crunch dough

softball in the distant wilds
more distant traffic flanges through space as space is heard

December 20, 2018
Canzon - Thomas Simpson - The King's Noyse, David Douglass [from Mascharada - Music at the Bückeburg Court of Ernst III]

a miniature opera
done in 4 minutes or so

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 17, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 972 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Recorded

December 8, 2018
How Firm a Foundation - Keith Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

my recording of December 5, 2018
unfinessed timing, but with great care to amuse

Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down - Sister Fleeta Mitchell, Rev. Willie Mae Eberhart [from Art of Field Recording, Vol. 1]

at ease with its confident command

Soundform II Cricket - S. Eric Scribner - [from Storm Sound Cycle, May 2011]

it is as though this weren't music we were listening to
but washes of layered ambiences
any story line focus is deliberately frustrated
so that we can experience this space without participating
a particular distance at which it grows dark

Finnegans Wake Part 2 Chapter 4 - James Joyce - aleorta [from Waywords and Meansigns]

outside inside
a quark an ark a bark
a beach of words like sand churned into filtered whorls of thematic synergistic jumbled geology
worlds piled into higglepiggle rhyme heaps
bits of precontext clinging
mucking up the whole weary moraine
repetitions
stammers
a dye has been applied to these lists of words
radio-ating

December 11, 2018
Aria - Thomas Simpson - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

Something about the way pitches repeat at register is more than vaguely reminiscent of Webern.

King Arthur Act IV - Henry Purcell - Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet

a musical extravaganza held together by a plot
but the extravaganza of the music is primal
which is why a dance number as a part of one of these things makes perfect sense
Wagner's through-compositional compulsion was just a way of making plain what had been developing all along, it actually lessens the importance of the music as such with which opera began its history

Schicksalslied - Brahms - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw

slow groundwork allows weightless lift
oops, dramas
setting a dense poem chorally adds density without contributing clarity, comes across like a movie adaptation of a book

Kansas City Shuffle - Bennie Moten [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

show dance upon which variations or doubles compete

Dona Nobis Pacem - Ralph Vaughan-Williams - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw, Richard Clement, Nathan Gunn, Patricia Nealon, Pamela Elrod, Sean Mayer, William Borland

much like Purcell in the knee-jerk wordpainting, but inflated by more ample resources, oppressed by the imperative to be important, National
the sentimental sanctimony of Empire
unlike Purcell in that it takes itself seriously

wordpainting fails to enhance text's meaning, it merely underlines an empty aspect of it
good for a laugh, but otherwise generally a distraction
it would help if he had any sense of timing or proportion

December 13, 2018
Concerto for Guitar and Small Orchestra - Heitor Villa-Lobos - Chamber Orchestra of St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Vladimir Altschuler, Marco Tsessos

mid20thcentury Display Concerto
a vehicle
for solo enhanced by orchestra
the play of sounds against each other - what makes a concerto a concerto - given lip service at best
given that limitation this is a rather attractive example, with melody up front

All The Things You Are - Art Pepper [from The Way It Was]

mumbling in close formation they scrawl a tune

Skinnie Minnie - The Sonics [from Boom]

woohoo!
hey!

Crepuscle With Nellie (take 2) - Thelonius Monk [recorded in London on November 15, 1971]

syncopation can be accomplished by playing ahead or behind the felt beat
or, as here, by moving the beat to where you need it, stretching and squeezing the flow into a taut rubato

Tomorrow - U2 [from October]

pipe tune
builds up
only to get to where the fade is

Rock and Roll - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

trying different vocal persona, demo-ish, (or self study)
rough song, smooth coda
what might this sound like if we were to do it this way?

Playlst

Recorded

December 1, 2018
Allemande - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

closer to clearly a dance than any of Bach's Allemandes are
being older

step kick step kick
do they all stem from the same root dance as the Polka?

King Arthur Act III - Henry Purcell - Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet

Purcell liked the noise of it
up to his elbows in liking the noise of it

a shake (ornament) on shake (word) - very clever, Henry
wordpainting as blatant as possible, visceral even
as though that were so completely the point
but also distracts some from the little seminar the notes are engaged in, as notes

and then there's a Wind Machine!

Quartet in F Major op. 135 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

four clowns
each answering

to reprise is to vary
the activating symmetries

we suspect the non sequiturs
are not so non as all that

a lull? a lulling? a trap?
(left hanging in the attentive lurch)

definitely a trap
pizzicati ex machina

Caprice - Henryk Wieniawski - Itzhak Perlman, Janet Goodman Guggenheim [from Itzhak Perlman 
Live in Russia]

an encore
a remnant of the old Music Is For Fun vogue

East Arkansas Shout - Sammie Lewis [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

picked that up (the vogue above)
a draft or older version of the land of a thousand dances
pre mashed potato too

Carabina Trienta-Trienta - Epifiana Sanchez and group [from The Art of Field Recording vol. 1]

There is a slow flange quasi-arpeggiation effect concerning the placement of the strum sound upon the strings within the presence of the recording. tape wobble or intent?

