Playlist

Live

May 4, 2018
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Prelude and Fugue in G Major - Jeremiah Lawson

J thought that there ought to be a slide-guitar fugue by now. And so now there is. We love how he uses our favorite hymn tunes for raw material. I kept wondering how many guitars he was playing up there.

My Muse and Equal Temperament - Jay Hamilton

tales told on the side
music from the performer's point of view (in that he played cello with his back to the audience)
which is the most interesting edge of this music/text piece as a theater: that we are never certain where within the personal we sit - we don't know the whole story, but we seem to be regarded as knowing the whole story, since here we are telling it.

Lyric Piece and Berceuse - Gavin Borchert

its past slipping under its present
the water closes tenderly over

lingers in languorous murk
languors in lingersome dark
each steps
out
at length

The Magpie's Shadow (excerpt) - Peter Nelson-King

A suite of aphoristic piano pieces embedded within a staged performance

that is, some of the inside-the-piano stuff, and even more of the outside-the-piano stuff, seem just enough outside as to no longer really count as piano pieces, or rather, that they don't seem to care whether that is what they are counted as.

or
some of these bits come to be like pieces and some stay bits

Recorded

April 28, 2018

He Started Building My Mansion in Heaven Today - Rachel Harrington [from Celilo Falls]

nearly straight, as though from the song book
adjusting her delivery just enough to own it completely, no more

Focus (demo of March 22, 2016) - St. Rage

St. Rage is the fictional band in my wife's novel The Gospel According to St. Rage. St. Rage is played in real life by Karen Eisenbrey (my spouse above-mentioned) and Neal Kosály-Meyer. A nice performance marred by some unfortunate technical issues with the recording.

Hughe Ashtons Grownde - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

terraced garden
tendrils twine
immersive aspects

the folks hereby dress well you can tell
and ample growndes they are too

I'll Fly to Hawaii - Brad Gowans [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Recorded in 1926, I wonder if they were still using a single microphone or not. Either way, this is a marvelously captured balance. They pronounce "Hawaii" to rhyme with "fire" (Fie-yuh). 1926. For how long had it even been possible to fly to Hawaii?

Rockhouse - Roy Orbison [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]

repeat name of song to fade
reminder as to what the name of the song is that you just heard on the radio
so you can buy it

My Romance (take 2) - Bill Evans Trio [from Waltz for Debby]

I was hearing the attitude they take toward the ostensible tune as distinctly Byrdish, playing off it, filling it out, illuminating it from all sides. This lends credence to the opinion that dramatic-arch-construction is a fatal infliction upon the lyrical. The harmonies act like vowels, making thick tunes that sound like sung lyrics. That aspect is all Evans.

The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine - Simon & Garfunkle [from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme]

For all the ironic veneer of satirical intent, this comes across as a pretty effective advertisement. B/W Kodachrome.

Unlabeled Track 12 - Tillicum Junior High School Band, Bob Runyan [from my mom's tape of a concert given March 3, 1971]

orientalism for beginning band
the Hollywood sound track concept of exotic

Slide - Walt Wagner [from Caprice]

balanced in everything
stands on its feet knees stiff
dream sequence a la Gene Kelly

April 29, 2018
Mutual Arising - Mark Hoover - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Michel Singher [from a private tape, Spring of 1981]

somewhere between Shostakovich and Ruggles
(contrapuntal thinking is a struggle!)
so legato

Hey Now - Talking Heads [from True Stories]

The rhythm parts are allowed only the time for their pitch to register on the rest of the mix, then they are stifled, stuffed, allowing a more transparent area to remain for the color parts.

Banned Rehearsal 264 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [August 1991]

analog
recorded hot
so that we would distort

not quite like it was before
the time we got it right
finally!

(one of those sessions preceded by a span in which we thought we were recording but were not because I forgot to push record/play or (forgot) to turn up the inputs I forget which)

Aaron goes all Beckett

I haven't got a clue and I haven't got a cue
I haven't got a clue and I haven't got a cue
I haven't got a clue and I haven't got a cue
But I got you

(song that trundled in)

topic: now we are making a tape it is what we are doing
in this tape the dictum to play not an instrument upon which you are able is taken literally and the image of its having been taken literally is forefront

How can an instrument be criticized for the scale it plays?
Aaron drifts off in wordpairplay
rattle me bones
wake the dead

an improvised dada opera

DADA APARA :: the absence of orange

It was that I forgot to turn on the microphones. Now we know.

May 1, 2018
Mean Model A - The Boss Martians [from 13 Evil Tales]

music fashioned old so as to demonstrate how well old fashioned music can be played

Springs of Wright - TCOR [from Sonicabal 2001]

a bit from a batch of bits and pieces for mixing with

Eyes On the Prize - Bruce Springsteen [from The Seeger Sessions]

A retelling of Who would True valour see (Bunyan) sung in singsong whisper

Gradus 192 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 2011]

measuring musical distances : pitch (all A nats so PC doesn't come up as differential), dynamic, time between and/or time we have waited since the previous and/or duration of the previous overlain by each of the instant, each time (between and among waited-for durations)

gentle iteration up high pointy pokes down lower
then all out
low

not, first, to please, but, first, to do, to be, to be doing, to do being, if you please
measured to a distance at which it is not clear that what we hear isn't from several disparate times

The regularity of Gradus's appearance in my listening (live) affects my perception of its less regular recorded appearances, in that the recorded appearances do what the live ones also do: reset, recalibrate.

Takur Takur from Dilwal - Pritam [from Bollygood Volume 2]

lively subdivisions atop a pulse

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 30, 2018
Gradus 332 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

single tones are outliers
as are the undamped
opening then into both
at once
flourishment
grip relaxed
wallowing sternly in the low notes
expanse and limit
refrain from going on
senza elaboration

May 5, 2018
Lamb Day A - Keith Eisenbrey
Lamb Day B - Keith Eisenbrey
Barn Wall - Keith Eisenbrey

Karen and I spent yesterday on Whidbey Island, which is why this blog is a day late. We attended Lamb Day at Sleeping Dog Farm, near Clinton, Washington, and I recorded two short segments of sound in homage to J. K. Randall's InterPlay cassette side Sheepshearing in Kingston New Jersey also geese and ducks of April 1982. Then we helped my brother, who lives near Greenbank, lift a new barn wall (just the framing).