Playlist

Live

February 23, 2019

Dave Knott & Company, last ditch efforts

Piano Drop
Jack Straw Cultural Center - Seattle

Music for a Dropped Piano - Amy Denio
Editorials - Ski
Eleven Little Piano Drops - Gust Burns
3144 - Luke Fitzpatrick
pool - Austin Larkin
quiet time - Brandon Lincoln Snyder
Piano Drop Redux (an aural history fantasia) - Bruce Greeley
Going to Duvall - Home Before Dark
Helios - Jeffrey Bowen
Composed improvisation #1 for piano - James Borchers
Lazarus Board - Bradley Hawkins
Chopsticks - Jay Hamilton
Ground Piauno - Count Constantin
Piano Gusting - Aaron Keyt
Eviscerations Round Dropped Piano - Stanley Shikuma
HELIX-KRAB Drop-Tuned Guitar and What Remains: The Great Old Time Piano Drop Soundboard - Dave Knott

50 years ago or so, in a moment of collective glory for KRAB Radio - now Jack Straw Cultural Center, one of Seattle's treasures - a piano was dropped upon the town of Duvall, Washington. The remains have been stored these many decades until a suitable wake could be arranged.

I was honored to have had a part performing in Aaron's piece. I hope to be able to visit the installation in a couple of weeks. It will be available for public viewing through March 15.

The community remembered, inventing means, each personal, to consider both event and corpse, involving, among other things, perforce, a plenty of methods for pulling sound from a distressed harp and board, many wires still intact. marbles, hands, E-bows, computers, straws, chopsticks, magnetic tape (VHS width, I think), a fan, mallets, a jug-band, pre-recorded sounds, paper clips, . . . , commentary, profound consideration, and thoughtful ears. We come from many places, but we all washed up here.

Recorded

February 16, 2019
How Can You Do It Alone - The Who [from Face Dances]

designed so warm that the shape of the naked body of sound is muffled
body parts could be anything

Banned Rehearsal 91 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Doug Haire, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Wally Shoup [June 1986]

page from my journal

lopsided
the heavy left
lifting the tippy right
seesaw of sideward

baleful
fulcrum
crumble

Bale Crumb
Crumb Full
Full Bale

a case of righteous strumming
a base of righteous strumming
a face of righteous strumming

we are the baking of cookies
bit of a clowns in a clown car thing
glorious really
how it moves so quickly into the meta

two waltzes walk into a bar

scraps of what was there blew by

There's A Love - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

I could be convinced this is among their best

The Abyss - Keith Eisenbrey [from Preludes in Seattle, June 2006]

my 2005 piece

my 60th birthday moon angel

as echoed in our Sanctuary's chamber
(University Temple United Methodist Church)

February 18, 2019
Double Song - Matthew Greenbaum - Stefanie Griffin [from Milton Babbit: A Composer's Memorial]

impatient scrubbing but thorough and strong

Banned Telepath 49 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer, [June 2016]

first on the porch for the year it was
banjo viola clarinet intonamator gizmo traffic
soundtrack to WB pratfall animation improvised 4U
transports to inside somehow
enroomed
walls arose
tumblers on tables
as we imitate the sounds of our
inhabited
our exhabited space
we push it back
walls against those sounds

we do have windows though

screenless

intonosombulation

priesterly somnolescence

pretend you are right

in the trees to the left a shrill ball of wormy songs

sparrowclan warbles (invasive)

a mix of means

Padua II Galliard IX Allmand II - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

when one climbs to the top one's view changes to nearly fly
be flying in the blue sky
like the bird does
spirit lifting

such an idea!
to inflict upon dance tunes
all the intellectual and subtle power of polyphony
overkill upon overkill

Keyboard Sonata in B-flat Major, Wq. 65/44 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

introspective essay
expospective assay
dramatic key area grid

The Better Land - O. A. Parris - University Temple Chancel Choir, Chris Vincent [recorded live on February 17, 2019 just a few hours after I turned 60]

we sound good
our own raucous honest to God
none of our edge off

It's All Right - The Sonics [from Boom]

guitar solo takes its moment
the sound has a voice

Jackie-ing - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

Ibb - scritch my head

after his own fashion
in his own keys

playing a similar introspective game as CPEB

hits the keys that
hard cause that's
how he bends 'em

Watch Your Step - Elvis Costello [from Trust]

another songwritten song
showing off his songwriting skills for actual cred

Little Drummer Boy - [from Listen to the Joy]

must admit, those boychoir rumpapumpums are pornographic in an icky way
and brings in the whole army

