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| Christian Pincock's quadapod |
"He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed."
The Gospel According to St. Matthew 16:2-4(King James Version)
Texts
Live
February 22, 2025
February Aleatory Concert
Patrick Cunningham, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith
Eisenbrey, Bruce Greeley, S. Eric Scribner
Jack Straw Cultural
Center, Seattle
Improvisation - all assembled
SoundScroll X - S. Eric Scribner
Tree and Stone - S. Eric Scribner
Ussers of Sleep - S. Eric Scribner
A lovely afternoon event showcasing performances of some of Steve's recentish scores.
February 27, 2025
Confluence 2
Jennifer K. Chung, Keith Eisenbrey, Soren Hamm, Aaron
Keyt, Peter Nelson-King, Christian Pincock, Mary Riles, Beverly Setzer
Chapel
Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Sonatina for Cello and Piano - Wolfgang Devine (Riles, Nelson-King)
Rannoch Moor - TK Murray (Riles, Nelson-King)
Five Pieces for Solo Clarinet - William O. Smith (Setzer)
Sinfonia 9 - Keith Eisenbrey (Eisenbrey)
Detritus 1-5 - Keith Eisenbrey (Eisenbrey)
Sinfonia 15 - Keith Eisenbrey (Eisenbrey)
Entracte - Keith Eisenbrey (Chung, Nelson-King)
Citruses - Aaron Keyt (Chung, Nelson-King)
Troposphere - Emily McPherson (Hamm)
All Logics Computation Activator - Forbes Graham (Hamm)
The African Kimono - Kevin Leysath II (Hamm)
The Beauty of the Butterfly - Melika M. Fitzhugh (Hamm)
Mt. Nowhere - Spencer Arias (Hamm)
No One is Special, but Everyone Matters - Spencer Arias (Hamm)
The Space Between Us - Spencer Arias (Hamm)
The Circus is Back in Town - Christian Pincock (Pincock)
The Bells of Bellagio - Otto Leuning (Chung, Keyt, Nelson-King)
I was honored to be included in this excellent group of performers, playing for a warm and attentive audience. Since I was participating I decided not to take notes, but in review mode, to my ear there wasn't a clunker in the bunch. Of special note was Christian's intriguing (and lovely sounding) quadapod (pictured above) - a slide trombone joined to a pedal-board synthesizer controller, Mary's carbon fiber 5-string cello, and Beverly's copper belled bass clarinet. I was surprised and pleased to find that Jennifer and Peter had worked up my little 1999 piano duet. Not only was this a rare instance of a performance of any of my music without my direct participation, but the first time I recall being surprised to find myself programmed without knowing about it ahead of time. Fun!
Recorded
February 23, 2025
Electric String Quartet - Noah Creshevsky [from Open Space 37]
isolated
as sounds
who might be the quarteterers
exist
only for the extent
of
each time
discontinuous persons
Banned Rehearsal 340 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [September 3, 1993]
that might be instruments
or sound textures
or combinations of those
a social organism
revealed by its sound
and there's the music box innards
liberated from the East Coast
cooperative
no-goal activity
parade march
snare drum
{journal entry of September 21, 1998:
some sexy sounds
lovingly captured
and some loud drumming
John "I want it! Mine!"}
Ave Maria - Stanislav Surin - Tirnavia, Andrej Rapant
music for the church
as
for real
February 24, 2025
Ms. Found In a Bottle - Keith Eisenbrey
if all production
is manure
it is imperative
we do not
produce
toxic manure
lest
we poison our nest
the production of manure
is essential to life processes
in this music
we discuss an antagonism
concerning agentless
electronic sound image
and agentful sound image
difference between
sounds
that seem to have been produced
electronically
id est
that exist
as sounds
only in the loudspeakers
and
sounds
that seem to have been produced
at whatever
remove
by a human agent
this difference
is a crucial one
for this music
and is not obscured
by the fact
that
they are all loudspeakered sounds now
irreproducible artifact
irreproducible
via the same method
from the ground up
I am quite fond of this piece
though I don't feel I can take credit
for the glorious crud of it
which happened entirely
by time
and decay
purity is an error
pitch-matcher's nightmare
sounds with clearly apparent agents
somebody made these sounds
with objects
we communicate
with sounds
primate-like
now it's time to scrape things together
Banned Rehearsal 835 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 29, 2013]
a procedure
once decided upon
can be an attractive nuisance
it inflicts
a prior structure
upon an ongoing experience
a stale joke
our attention to it
obscures
the ongoing
experience
dog with a bone
it has always been a half an hour
since then
February 25, 2025
The Joke - Brandi Carlile [from By The Way, I Forgive You]
I'm not convinced by the reverb on her voice
comeuppance fantasy
Banned Rehearsal 1073 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt [March 29, 2023]
here's a tone
what's it doing here?