December 4, 2018
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - The Sonics [from Boom]

a reimagined throwback

Punk and its progeny being a back to the roots music, from the very root of it arises a propensity to revisit older songs and goose 'em. From this trope comes some of my favorite covers and moments: The Stranglers Walk On By; The Dictators I Got You Babe; and (live): Peterman I Can't Help Falling In Love With You; and Red Ribbon That's All Right Mama.

stripping the sheen from the 50's
bringing it home

Chordially (Improvisation) - Thelonius Monk [recorded in London on November 15, 1971]

experimental
thinking with his hands
not a finished thing and clearly not a thing intended to be finished
melody notes perched uncomfortably on lumpy chord chairs

Eliza Act I - Keith Eisenbrey, Dave Jones, Aaron Keyt [December 1981]

oh golly this goes back

in the year between my graduation from the UW and my wandering off to the East
Aaron, occasionally Neal, Dave Jones, and I would gather in the basement of Dave Jones's place north of the University and record improvisations. Over the course of several such session we improvised an opera named after one of the characters in Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick. The result is easily not all that wonderful, but it has its moments and anticipates many of the activities that came to dominate Banned Rehearsal a few years later.

the overture
intoned trombone, bass clarinet, conch? ceremonial solemn
text erupts
fairy tales

If improvisation's purpose is to elicit pieces of music then we explode that idea by trying to elicit a particular known genre of music, demonstrating just how far off things can get. And it isn't due to us choosing the wrong kind of music to elicit. We do it in numbers.

we didn't have amplification per se to play with so we moved the microphones around instead
competitive cleverility
all of a sudden I realize
hey I'm in control here

December 6, 2018
Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes - Paul Simon [from Graceland]

fancy melismas and choral drums

Banned Rehearsal 275 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [November 1991]


a piano, so, Toad Hall

as none was available at that time at headquarters
thumbpiano mixed to have presence
J operates a spring contraption and is cyclically quite amused
drum and brass with flabby lip
the organ transformed suddenly into The Show
or was that the Aaronsynth?
going on for the cause of why not go on
awake!
or drift more
fat finger tunes
some tiny whisper whistles imitating cassette ghosting
J squawks discovering agency
double double reed thingy designed for the desire to be at two with one's self
pre-toddler delight
squeamish should turn their ears aside
diaper is being changed

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 3, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 971 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt


December 4-5, 2018

How Firm a Foundation - Keith Eisenbrey

I wrote this chorale prelude-ish arrangement of the hymn tune Foundation in July of 2001, the last of three little organ pieces. For the last decade plus now I've been going through all my keyboard pieces to be sure I have acceptable recorded documentation. They all work pretty well for piano too, though this one requires some carefully applied sostenuto pedal in three or four spots.

Playlist

Live

November 30, 2018
Denise Glover and Friends (Julian Smedley and Greg Glassman)
Ristrettos Coffee & Wine, Maple Valley

Denise and I were fellow students of Ben Boretz, though we missed each other at Bard College by a few years. A year or two ago Ben recommended her first album, Pathways, so I looked into it and was pleased I had. Denise and I ended up as social media friends, and somewhere along in there I realized we lived just a few cities away. I had been waiting for a good opportunity to get to a live gig, and this was it.

With her gently focused alto voice nestling comfortably in amongst where a fiddle's D and A strings sound best, alternately joining herself on guitar and mandolin, she and her able henchmen - Julian Smedley on fiddle-violin/viola/guitar and Greg Glassman on acoustic bass guitar - presented two sets from the humming nexus of country, singer-songwriter, swing-grass, and roots rock. I'm sure I missed a few possibilities in there, so I think I'll stick with "pretty guitars, no pedal effects." And oh but the guitars sure are pretty! There was a nice mix of original songs and covers: Cochran, Dylan, Lennon-McCartney, Guthrie, Cohen - that crowd. The originals hold up just fine, thank you. Another win for the locals.

The venue was pretty noisy at first, but we sat right up front - practically in their laps - close enough to hobnob without heckling. It was a nasty drive to get there through the dark rainy traffic, but I was sure glad we did. Thank you for the lovely evening! We hope you find a way to play closer to us soon.

check out her new album: Gaps in the Stories
you'll be glad you did

Recorded

November 24, 2018
Magnificat in D S.243 - J.S. Bach - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chamber Chorus, Robert Shaw, Dawn Upshaw, Penelope Jensen, Marietta Simpson, David Gordon, William Stone

what an odd thought, that there should be a timpani part by Bach of all people
to be sure the tonic and dominant are pounded clearly

thoughtful braided melody lines

but: performed as though for a Symphony Hall audience
back when you could do that and not have it come across as out of it

one glorious protracted cadence
to rule them all!

aside: the more clearly articulated are the cadences throughout the less dramatically one needs to be with the final (a rule for balance, or an index for when in musical history one is)

comment: the biggest sounding bits of tutti lose detail in the room, a problem with performing as though for a Symphony Hall audience

November 25, 2018
Gloria in D R.589 - Antonio Vivaldi - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chamber Chorus, Robert Shaw, Dawn Upshaw, Penelope Jensen, Marietta Simpson

structurally segmented :: each activity set apart
starts with simple ones
builds carefully brick on brick
affectual boundaries are simply not crossed
life, after all, is controlled. is organized. is set.

clear or obvious structural outlines focus or allow attention to melody
a reprise, and of course, a spectacular double fugue

this is the last picture my Mom took.

