Preface
"What I want to suggest about this kind of music experience is that it might plausibly be consequent on, and ultimately ontologized with respect to, a series of previous life-events speaking exclusively in the suigeneric language of music. 'Suigeneric' does not signify 'isolated', or even insulated, just relatively discrete in the total cosmology of consciousness. Floating independently within the global consciousness-bubble along with, in some loosely determinate relative configuration, everything else in your momentary mind-world. Of course the interdependence of everything is not in doubt, but it probably isn't designable in any one intracoherent language; although everything has to do with everything, and everything is affected by everything, not everything is intercommensurable with everything."
- Benjamin Boretz "Music, as a Music" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"
Texts
Streaming
Wayward in Limbo
With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially “live” performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere.
- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/.
January 23, 2021
Introductory Remarks
How to Paint the Portrait of A Bird (French #1)
Jamaican Sunset
How to Paint the Portrait of A Bird (English)
Beneath My Hand And Eye The Distant Hills, Your Body
The Sigh (English)
Better Times Ahead
1980: Letting Go
The Sigh (German)
Winter Solstice Improvisation
January 24, 2021
Kaori Suzuki
rose flames dance on a spiral staircase
an aside:
the shift in new music performance practice
from when live digital
manipulation
was rare
and suspect
to being absolutely the norm
transpired in my lifetime
for me at the UW in the late 70s
to hear a synthesized piece on a
program
was weird
a genuine curiosity
from the province of
specialized computer labs
and expensive equipment
at that time
electronic music meant
analog synthesizers
magnetic tape
and soul numbing tedium
amped up free reeds
source sound
fed
into a fine grained
manipulation device
bending
extracting stress rhythms
vowel
flange
these are like shapes our mouth can make
for singing
Randallian
as in
Compose Yourself
Recorded
January 23, 2021
pleasant sunny simplicities
go nowhere
certainly not to dark
places
Frieden auf Erden - Arnold Schoenberg - Robert Shaw Festival Singers, Robert Shaw
all are found
wherever hidden
however it must
contort to
achieve
octopus clever
desperately seeking cathedral
January 24, 2021
Evocations - Albert Roussel - Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, Michel Plasson, Jose Van Dam, Nicolai Gedda, Nathalie Stutzmann, Antxon Ayestaran
from whence Grofé cribbed
so is it second order Debussy
or
something else
but such opulance
something else I think
more grandiose and
pathetique
a different accent to it
French equivalent to Zemlinsky
perhaps
pre-war decadence (1912)
wide screen
showcase Western
open
sky
steppe
chorus in the last one
sad echoes of Beethoven's 9th
the diaphony is voluptuating
pretty fancy choral writing
back
there in the voluptuary
diaphonizing
Holst could be a kindred spirit also
Sonatine Bureaucratique - Erik Satie - Frank Glazer
stamped in triplicate
deft
Fantasia and Fuge in C minor - Johann Sebastian Bach, orchestrated Edward Elgar - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz
the impulse to opulance
and the safety
of the safely
dead
masters
pound it home
takes a martial turn there
En fantasirejse til Faerone - Carl Nielsen - Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Herbert Blomstedt
how it sounds
in the dark north
travelogue
here's the dance
hall
I'm Leaning on the Lord - Famous Blue Jay Singers [from Goodbye, Babylon]
barbershop neighborhood
men's quartet
a particular culture trope
think the Beatles
4 guys
the frame is square
black
greys
and white
maybe 16 fps
aspirational line
motion transfers
in the space
within clock time
and metrical
time
Circus Polka - Igor Stravinsky - New York Philharmonic, Igor Stravinsky
the tempos are remarkably exact
Cherokee - Art Tatum [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
how crazy it gets
(pretty crazy)
is only to measure
how closely
(pretty closely)
he adheres
to the center of singing
the tune
straight in the middle of his sound
Schlagtrio - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Aloys Kontarsky, Jean Batigne, Georges van Gucht
the high notes
descending
the low
ascending
the Schlag
playing ref
between them
I'm Waiting Just For You - Pat Boone [a Rescued Record]
do what we used to do
I Love You - The Volumes [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
back to your friendly neighborhood barbershop
naively brilliant
arrangement
all the sounds in a little clump
low to the right
(shaker)
pop songs
no one cares how they end