it's with that next tone
is a language blurb
that seeks to inform
of the happenings of
music
play by play
doomed to failure
except superficially?
(that is
technically?)
population of sounds
similar to a book report
that points out
that the ink used
is black
is part of the problem
that language
uses the tools and syntax it
has
within language-time
(words
parts of speech
phrases
sentences
fragments
letters
and marks)
and how it goes
which
in no clear way
accords
with music-time
(and how it goes)?
how
for instance
Steve's grass blade reed
and our tambourine
can transpire together
and separately
at one
and
several times?
this music
becomes its text
as this text
becomes it
So fahr ich hin mit Jesu Christ, SWV 379 - Heinrich Schütz - Capella Augustana
this music takes root
and grows within us
Ciaccona in E minor, BuxWV 160 - Dieterich Buxtehude - Simone Stella
the same landscape
in ever-changing costume
Premier livre de clavecin: Triosieme Ordre (ut) : Les Regrets. Languissamment - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert
mulling music
posing questions of itself?
Sinfonia in G Major, BWV 796 - Johann Sebastian Bach - Edith Picht-Axenfeld
each part remains on task
efficient business methods
Sonata in E minor, Kk. 263 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder
prospects
of hills beyond hills
royalty and nobility
seeks constant confirmation
because it
suspects all
across their realm
the recorded sound
is in a large hall
the music spreads out
into the capacious environs
as though
it were wearing
importance
and profundity
and true expression
on its sleeve
which it ain't
certainly not
on its sleeve
at this distance
the careful and clever voice leading
comes across
as merely correct
or worse: grandiose
takes all the fun out of it
Fantasy in C Major - Carl Phillip Emanuel Bach - Christopher Hogwood
poised to leap in any direction
at any quickness
are we thoroughly
lost yet?
String Quartet in D Major, Op. 71 #2 - Franz Joseph Haydn - London Haydn Quartet
pass the line of attention
among the strings
and desks
its path
and its package
lovely viola solo bit
Die Doppelgänger, D. 957 #13 - Franz Schubert - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Gerald Moore
cold comfort
of cadential turns
Etudes de concert d'après les Caprices de Paganini pour le pianoforte, Op. 10 #6; Etude in E Minor, sostenuto - Robert Schumann - Eric Le Sage
arpeggiates like a harp
then romps like puppies
the preacher and the choir youths
Prelude in B minor, Op. 24 #6 - Frédéric Chopin - Garrick Ohlsson
where this is
is nothing like
where anything
so solid
as B minor
could be
Slavonic Dance in E minor, Op. 46 #2 - Antonín Dvořák - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, John Farrer
suitable for ballet stage
exotics and nationalists
pea and pod
Prelude in B minor, Op. 22 #4 - Alexander Scriabin - Dmitri Alexeev
dreaming of B minor
as of a fond time
Preludes Book 2: Feux d'artifice - Claude Debussy - Paul Jacobs
flickers and sparks
and bursts and tongues
Vesper - Ernest Nazareth - Marcelo Bratke
needs a slow frame rate
and the smell of popcorn
The Wagoner's Lad - Buell Kazee [from Anthology of American Folk Music]
demotic song
both for general amusement
and moral instruction
You Go To My Head (take 1) - Billie Holiday [from Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia]
like a Summer with a thousand Julys
I'm loving the tunesmithery
how and whereto
each line gets
by its end
Study No. 2 (with false start) (1938) - Charles Ives - Charles Ives [from Charles Ives Plays Charles Ives]
meanwhile
in the workshop
of an old Yankee crackpot
The Perilous Chapel - Lou Harrison - San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, Barbara Chaffe, Doug Riath, Stephen Harrison, Stephen Mosko, William Winant