I think it's at Mt. Rainier National Park

Quartet in C-sharp minor op. 131 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

Certainly starts out in Vivaldiland, plaintive imitations and resolutions
but conflicted, unstable
disintegrating

in a prior music this first would be an internal movement, only the first for special occasions, such as death

another movement: this peaceful evening cave life! friendly whist hearty humor cozy fire, chastely dance

slipping back so easily into Vivaldish
the image has invisibly engulfed us, we are among the changelings
the scaffolding of what was music elsewhere

the fogeys are gone we can risk up the dance a bit now
old house spirits present and old house spirits past

Andante cantabile from Quartet Op. 11 - Tchaikovsky - Itzhak Perlman, Janet Goodman Guggenheim [from Itzhak Perlman Live in Russia]

always the opera scene thinker, as was Mozart

Memphis Shake - Dixieland Jug Blowers [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

irreconstructible set up to make this amazing sound!
Engineer that, M***** F*****!
balance among them just upside turvy enough to bring out every telling

Jeep's Blues (Live) - Duke Ellington and His Orchestra [from Ken Burns Jazz]

Duke accompanies that big brassy sound with hardly a twiddle, so as not to overpower

Cinderella - The Sonics [from Boom]

I wants to be her man
glasshard texture into which the voice mace wails

This is, of course, the classic 1966 recording. Not so many years ago Freddie and the Screamers played a Cinco de Mayo gig in the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant in Crown Hill, Seattle. At the time I was already a fuddy duddy, and I honestly didn't think they were unduly loud at all, considering they were competing with four lanes of 15th Avenue Northwest traffic. At some point a neighbor several blocks away called the police, who began gathering at about 730. Freddie, who, at that time, was touring with The Sonics, was watching them warily, pretty certain they were about to be shut down. As a taunt, I think, he pulled out this work of brilliant punkass - at the "Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey CinderELLa" of which even I, fuddy duddy as I already was, had to get up and dance with Karen. That was when the police shut it down. When fuddy duddies dance in parking lots the party has gone too, too far.

Blue Sphere - Thelonius Monk [Recorded at Chappell Studios, London]

damn

I'm Coming Over - X [from Wild Gift]

P.O.V. (from the first person) or (to the first person from the 2nd) i.e. "I'm coming over," she said on the phone

November 26 and 27, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 85 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, George Kosály, Marta Kosály, and Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 1986]

we converse

weren't we darling?

we cover I Can't Explain
Brim decaffeinated coffee can and drums

calms down then patter tick tick plock
holding patter pitter patter in time with inhuman nature

strawberry appears 11 8 1981 Dave Jones starts scheduling students on Tuesdays
telepathic feelers

high ultra-modern jacked in fussiness
kicked in head
7PieceMatchSet bit
the imitation of ecstatic
the known path can't lead to the unknown
kill that buddha kill it

actorly feint

have it away
come on in
bring it down

November 28, 2018
Endless, Nameless - Nirvana [from Nevermind]

poly: genre-al :: tonal
multi or bi

easily my favorite cut, perhaps because it's the closest to being improvisatory, or perhaps because it's the most compositional

Row, Row Your Boat - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

a fare thee well for the well
gentle waters

24 Tonal Preludes 1 through 4 - Greg Short - Keith Eisenbrey [from my recital Preludes in Seattle, June 2006]

And I thought I would be through the cycle of 24 long since! I am just now, 12 years later, beginning to steel myself up to work on 21 through 24. Greg's piano writing is fiendishly difficult, and splendid. It doesn't seem like they should, to look at the scores, but every little detail counts.
From the outside these four are even stranger and lovelier than I remember them. As preludes, they stop and consider what they are, quite unhurriedly, but always exactingly. Another win for the locals.

Zinda - Shankar Ehsaan Loy, Siddarth Mahadevan [from Bollygood Volume 2]

takes
spilling onto each other
slowmotion Max Head-ead-ead-room
roboticize the personal

Lincoln Park Beach Walking South - Keith Eisenbrey [May 2016]

I wish there were a way to keep the handle of the recording device silent as I walk with it.

gentle wave sough and beach gravel
steps activated

the contrast between the sound of the device's own bumping and the sound it picks up in the usual microphonal way is, conceptually, very like the difference in sound we hear between what our ears pick up from the outside and what we hear when our skulls bump.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 26, 2018
Gradus 342 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

back to one note then two
none of them an A natural

Playlist

Recorded

November 18, 2018
Quartet in B-flat Major, op. 130 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

the more these unison notes get to know their fellows not the less fellowship ensues but the more specific their intra-life

the key upon which we stand is often a bit soft
just before a cadence our feet punch through requiring detour

this warmheartening mass of stringbox resonance, if we could imagine it as arising from other means than stringboxes,
what might that means be imagined as sounding like

alone

the key must be somewhere around here
look everywhere

The Prodigal Son - Rev. S. J. "Steamboat Bill" Worrell [from Goodbye, Babylon]

rhythm saying translation
gospel according to Rev. Steamboat
Amen

Blue 7 - Sonny Rollins, Tommy Flanagan, Doug Watkins, Max Roach [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

each chord to chord sequentialization they play is cross-indexed to other songs in which such exact sequentialization pre-occurred in their individual and immediate imagination

tell me true
do I or you believe Max Roach was really keeping track of where one was through all of that?
yes, do.