Alexander's Ragtime Band - Canadian Brass [from Red, White, & Brass]

of the sort of ensemble that thrives on arrangers - a kind of symbiosis

Cream - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

lumbers heavy blues

The Field of Arbol III Malacandra - S. Eric Scribner [from Storm Sound Cycle, Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, May 2011]

the sound of a room emptied of our sound
dim spotlights for illumination of such a vast sound there is of this sound emptied room
the hush of one, listening, whalish, earned
(lovely melodic lines in the marimba rumble)

stage: presentational platform, sacrificial plinthstone, altar

February 19, 2019
Hard Times for Good Days - Dræmhouse [from Only Friends]

introspective in the sense that it speaks directly to an auditor rather than to an audience
there is no crowd out there worth speaking to

Paduan - Thomas Simpson - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

the persistence of any part, from the get go, is not tied to the persistence of any other part
except by consent
melody framed as sequence of harmonics evoked in contrapuntal fancy

Keyboard Sonata in E Major Wq. 65/46 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

the frequency and attitude of how return happens is not altogether comfortable
fancy is encouraged
the thought process of this drama is unstraight, heavily glossed
each movement so varied in its innards as to make the motion from movement to movement less forward
or at least less wrapped and ribboned

February 21, 2019
These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Nancy Sinatra [a Rescued Record]

kiss off with a guitar lick that makes all worth while

Little Rootie Tootie - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

last note of each bit is the fulcrum
compose a scribble
a place to stand

Track 7 - Empire Brass Quintet [from American Brass Band Journal Revisited]

unfixed repeat fault of vinyl (see below)
a part song hymnish ca 1900 choral anthem suitable for church or sentiment
bonus fast bit!
ripped from vinyl by recording with a boombox the playback from stereo
wireless sound leaping from device to device filtered by all possible equipment failures

Banned Rehearsal 92 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [June 1986]

we discuss tape making and self consciousness

My 60th birthday breakfast yummy

finishes but crosswise voice in book of windows
score is best performance the narcissistic orator
behave yourself
the be prefix
3 know it alls becriminating themselves
Neal begins the wake again

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 18, 2019
Gradus 344 (again) - Neal Kosály-Meyer

the paucity of pitches used can be hinted at while being obscured and celebrated
seeks: pitch maximalization within pitch-class minimization

silence sabbath ceremonially obligatory cessation or caesurae rationing

that milestone long since passed wherebefore one could confidently post-rungily assert that one had a firm mind's grasp on the set of pitches in play
not an insignificant cognitive boundary!
strike a chord like a fistful of hornets

Playlist

Recorded

February 9, 2019
Male Content - Thomas Simpson - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

empty set?

an ordered texture of durations
several orders of embedded ordered textures of durations

Alla Polacca in G, Wq. 116/8 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

scraps cut to not fit quite just so

The City Never Sleeps at Night - Nancy Sinatra [a Rescued Record]

wide-eyed cinematic distance

I Mean You - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

a pickup of three eighth-notes and a downbeat played as
a pickup of three quarter-note triplets and a downbeat, all offset by half of a quarter-note triplet
or fairly like that

October - U2 [from October]

brief
the piano figuration could turn in upon itself intriguingly
but won't

Banned Rehearsal 90 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Doug Haire, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Wally Shoup [June 1986]

the third of seven sessions made on June 7, 1986, in the attempt (successful) to get to 100 by the time Neal left for San Diego later that month

back at the half house

microphone placement
tape to the window
sacrifice the television

Wally is reading from my listening journal which I had been keeping for 3 months at that time and of which this blog is an extension 33 years later
working backwards bloglike

instructions for the Realistic mixer
Karen's going to make cookies
run the output through the ox
back in time we are in two
at once of times
time travel
time's return

sounds of us recording sounds
life within the veil
all the objects this signal has passed through
as it passes from skull to skull

mix thoroughly
combine ingredients

Salute to John Philip Sousa - The Canadian Brass [from Red, White & Brass]

what was the first military force to have a band?
or has music always lured us off to war

you can almost smell the outdoor air

On/Off - Tom Baker - Tom Baker, Keith Eisenbrey [from Preludes in Seattle, May 2006]

in which
I perform on piano
exciting its harp and board
by amplifying recorded other musics
into its underparts

by signaling to Tom
who operated the ingoing sounds
with my hat
on the music rack