24 Preludes, 17-20 - Lockrem Johnson - Keith Eisenbrey [from my recital Preludes in Seattle Part 5, February 2018]
it is ominous
18 is scary
as well as I know these
they are never what I expect
they remain
sharply distinct
from any idea I have
of how they go
while I
am playing them
January 26, 2021
A Simple Song - Paul Revere and The Raiders
funk all over
("...my chart shines high where the blue milks upset...") - Benjamin Boretz - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded at home June 2010]
the question for me is
can I divest myself
of classical music
habits
thoroughly enough
to play this
to keep
its focus
rather than
my prevenient long line
or
attempt
at a long line
about as well as I've ever played it
always room for improvement
I sure wish I would
consistently
play the dyads exactly together
Peek-a-Boo - Devo [a Rescued Record]
the American mechanical sensibility
automatic music
like the
carnival calliope mechanical orchestra devices
of the late 19th and
early 20th
in this sense only
in that it evokes a machine
Seeds - Keith Eisenbrey [midi realization February 2006]
without breaks between
and mechanical
as above
as though it
were a single piece
rather than a set of 6
works that way too
brings out something at its core
concerning the size
the
heft
of these ideas
and how
the weight and balance
shifts
as it moves on
After The Reign - Michael Leese - Cleveland Chamber Symphony
film score reticence
attractive without calling attention to its doings
its own logic is not any point at all
free floating atmospheres in
search of a planet
from my journal entry of August 23, 1996:
block sounds supplanting each
other
occasional parodistic element
(chinoiserie)
motoric
masses
like traffic
Ivesian leftovers
but they don't get the
last word
January 27, 2021
Banned Rehearsal 441 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1997]
begin with din
fill the media with signal
Wurlitzer
Silvertone
Ludwig
chimney
violin
socializing for a long journey
each copes
separately
together
we don't know what we're doing
Aaron spells it out
the obo roi
scrawl of the 90s
our intent
even when spelled out
is
hard to make out
above the noise
all for the best
in full ear scour mode
settling into a feedback hum drone
the ground is treacherous slick
devious within
dubious support
we crowd and press
nothing about this is
good
professional
public spirited
it's all crud
from among the last of the analog cassette tape sessions
from my journal entry of September 19, 2004:
opens with something of an
energy release
cornet guitar over percussion
sounds like a lot of
chimney and banging on metal
high pitch bells
baby mutter
rattles-word and guitar
tiny fingery sounds
all sharing a
rhythmic space
runs too
slowing
calming
a violin works
its way in
back in our enclosed space
we wrestle
Ya! Yahaa!
see Isaac
some energy dispensing itself outward
feeding back
into itself
and the organ
funmaker
Isaac complains
rather especially
as it gets going
this sounds pretty good
sounds like perhaps Neal on the guitar
me
on organ?
winds down
loses some energy
though the sound is
pretty reasonable
Aaron begins to spell things
and the obo roi
comes out
sounds very much like a crying baby
Isaac demonstrates
Aaron continues to spell
a fascinating way to make what is written
nearly unintelligible
especially when we only get a bit of it
still much engaged with tension release
Isaac's contribution is
fine
as it calms down
it could close or not
these guitar
feedback sounds are pretty nice
may be better to cut the first bit if we
need to cut (or perhaps as this bad drumming takes over but then here it is
being pretty interesting again [NB at that time we may have begun to think
about putting out a compact disk]
superfly - The Humidiflyers [from Blue Ducky EP]
here we come to save the world
all the boys and
all the
girls
this year I can't wait for Halloween
a million little kids all dressed
to look like me
Banned Rehearsal 713 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2007]
we do not cram the signal
but scratch
and occasionally bong on it
tune in
or not quite
in tune
near
an older sound comes to visit
in a can
animal human hybrids
we allow and comment on the past
creating a seminar live
big feedback squeal
we have to stand for life
but is it a
codeword?
In Session at the Tintinabulary
January 25, 2021
Banned Telepath 69 Toad Hall - Aaron Keyt
Banned Telepath 69 Tintinabulary - Keith Eisenbrey, Karen Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Banned Rehearsal 1018 - Keith Eisenbrey, Karen Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
once again the banned gathers along the telepath
Postscripts
::Consult the Oracle
upon the sun-blind frames outside the
druggists' appear to have been just turned out of
the united states' mint and when I saw a
Reality Check::
remove quantification
focus on reality
for a change
