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
|
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? |
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
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
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