February 10, 2019
Dhunki - Mere Brothers Ki Dulhan [from Bollygood Vol. 1]

with so much money evident in the production the question of heartfeltness seems inappropriate
like one of JKR's "farts in church"

Banned Telepath 49 Mississippi River Brewery - Aaron Keyt [June 2016]

sounds glinting off the echo shiny walls
a box of jewels flashing

Mascharada - Nicolaus Blyer -  - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

the multiple tempo changes make this seem a much bigger piece than can quite fit in a minute twenty four

Fantasia in G minor, Wq. 117/13 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

fabulous instrument (fortepiano?) seems to have a damper pedal
Bach the J.S. used music to exert intellectual control
Bach the C.P.E. used music to consider music

or
given the tremendous gifts of B the C.P.E.
personal, peculiar
what must it have been like to have B the J.S. as dad?

Hitch Hike - The Sonics [from Boom]

rhythmhornB3 has a luscious fuzz all through it

Introspection (take 1) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

the melody
within itself
loses itself in itself
finds within itself
melody itself

February 12, 2019
Wild Wild Life - Talking Heads [from True Stories]

it's so clean!
so clean the words don't even register
except as placeholders within the songwritery songwriting

Can You Dig It? - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

showcase: I'm what you got left (all of it)

Time Stratifications I Through a Glass Darkly - S. Eric Scribner [from Stormsound Cycle, May 2011]

sounds recur
flirt with adding

up to a sequence
resist

congealing into
a texture might be

commentary mostly
mutter art

Tetua (Jai Gangaajal) - Sukhwinder Singh, Salim- Salaiman [from Bollygood Vol. 1]

mid
distant
too close

February 13, 2019
Mascharada der Edel Frawen - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

a genteel quicker but not really quick bit
a breathtaking slow few phrases
rounded by quick slowing to slow

Keyboard Sonata in A Major, Wq. 65/43 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

master of do-overs and sharp turns
sudden shade

in this music the weather changes always

I Met Him On A Sunday - The Shirelles [from The Shirelles Anthology]

cycling through voices
one for each day
great clapping part!

Introspection (take 3) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

recorded to make you feel like you're in the keyboard seat

low left
high right

Playlist

Live

February 7, 2019
Nonsequitur presents the 34th annual
Seattle Improvised Music Festival
Hollow Earth Radio, Seattle

CK Barlow electronics / Ambrosia Bardos voice & electronics ||

ceiling pizza

Bryan Lineberry sax / Schraepfer Harvey drums / China Faith Star sax ||
Banned Rehearsal (Pete Comley, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer) ||
Andria Nicodemou vibraphone / Chris Icasiano drums

First of all, the Banned sends a sloppy big "thank you!" to Steve Peters, Nonsequitur, and the multitudes who have kept this festival going for 34 years. I have been much remiss over the years in not getting to many of its events. Thank you for inviting Banned Rehearsal to join in this time! We were all of us excited to be there, and I hope everyone there in the hollow of the earth at Hollow Earth Radio found us at least puzzling, if not as all sorts of magnificent as I honestly think we were, having heard the recording now several times. But enough of us.

CK Barlow and Ambrosia Bardos play loud electronics splayed out on a table. Their sounds push back like firehoses, scour like sandblasters. No fooling around here, you will be cleansed up raw near bloody.

Bryan Lineberry, Schraepfer Harvey, and China Faith Star live to go lickety split, or to lay it out sweet and true, or somehow both at once.

We started out quiet and scribbly. Then we got more so.