Working In The Coal Mine - Lee Dorsey, Allen Toussaint [a Rescued Record]

Zoolander! or slang code?

Wheatland - Oscar Peterson, N. H. Orsted-Pedersen, Louis Hayes [from The Great Connection]

settles into frenchfilm montage mode

the happiness of it treated as one might have treated a key in other spheres

the hypothetical
other
electron

Pop Pop Da Da's Empty Word Club Band - Aaron Keyt - Neal Kosály-Meyer, vocals

a precision key-bard contains its own recomposed notes (program)
what can a Da Da do? La de Da?

Da Da as (sophomoric) (insufferable) cleanser
works a charm

Hyena - REM [from Life's Rich Pageant]

the big guitar guitar guitar sound is a room they love returning to

Banned Rehearsal 274 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [November 1991]

johnny jump up?
in the pre-garage Maple Leaf Tintinabulary
before it was infested and became

Boylair

jumpup jumpup

cymbal of drumset and shrillpenny whistle join to battle high fidelity
jolly jumpup baby we have here

a drumbeat and its worthy opponents the different drummers
vowels intonate
differently hung in acoustic space
low or high on the bendy branch
rattles and cymbals totally into messing with cassette tape limits

the drums may be big in Jerseyville
but they're bigger here

6 and 3
got it to go (an ad)
Piccolos is closed! replaced by Pete's Pizza

the beads travel over the face of the ground
like a horde of antelope

there is no still point at the center of it all
Aaron sibilates a list with s sounds
everything goes (on) in the mouth
it's a stage
all the world's a

when Banned Rehearsal talks gibberish to toddlers
we overdo it
hyperintellectually
in a way that only Da Da did could

tempo on a slider

the stance from which Aaronsbundler is played
always
in motion
on the march

Lauda Anima - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [composed February 2001; recorded November 2018]


in my mind composing this I was focused on subverting the 4 4 4 4 -ness of it but ended up problematizing octave equivalence or non
seemed almost too simple when I wrote it, too obvious
I was wrong about that

November 20, 2018
Froggie Went a Courtin' - Bruce Springsteen [from The Seeger Sessions]

replication of field recording at the start
we are Miss Mousy
every song is a reason for a big fat singalong

Soundform I Voice - S. Eric Scribner [from Storm Sound Cycle May 2011]

visitation
or creek crease along the trail
creek cross creek crease

November 20, 22, and 23, 2018

Finnegans Wake Part 2 Chapter 3 - James Joyce - Jenken's Henchmaen [from Waywords and Meansigns]

as si fi ro bo vox overread from signalsphere
detailed language largely bulldozed by and under space
space synthesized joyce voice
as though humano-utteral rhythm abstracted from spellingplay picked up from broadcast
oaky doaky in episodes cued by interludes and breaks
gender in voice filter
knock knock
wanders off from digital filter to a more transparent sing song spoken area
it is with great relief that we
tuff as reset word
making silly voices
tuff

what might we make of the expanse of this? draw maps? train our microscopes? pursue dubious rumors of sense?

does the global, granular, and quotidian together gathered form a whole or only so if we close our eyes I believe in Fairies I do I do (Kathleen E saw them wearing boots)

suspicion :: the helps we get from our fellows indicate paths of pains of inquiry which, truth be told, have so often been found empty and wormy

OR

one's own associations distract into the personal

we each make of it what we will
if we will
less and less do I so will

missive from distant galaxy

OR

to decipher by xray of ruined scroll unflattenable

guns!guns!guns!guns!
ends with chantish (on the) plain cloistered (in the)

November 23, 2018
Ah, miserata vita - Johann Grabbe - The King's Noyse, David Douglass [from Mascharada - Music at the Bückeburg Court of Ernst III]

oh, how compositionally arch!
balanced with clowns
so as
to cut more deeply

King Arthur Act II - Henry Purcell - Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet

barely dramatizing outside of a desire to compose a complexity of vocal presentation, spectacular!

by stringing it together
with a plot and characters

actual stage acting not required
rather
discouraged

In Session at The Tintinabulary

November 19, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 970 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Aaron brought over a new wind instrument, a tiny little saxophone about the size of a soprano
recorder

