Playlist

Preface

"Here matter is not what matters, but instead 'mattering' as inter active processes that take place between a diversity of matters, human beings in interactions with other human beings, human beings interacting with other non-human beings, including inert things, producing a diversity of situations in sounds, words, gestures, dances, visual traces, acts, ... Each time the complex layering of active material elements that influence each other in conflicting multidimensional intercourses, gives rise to the emergence of a peculiar situation that can never be exactly repeated, due to different circumstances and agencies. And therefore mattering, even if a stable instituted disposition will be the guaranty that something of importance can emerge, has to do with ephemeral forms of experience, with work in progress without progress, in which matter is continuously revived, far removed from definitive immutable truths." Jean-Charles François "What Matters" Open Space Magazine Issue 21 spring 2018

Texts

Recorded

August 21, 2018
MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers - Leonard Bernstein -  Alan Titus (Celebrant), Norman Scribner Choir, Berkshire Boy Choir, Studio Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein (Conductor)

It was not my intention to be blogging about this piece on LB's birthday, it just worked out that way. I spent a certain amount of time with this back in the day, and it ends up, frankly, leaving a bad taste. What isn't cribbed from others undermines itself irremediably. And he keeps hammering the Author's Message home. Hammer Hammer Hammer. Then some more hammering. The rotting corpse of Big-Tune Romantic Triumphalism on obscene display. Every possible end point strung together end to end without purpose. It won't help. Larded with ear worms and sodden with gaudily lit up irony. Slightly higher brow Andrew Lloyd Weber. Ugh.

August 22, 2018
Stray Bits - Keith Eisenbrey, Dave Jones, Aaron Keyt [November? 1981]

the tail end of something lame from 1981, left over at the end of a tape re-used to capture something else.

Baby Grand - Billy Joel with Ray Charles [from The Essential Billy Joel]

Bad Bernstein, lame bits, and now Billy Joel. I was not expecting anything remotely as fabulous as this is. BJ does a creditable RC impression both singing and playing - I don't think I could reliably pick out which was which without seeing it done. It's as though Ray were teaching Billy how to sing his own song. So far, hands down, this is my favorite cut on this album.

Banned Rehearsal 270 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [October 2001]

gently begun til bowing takes off and opens up though never not gentle
spring in a tube
inaverse to playing out loud shaking scraping backforth rhythms restless sleep
JJumpUp?
Ring the Bells! Ring the Bells! Jingle Bong HOI!
oh dear we woke the sprite
eruption of radio
Aaronsbundler shatters apart slipjointedly
someone pitched 104 pitches
back to gently restful with guitar and bells and strikes upon the imperturbable going
on tribes of drums ongoing
we return to spring in a tube

August 24, 2018
Eight Pieces for Violin and Cello - Handel - Philharmonia Virtuosi

starts honestly, tuning up
just enough substance to allow music to be made of it, almost Couperinish, but less overtly sophisticated
bending toward neo-classical phrasing rather than wallowing in baroque interweaving
concerns balance bald - almost Randallian
by the book balance of phrase disturbed by inner disconsistences
or
we deafen ourselves to many things by applying, as the whole point, balance, rather than using it as only a frame of reference within a more twisted aesthetic
how many ways can the utterly stable be not at all stable not at all
within these balanced boxes metrical hefts shift in close pre-Copernicusian dance

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 20, 2018
Figure Study 180820 - Keith Eisenbrey

Neal couldn't come over for Gradus so I flailed away on the keyboard for awhile.