Andria Nicodemou and Chris Icasiano do density and having done density density is done for true

Recorded

February 2, 2019
Six Six Sixties - Throbbing Gristle [from Greatest Hits]

wearing de rigueur wrath on his disgusted sleeve
another know it all

Banned Rehearsal 89 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Doug Haire, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Wally Shoup [June 1986]

all previous banned rehearsals are hereby
rendered
the circumambulation of Green Lake
continued

must have been a second tape player being played into the microphone of the recording device from which the artifact arose

What explanation do the passers by explain to themselves us passing by by?

in recording our walk we are the noisiest of what we hear

visit the nature mall
looking for Neal's old place

the same few feet of tape replay are played and replayed at irregular intervals and in irregular scraps
a bit like a toddler game see my toy into your face over and over yes I saw it

Oregon Trail, near Baker City, Oregon

Westward Ho - The Canadian Brass [from Red, White & Brass]

brass playing is all about tonguing
as string playing is all about bowing, and hence arms
the audible tongue
scenes of the mythic west

Patti's Parlour Pieces 1-4 - Ken Benshoof - Keith Eisenbrey [from Preludes in Seattle, June 2016]

How did I accidentally luck into studying with such an elegant pianistic magician?
If you play with ears open the music takes care of itself.

February 3, 2019
Compulsive Loves - John Aylward - Mary Joy Patchett, alto sax, John McDonald, piano [from Milton Babbitt: A Composer's Memorial]

completely lovely
tender playful
gentle
but that doesn't capture the wide embrace of it well into the night

Gradus 290 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 2016]

music is thinking in the sense that it is a medium within which we can hear each other think
a concretion of thinking like as to language
but a different medium than language
though both ride on the same carrier wave of sound
let us then listen to each other think

(if the silences in Gradus are intended to be taken as Cage-an silences then I have a confession to make
I have been grossly abusing them)

I wonder, has there ever been a launched-themselves-upon-a-project pianist with such patient insouciance?
so you say this is going to take more orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude of sessions than there are particles in the universe to complete?
well, we'd best get started

the magic though is that as vast as it is
the infinitesimally tiny time we have to consider it is rich in melody
such a tiny thing
strand of mere magic

it's snowing outside as I listen, but on the tape's outside are the birds of a Spring past

a combination (rung) can be a simultaneity extended varietously
or a melody matrix spontaneously permuting all its orders
and everything that might be imagined in between

Der Satyrn Tanz - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

almost any style can be a carrier wave for music thinking itself out loud

Since I Fell For You - The Sonics [from Boom]

their slow dance number
best use of the B3 4ever
YMSK should do this as a cover

Hackensack (take 2) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

his fingers is all elbows

rhythm is a body

comin' through the rye

rock on your haunches

side to side

don't rinse, repeat

It's Who You Know - X [from Wild Gift]

anxiety paranoiamal
all your lipstick shows
little Satie jape to end it there

Seeing and Believing - Screaming Trees [from Clairvoyance]

a distinct hit of a subset of west coast 60s psychedelia synthesized in situ

Evening - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

a power surf take on what should be a romantic ♥♥♥♥ slow dance (moi!)
strange little tag for fans only

Get It Up - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

virgin boot camp

February 4, 2019
The Songbird Flies Unhindered Through  Storm and Violence - S. Eric Scribner [from Storm Sound Cycle, May 2011]

coming to terms with what isn't about us
finding rhythm or sense in it is our pretence not its

Finnegans Wake Part 4 Chapter 1 - James Joyce - Graziana Galatti [from Waywords and Meansigns]

calling all
hear ye
cemetery insomnia
he voice it whispers
where did thoughts come from?

(flips back around and goes through Part I Chapter 1 also, but that's it)

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 4, 2019

312 Bus - Keith Eisenbrey

on the bus home from work one of the tire chains had come loose and made sweet whap whap whap whap whap with the wheel well
I recorded on my phone

Playlist

Recorded

January 26, 2019

George M. Cohan on Broadway - The Canadian Brass [from Red, White & Brass]

medley hit
corporate drop the needle
oh I remember that song
it sounds like I ought to remember that song
oh that song is by the same?

souvenir
once emerged
never comfortable

Another Sad Song Littering the Highway of Life - Doug Palmer - Keith Eisenbrey [from my recital Preludes in Seattle, June 2006]

I love how the melody emerges from the chord voices
and perches on them
and complains to them