an attractive surface
disarmingly so
but the overall effect
is intriguingly troubled
as though something ancient
lay
hidden
forever
beneath
B Sharp Blues - Duke Ellington [from Piano Reflections]
not orchestral
combo-al
he plays
in imitation
of a
dance band
Minority - Bill Evans [from Everybody Digs Bill Evans]
we do love our music term puns
sudden things to say
lingo of active nouns
it is
and
it does
Jerusalem gaudi - Academy of St. Martin-In-The-Fields [from The Life Treasury of Christmas Music]
selling the suburban American dream
There Was a Time - Gene Chandler [a Rescued Record]
full glitz jump suit prance
with mashed potatoes
Fantasy Beginning - Carole King [from Fantasy]
outline of the procedure
September Song - Willie Nelson [from Stardust]
the chords change
in each line's wake
machine-synthed
virtual ad copy
as 80s as it gets
Sonata in 2 Movements - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey [February 18, 1988]
my original recording
made shortly after completion
on cassette
tape
that may have faded
somewhat prior to ripping to
digital*
I still like the performance though
*passed across
too many heads
too many times
I'm peering down a shaft
toward who knows what
peering about
with a lantern
where does it go
if we go
somewhat further?
a chamber of awesome wonder
humbles our illumination
Cold Mountain Songs: Piano Interlude - Robert Morris - Margaret Kampmeier [from Open Space 30)
a time to put oneself together
before proceeding
(be quick!)
Dempster Retirement Jam (continued) - University of Washington Improvisation Ensemble Alumni [recorded at The University of Washington, June 19, 1998]
we lapse into music from chatter
a manner of march
preliminaries
completed
observation
of the collective now-tuple
is begun
in earnest
it expands
as we enter
up on its haunches
grubbing about in the brush
Rondo ala Turkey - Brave Combo [from Box of Ghosts]
one of those pop acts
that plays cabaret versions
of Western
repertoire music
such as Mozart
with lots of drums
Banned Rehearsal 735 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 17, 2008]
we tend the caldron of hypnotic chant
a break in the action
we
toss sounds across
excited discussion
we are left without an outside
we percuss sharply
February 28, 2025
Judas - Lady Gaga [from Born This Way]
dancing
in an aroma of transgression
within a holodecklic sound
assault
the improvisatory muse
lives
in the midst of activity
(so do
something
so we can begin)
the listening ear
latches on
to any passing sound
sounds clang
and their reverberant residues
fade
into an
ever changing audiosphere
of uncountable pitch motes
that linger
into the long inaudible
under the girders
of the ongoing
activities
we construct figures
and forms
out of the vanishing present
in order
to have an experience
in
both consciousness
and preconsciousness
some tambourines buzz like hornets
All Logics Computation Activator - Forbes Graham - Soren Hamm [recorded live at The Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, February 27, 2025]
this music is a wiring diagram poem
In Session at The Tintinabulary
February 23, 2025
Holyoke - Keith Eisenbrey
February 24, 2025
Banned Rehearsal 1120 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer
Postscripts
Drops
My 16 Sinfonias were composed, in part, in order to discover ways in which they might sing themselves differently on different keyboard instruments. I offer them here as performed on piano. The recordings were made at my home in 2023 and 2024.
recordings of my compositions (and more!) can be found at keitheisenbrey.bandcamp.com - free to download or stream
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