Playlist

Live

November 15, 2018

Heather Bentley and Friends
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Heather/Dio Duo - Heather Bentley, viola; Dio Jean Baptiste, drums; (with Darren Palmer, video)

flutterby shutterby
seaby skyby
shorn of weight

cyclic himalayas crash the skyshore

morphmaps
cooperative restraint
allowance in laser focus

CHA - Heather Bentley, Amelia Love Clearheart, Carol J. Levin

giddy rhyming path
leading where it always started and began

a polydimensional shimmer song
turned a corner turned beyond the corner turned

nothing crucial not
nothing not crucial

capsules eschewed for bare feet

Recorded

November 10, 2018
Stockholm Stomp - California Ramblers [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

for dancing Charlestons for slidy strings

Boppin' The Blues - Carl Perkins [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]

the kid's done some yodeling
catching up an octave or so in unguarded dipthongs such as "y" in "baby" or "rhythm"

What Becomes of the Brokenhearted - Jimmy Ruffin [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

one wonders just how much it cost to produce this recording

all those engineers to pay
all those musicians to pay

On The Trail - Oscar Peterson Trio [from The Great Connection]

stringing a whole puppet theater of dancers
any of whom are lighter on their feet than any Astair or Kelly e'er was
one or more impersonating all or all

then things get serious

AB 7A - Throbbing Gristle [from Throbbing Gristle's Greatest Hits]

sparkly! will there be rainbows and sly unicorns?

awakes beneath it subtended slowed speech
grumbling troll

tin foil
drum snare

Banned Rehearsal 84 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, George Kosály, Marta Kosály, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 1986]

enthusiastic singing! a treasury to hear them unleashed
a different take on field recording
to think of it as field recording

and in comes MLKingJr

full feed back

captured or embraced by the mouths of apes

and back to the fingerspun glass rims
funmaker joins the fray

in layers like how we dress here
sound outfits on parade

grimly go we grimly go
gimly grow we gimly grow

dinly go we dinly go
and grow and grimly

oboi roi in gloire

some of these layers are rough and tough
energy relaxes so simply

Beethoven builds repeats ad nauseum

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Voluntary on Old 100th - Canadian Brass [from Red, White, & Brass]

brass ensembles to organ music: what bell choir music is to piano, or halfway along
another nexus: church and art music - a stubborn one if ever was

Top of the World - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

on a Toppenish farm!

November 11, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 703 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 2006]
jittering nervously theatrical fidgets
that is
fidgets portrayed the ground as level and clear
the mountains miles away

it may be night
nay it might be

it might be May
at night, nay

a feedback hovers far off, poised
ceremonial tingling tinkling bingling and bongling
care must be exercised lest it veer too near us

bells from the rafter pendant
we zero in on it

stops and then
vanishes

Bury Me Close - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

oops! already blogged this one recently oh well
knockout melody of those words

Where Are You - Rachel Harringon [from Celilo Falls]

this is the one I should have so I did
a howl to wolfmoon human moon howl
string band sneaks up on you and is perfect before you are aware it is

Gradus 289 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 2016]

and the first g preceded by quite the list of notes
an abundance in which sing precise intervals
re-deconstructing in exponentially accelerating epic grandeur
a sense of a chord sound

a combination (in a rung) is a collection, a set, a bagfull, a bag
each bag being infinite in extent and content

some long no note bits are between rungs but others aren't

King Arthur Act I - Henry Purcell - Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet

the five act format works in a smaller room where the guests can accept the shorter parts as worth the size of space
a costumed oratorio

November 13, 2018
Premier livre de pièces de Clavecin - Jean-Phillipe Rameau - Pieter-Jan Belder

the end in mind at every beginning renewed
loves that low grumble
Chopinesque suggestion of contrapuntal elaboration
never acquiescing to the fact of it
a confluence - the Gavotte of this also came up in my sight-reading cycle that same morning
order among the suite parts is satisfactory but not crucial, ad hoc is ok
except the Prelude, which must be first

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 12, 2018
Gradus 342 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

a sequence of Venn diagrams formed as a chain jumble linked by how a token is a part of a pair
Romantic Ordealism - that an artist's effort is part of the image of what the piece is as itself
plausible melody and polyphony
venntrios

November 13, 2018
Lauda Anima - Keith Eisenbrey

I wrote this chorale prelude in 2001 for organ, and only had to make a few adjustments to make it work for piano, which version I present here.

Playlist

Recorded

November 4, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 273 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [October 1991]

I am about
in tone nation
of tempo

sticks to its guns
in the red toad hall
the piano of eliza act 2

hearing J grow before our ears

becoming conscious of one's own sensations
nursery song for the young to join

I'm trying to figure out who's playing what
but the math doesn't work out
pretty certain me on piano, and Aaron on brass
so if Karen is plucking the pluckinator who's holding the baby?

domestica moltissima

a trope of complaint about free improvisation is that it always devolves into increased volume competition
this is the counterexample

a diaper is changed right there on tape

a forest of intervals none heard ever before
we wallow so in the the revel of our mis mal in tone nation

off
in all the ways
off
can be
off

Pressure Drop - the Specials

as the verse descends stepwise
the word repetition spreads
the pressure drops
(clever)