Clusters - Hubert S. Howe [from Milton Babbitt: A Composer's Memorial]

mouth shapes like pipe organ music with full, muscular, control of the pipe shapes
mouth shapes evoking bell decay in immaculate motions

cuts off sharply
can't stay gotta go

Banned Telepath 48 Seattle - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 2016]

bells and gongs and mostly metal sounds scrambling around the Joyce worm, and guitar
and wooden train whistle

one is concerned with the ceasing of doing anything
that the ceasing be not too artful
nor too lazy
as though already on to the next thing
through the side of one's mind
offhandedly

metal on metal squeal talk and rasper rasping sweet nothings into the dragon's ear
declamation
can ring Morse taps
guitar elegy
scrape chatters on
coexistent doings

January 27, 2019
Der dritten Mascharada - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

distinct strands of thinking
structure: cadence point sequence
fanciful: interior phrase shape conversation

Cinq Mélodies populaires grecques - Maurice Ravel - Frederica von Stade, Martin Katz [from Voyage a Paris]

accompaniment not an equal partner (as in Schumann) but every detail counts as much as anything sung
since I don't understand French I am not disturbed by any wordpainting that might be there
which seems mostly intent on capturing the mood of the persona singing this song
rather than the meanings of the words lifted out of the song's context

Louie Louie - The Sonics [from Boom]

as packed as packed can be

Evidence (take 2) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

interjectionary left hand blats

Well Paid Scientist - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters/In God We Trust]

a certain proto hip hop structure in the sense that any new affect segment sounds dropped in as from a tone arm

Coward Till The End - Julian Lennon [from The Secret Value of Daydreaming]

You :: Me
a complaint
when out of ideas throw a bridge away
more than a little Sting-y
warm wash synth rinse
(fade out long? really?)

Tomorrow's Gone (And So Are You) - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

song for kiss off

Holding On - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

punk attitude about what? getting through it
for battle within the way it is

The Field of Arbol II Magnetic Fields - S. Eric Scribner [from Stormsound Cycle (live) May 2011]

de-peopled
unobserved
plain

a distant world in a fictional universe, not where the action is
not even in the same galaxy cluster over from where the action is

Finnegans Wake Part 3 Chapter 4 - James Joyce - Conspirators of Pleasure [from Waywords and Meansigns]

The reason we don't think of English as a tonal language is because we are all deaf.
The speaker is using their voice pitch reverberance to sever the parts of the adherent puncrustaceana from the next deeper encrustacean of adherent puncrustaceana. In short, it's puncrustaceana all the way down.

like unto a decorated psalm tone, it would make a remarkably strong password
not an exercise in declamation
perhaps in acting
as though any bit could have been heard as a could have been heard out in Dublin wild.

We see or hear these words as the pulsing of a vessel of flowing wordery
lexicon only viewed through a microscope and delicately held open (the tissue of the vessel) above scalpeled through
three weeks to heal

January 29, 2019
Der Pilligrienen Tanz - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

short phrases with clear countable beats
within which cage
the action is

Trois Mélodies - Eric Satie - Frederica von Stade, Martin Katz [from Voyage a Paris]

The plain and square is foregrounded
or would be
if it were
actually
plain
or square

Wichita Vortex Sutra Part 3 - Allen Ginsberg [from Holy Soul, Jelly Roll]

joy covered with ash
give up your desire
this vortex named

Hackensack (take 1) - Thelonius Monk [from The London Collection]

the image of: tempi of LH and RH going off, slipping away from each other in cogjolty syncopation
but each always right with it
can seem several beats or measures off, but ain't
so: the sense of having awkward joints, or celebrating them

Here drums, have it.

In Session at the Tintinabulary
(and beyond)

January 28, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 974 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Our last good chance to not rehearse for our upcoming gig at Hollow Earth Radio on Thursday, February 7, as part of the Seattle Improvised Music Festival. We are excited and thrilled to have been invited!

January 31, 2019
Piano Gusting - Aaron Keyt - Jennifer Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [at Jack Straw Productions, Seattle]

Aaron is participating in Jack Straw's celebration of the piano they (Jack Straw/KRAB Radio) dropped from a helicopter some decades ago. There the harp lay, many ranks of strings still intact. His score is for piano four straws, amplified by little contact microphones and tiny amplifiers. We blew in the straws, remembering the rush of winds as the soft plummeted home.