Preface
So creativity isn't a compliment, a valorization, it's an analysis of the state of things; and the realization that music creates its object on that ontological level liberates composition and redefines analysis as creative rather than exegetic, and certainly as not authoritative ("persuasive") or coercive.
- Benjamin Boretz "Unconnecting the Dots" Open Space Magazine issue 19/20 fall 2015/spring 2016
Texts
Live
March 1, 2019
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Poem in Praise of Menstruation - Kaley Lane Eaton - Kaley Lane Eaton, voice; Ha-Yang Kim, cello
orbital cello intones ellipticals 'round its open strings
naiad voice sings its river
Is It Pretty Enough? - Lily Shabbabi
for electric bass, played by a young gentleman whose name I didn't catch but who bore an uncanny resemblance to a young Marlon Brando - the bass's sound fed through a software gizmo that made me lust after a more intricately contrapted sostenuto pedal on grand pianos, lifting individual resonances at will (if only there was no need to filter it through loudspeakers).
This Is The Understanding That The Self Is Time - Liam Harbison - Liam Harbison and Matt Walker, electric guitars
granular intonation oh so exquisitely just off - I want it
fragile acoustic prefigurements
Carolina - Ha-Yang Kim - Ha-Yang Kim, piano
joined at wrist and ankle
in difficult cooperation
[NB - I didn't catch the title, if there was one] - Blake Degraw
I didn't catch the names of the performers either, but I think there were two Jeffs and a Noel, who played a viola with 7 league boots (impersonated by 16 loopers on a synthesizer)
Tracks - Neil Welch - Neil Welch, tenor saxophone
high speed reedless hypertravel
oncoming outgoing sidewhipping flutterweight
rip your face off if you're not careful
Recorded
February 24, 2019
the title is one third of the poem
reluctant to fade out
but it must
O - Benjamin Boretz - Keith Eisenbrey [from Preludes in Seattle, June 2006]
dyads together mark
or can mark
group units
parentheses made of notes
as punctuation made of words stop
raptured in the middle of its making
a thought about scores and intention and liberty to transgress:
Who is a score for?
hint: us
If I intend to take a score as seriously as the score takes me
as a heartfelt, fully considered utterance
in the form of an invitation to engage
and I do so take it
then it behooves me to engage it likewise heartfelt
and likewise fully considered
and
with equal freedom to create as had the composer
and so
it is not morally possible to perform any score as the composer intended.
*see below*
fingertips - Paul Lansky - Mihae Lee, piano [from Milton Babbit: A Composers' Memorial]
many masks
many thoughts
about many masks
Banned Rehearsal 911 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [assembled from Telepaths 49, June 2016]
one of us - Steve, I think - finds toontown sounds and brings them into our world
faustforest bansheewhale
a bar walks into a banned rehearsal
*composer has a thought of how the score goes
but has no certainty that that thought
is the score's clear intention
anymore than we the performer can
in intention's reverse*
and here it is
delicious placements with recorded space
on banjo - me, I think - I never tire of playing with number
tambourine playing
fully part of the melodic and liquid planes in tonal games
a giant in the grass
instruments arose as intermediaries between song and dance
between sung and danced
singing and dancing
the voice to dance and the feet to sing
body to singing dance and dancing sing
or so the story has been told
Minuet in C Major Wq. 116/5 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi
rhythms cross so awkwardly
I surmise that forte piano is using a literal "una corda" effect
old man B was an architect and craftsman nonpareil
young dude B was a molecular physicist and
a prodderpoker into dark corners
Shot Down - The Sonics [from Boom]
ringy snare
the quintessential punk drum solo
Loverman - Thelonius Monk [from The London Sessions]
hang on, I'll catch up
not to worry
left-hand voicings to die for
BuzzBomb - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters / In God We Trust]
BB, flight of the
Underneath The Bunker - REM [from Life's Rich Pageant]
tango time
waddayknow! he's sayin' words back under there
Ever Since My Accident - Melvins [from Kill Rock Stars]
ratio: crazy drum / sticky tongue vocals
Sugar - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]
precise vocal pitch
gospel joy of pain
February 26, 2019
Spherics - S. Eric Scribner [from Storm Sound Cycle, May 2011]
amplified sounds of sounds of a distance
in elsewhere's elsewhere
the near presence of distance accumulates
February 28, 2019
Home - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]
---- is where . . .
cat does something on your zafu (turn it over)
---- is how----'s a place
around you
inside
with ukulele
Paduana XI and Galliard XI - William Brade - The King's Noyse, David Douglass [from Mascharada - Music at the Bückeburg Court of Ernst III]
fanfares and responses lyric and profligate
rhythm fixe and the rhyme of its reception laid bare
an event mis-heard corporately
Minuet in F Major Wq. 116/7 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi
the small rooms
the rooms with queer corners
In Session at the Tintinabulary
February 25, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 976 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt
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