Carpe Diem Carpie - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

fishy fish tale
that giant golden horse trough in the sky

We Shall Overcome - Bruce Springsteen [from The Seeger Sessions]
Songs from the Voices on Earth - S. Eric Scribner - Ivan Arteaga [from Storm Sound Cycle May 2011]

an ambience created on the fly cooperatively
Ivan's friendly inquiries toward the sound around him
oracular

November 6, 2018
Finnegans Wake Part 2 Chapter 2 - James Joyce - Ollie Evans and Steve Potter and Co [from Waywords and Meansigns]

M Python radio play in a blender
overheard at its rehearsal
overheard at toothbrushing

multiplex the multiplex narratorices
over the backdrone
classroom at attention

such as it may be
studiorum upstarts
to me or not to me

the game goes on
distinctly understuttered
incipit intermissio

from the table
over a book
read by another

November 8, 2018Concerto in G BWV 1048 - J.S. Bach - New London Consort, Phillip Pickett

shuffling through the stacks for
great oh yeah I remember that's sooo cool! things

deep in the stacks
subindexed scary bass (truly)
almost forgot myself

query the first: how might this have sounded then?
query the next: given how it might have sounded then, among those possibilities, how amazing might we make it sound this time?

Quartet in A minor Op. 132 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

thoughts circulate in contemplation of an enormity or
but we really can't just not
well
meant
(a distracting toy)
seek chapelic comfort

4 Organ Preludes - Brahms - Craig Cramer

the tug-o-war among:
the instrument
the space
the score
the performance
the sheer sound
the recording
the abstraction

[blogger's note: Bach Beethoven Brahms (alphabetical order too!)

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 5, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 969 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

November 10, 2018
Maple Leaf 181110 - Keith Eisenbrey

I recorded some birds in our backyard this morning

Playlist

Recorded

October 28, 2018
You Need Jesus on Your Side - Deacon A. Wilson [from Goodbye Babylon]

each phrase in verse or chorus is a vector of rhetoric, preaching in the structure of preaching

Footnote to Howl - Allen Ginsburg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

hideous human angel ho(w)ly the fourth dimension kindness of the soul

Variations for Orchestra - Elliott Carter - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, James Levine

films projected on all the walls around us
but not always on all or more than one
we seek out wheretoward to attend
balancing systems of rhetorical affect
with systems of pitch

as rhetorical affect is used to clarify the pitch
the patterns of rhetorical differentiation are exploited with the hard edged systemic rigor image

to keep it civilized

clearly
the actual facts of the system
are so many red herrings

Soft Winds - Oscar Peterson, N. H. Orsted-Pedersen, Louis Hayes [from The Great Connection]

playing the recognizableness of a tone
oh that's this
knows he's on to something
but doesn't allow much high art pretension to show

Trust Your Mechanic - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters - In God We Trust]

not a happy surfer's surf rock wave
rather a rocket car g-forced blubber face

Banned Rehearsal 83 - Karen Eisenbrey (Meyer), Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

soft ball
some background noise
like a distant subaquiescent engine
softball game
repetition brings comfort
from this stability
we make inquiries
kitchen vicinity acoustic
running water
harmonica and softball shaped clay ocarina
proximity effect as improvised compositional device
at the half house pushing to 100
my tub filling in a microphoned house
running water to which we warble
mitt glove!
sneaks upon one in two
Karen to be always being present as transparent image of presence

all oc
oc mit

improvisation as conceptual multimodular composition thinking
bathtub clangy delight
Neal supplies the "the"
article to which the all is applied
and why

among our finer moments even though talking in it
extraordinarily focused on its soundworld
one channel is where Neal goes to play by himself
a guitar chord plucked?
NO! clavichord tangented
a new sound

Fear Bitterness and Hatred - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

67ish mini big guitar

"...woe my road is spoken..." 060604B - Keith Eisenbrey

string quartet for robot string quartet
getting there

Dark Star - Youth Rescue Mission [from Youth Rescue Mission]

grownup song
nicely layered backing vocals

Something of Mine - St. Rage [Karen Eisenbrey and Neal Kosály-Meyer vocals and instrumentals, recorded and produced by Keith Eisenbrey - April 2016]

in a can luscious

October 30, 2018
Concerto in G BWV 1049 - J.S. Bach - New London Consort, Philip Pickett

spendthrift rubato
if you want it straight go down the street
3 magic strokes and they appear
lofted free
shadow lines scribble and scribble cleared outside
extra dry tremolo shiver guiro

Finaletto "Di si felice innesto serbiam memoria eterna" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

over before you know it
time to hit the road

Grosse Fuge in B-flat op. 133 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

tries an ill-fitting subject on for several sizes
various success
fugue and continuous granular variations
it will never fit
none of it

Trio in E minor op. 114 - Brahms - Walter Barylli, violin; Franz Koch, horn; Franz Holetchek, piano

clearly, this was ripped from vinyl, but by whom?

single thread music
3 distinctly produced sounds become one melodic thread

November 1, 2018
Your Enemy Cannot Harm You (But Watch Your Close Friend) - Edward W. Clayborn [from Goodbye Babylon]

replacement of (words) by (fancily vibratoed high guitar)
rather a bleak sermon

Pent-Up House (excerpt) - Sonny Rollins [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

head repeat serves a stabilizing function like binary form repeats in classical
especially as here where the phrases skew off meter

Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan [from Biograph]

cultural imprint
his luck and talent and skill to have hit upon a rubric in which any can find themselves

until you step back a tidge

Just Squeeze Me - Oscar Peterson, N. H. Orsted-Pedersen, Louis Hayes [from The Great Connection]

differentiates threads of tune by how they hang in the swing

Log P - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 1981]

keyboard dueting

perhaps too compatico
nice vibrato on the stop tones though

Adeste Fidelis - London Symphony Orchestra, et al [from Listen To The Joy]

I hope they all got paid.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 29, 2018
Gradus 341 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

October 26, 2018

Cristina Valdés, piano
Meany Hall, Seattle

Klavierstück IX - Stockhausen
Pièces Froides Danses de travers - Satie
Gymnopédie No. 3 - Satie
Ein Kinderspiel - Lachenmann
Douze Notations pour piano - Boulez
Gnossienes No. 3 & No. 5 - Satie
Piano Sonata - Bartók

heaven

Cristina's performance presence ought, to my mind, to be a model for other pianists (and for more than a few violinists)
not shirking in concentration nor elegance one bit
but never bringing attention to itself, as itself, as a distraction, from the real magic that's going on
and magic it is too
say it again
heaven

Satie and Couperin, soul bros in so many ways
and both French!
imagine that

Lachenmann showed up in repertoire culture after I had pretty much given up keeping up with developments abroad
in the sense that, at least in these pieces, he is being a pianists' composer rather than a composer's composer, he reminds me of the late Greg Short

Boulez in these early pieces trying on coats, not quite the one that fits yet

Bartók this barnburner was written the year my Dad was born

Part of the reason I gave up keeping up with developments abroad was the overwhelming experience that was my discovery in 1978 or so, and exploration ever since then, though certainly less so now, of the music of Stockhausen. In a way, after that, I didn't need another or very much more music from abroad. And IX was certainly among the pieces that stuck. The overt severing of the realms, the note playing realm from the resonance billowing realm, cracked a door open in my own work, a door that was already pretty loose on its hinges, truth be told. It is fascinating, now, 40 years on, to hear that wild ass music that riveted me in my seat in the UW School of Music's lower-level listening library, trotted out into the clear air in Meany Hall, right there in public as an ever so venerable hunk of repertoire. I would be more disturbed if Cristina hadn't made it so clear that what it truly is is a poem of bone and blood, awesome magic

And now if you'll allow me an amused aside
about a week ago Cristina had, as a sort of mock-desperate joke, asked if anyone would be willing to write the program notes for her and by the way they are due tomorrow. My not entirely unserious response was to ask if she had ever considered not having program notes at all. imagine then my delight when I sit down to listen and there are no program notes! My dream came true! I must be in heaven!

Recorded

October 21, 2018
Concerto in F BWV 1046 - J. S. Bach - New London Consort, Phillip Pickett

composing to show he can
he overdid it
conception beyond any possible previous experience
see, I can write idiomatically for any and each
what you can expect should you hire me
pre-figure of Pictures at an Exhibition

Quartet in F op. 59 #1 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

the ground will begin to curve downward or drop or vanish into other grounds
the long groups that eventually seem to repeat are so repletely cross-indexed with their own internal repetitions of patterns and patterns of patterns and inner levels of levels that the grander scheme is uncanny
or, what is it that Beethoven thought a movement was? anyway?
we are being ushered somewhere into some society of some kind a refined kind
but can we trust beauty and a human face?
do we trust where we are going?
we are variously pulsed into and away in waves of envelopments
like falling into sleep

Terzetto "Ah! qual colpo inaspettato!" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

hint: follow the voice closely
get right up in its face

Symphony in A (#6) - Bruckner - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer

as though overturing an opera
IN YOUR SKULL!!!
even his by the book sequiturs sound like nons
naked quite starkly in his contrapuntal proclivities
a nervous keyboardist's way with figurational counterpoint
in order to proceed properly to Y one must pass through the membrane of X
it hurts but it lasts
never
lots
where you are when you are here
from within everyhuman all planes occupy every where all the time
the action is in the melodies between paired or patterned paired patterns and or patterned pairs: between
the still
within
contrary
the motion lurching through similar the stretching within obliqueness
as succinct as it gets

October 23, 2018
Sonata in F op. 99 - Brahms - Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma

the face of this collaboration is not always turned outward (usward) nor really even often
loves to linger, hold a thought in its hand, Yorick alas
tunes spill out from their vessels

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 22,2018
Banned Rehearsal 968 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Playlist

Recorded

October 15, 2018
Sonata in C minor - Pietro Locatelli - Philharmonia Virtuosi [from Musical Evenings With The Captain]

ornamentation is a supplemental pointer
as is repetition
and scale degree
function

it points

but what is it that points
and ought we to
blindly
and boldly

follow?

Moving On Without Us - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

told in stanzas
featuring a monolineal refrain

Rat Hotel - Charming Snakes [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

hot wheels stunt track driver
the familiar push button thrill
the inevitable frustration of which
forces the ear into the tight packed mosh of feedback
for anything to bind it

Songbirds and Stillness - S. Eric Scribner - Ivan Arteaga, Neal Kosály-Meyer [from Stormsound Cycle, May 2011, private recording]

sound floating free of intent, barely anchored to seafloor

kelpish in swaying slumber

gravissimo

October 16 and 18, 2018
Finnegans Wake Part 2, Chapter 1 - James Joyce - Robert Amos [from Waywords and Meansigns]

advertisement
very plain
intro blurb at length

the rhythm of one strand of punnish
the wordless either

did these ways wend
they and the world is made free

plain speaking reading or telling

word by word

to the left leans a guitar whose not recently tuned strings being open and exposed are variously reverberated by the word by word formants and resonunciations of the speaker's head

to make a long story badder
apocryphal of rhyme
ear relevance

tongues' promiscuities

curtains

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 15, 2018
Figure Study 181015 - Keith Eisenbrey


Neal, being deep in rehearsal for Chapters 4 and 5 of FW, couldn't make it to do the Gradus, so I kept the piano company.

Playlist

Live

Dead Bars, not Counterpunch. 

Showbox at the Market, Seattle, 

October 11, 2018

October 11, 2018
Dead Bars
Counterpunch
The Bombpops
Strung Out
The Showbox at the Market, Seattle

Our long-time favorites Dead Bars opened at the Showbox.

Let me say that again.

Dead Bars opened at the Showbox! Woo Hoo!

We have watched and listened to this fine little band rise from their beginnings as a one-off pick-up band thrown together to play a few songs before Your Mother Should Know came on at the Comet back in 2013 - a great show that also included two of my other local favorite outfits: Rob McDonald's Canals of Venice and Emma Danner's Red Ribbon. It was our anniversary, so Karen and I were delighted to be there as they spread their wings on the ample Showbox stage. They even played Regular, which is one of Neal's songs!

Counterpunch hails from Chicago, The Bombpops, who were down one regular member to attend her sister's wedding and for whom their producer filled in, if I got the story straight, were from San Diego, and Strung Out has apparently been doing their thing since 1989. This is not the first time we have been to a show because the opener was somebody we knew, and in which I had never heard of the headliner.

Recorded

October 8, 2018
Concerto in F BWV 1047 - J. S. Bach - New London Consort, Philip Pickett

subdued trumpet touched to balance flute and strings
outsized no more
each part given its full color and articulation
not a reduced orchestra, but a chamber ensemble of only the players absolutely necessary to cover the parts

Quartet in E minor Op. 59 #2 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

do not approach directly
it will struggle to break free

a vacancy in its middle

third movement gets stuck in tuneland (which paid the bill) and has to work mightily to sneak out the back corridor

fourth movement
here be the cheerful hero youth to finally grasp the prize
if only there were any end to braggadociations

October 9, 2018

new moon

Aria "Il veccio cerca moglie" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

was setting it in far off Seville just enough distance to pass the censors?

Answer after some research, sort of, but not really. Beaumarchais had spent some time at the Spanish court. What a crazy life he led! What other 18th Century watchmaker's name springs so easily to mind?

Stockyard Strut - Freddie Keppard [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

theory:
before imitators imitated celebrities they clowned types and critters
anything to get a laugh
the act made more money if there was music
so the band learned to imitate the imitators imitating clown types and critters
somebody's tappin'
everything is a show

Howl (for Carl Solomon) - Allen Ginsberg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

would prefer to read without hip static

post holocaustic flagellation
tunes his pitch to the room of words

Moloch
the vast stone of war

oh Victory
forget your underwear

Twenty-Four Tonal Preludes: 9 through 12 - Greg Short - Keith Eisenbrey [June 2009]

I like my playing on these, deliciously reckless
Greg's piano writing is brilliantly orchestrated
Busoni-ish in expanse

Smile - Oscar Peterson [from The Great Connection]

each impact keystroke chord struck
slips so perfectly into the granular swing

dropped from above

such clear thinking!

Intermezzo - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt

A story teller tells a tale with tune bits
edges between segments are given room to breathe
by spreading them oddly among the two pianos
(even with the shuffled order of the ultrafamiliar we give it a long line lyricality)
a play
in the form of a dialog
between two pianos

October 12, 2018
Papa Legba - Talking Heads [from True Stories]

adds interest by adding sounds rather than by re-arrangement
spend-thrift
gets stuck when there are no more to add that make a difference

Banned Rehearsal 272 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [October 1991]

Aaron provides music lesson for young
and old beat drum beat drum gibberishpoems
"free space for causeless bliss"
persistent drumming drum must be tapped at all times wolves dontcha know wolves say what
do I hear slinky back there?
we howl at the leaves
missivate to the stars

pa pa hay dn's
dead and gone

but his mem ree ling ers on

in the grave his bo dee rots

these are rhymes
we teach our tots

that was a subtle use of rhyme there pal
nonsense rhymes for the outré 90s dad
absurdist radio play

best cadenza ever
you're welcome