Up-hill and Down-dale - George Cruikshank, from The Comic Almanack, 1st Series 1835-1843
Texts
Live
August 7, 2026
trio ABK - Amy Denio, Bonnie Whiting, Keith Eisenbrey
Chapel
Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
it was warm in the Chapel but we had a fabulous time getting to know each other through improvisation
first set
second set
Recorded
 |
| trio ABK in action |
Nocturne in B-flat Major (#5) - John Field - Benjamin Frith
we are within the melody
or we are cadencing to regroup
Album d'un voyageur, S. 156/R. 8, Book I, "Impressions et Poesies": V. La Chapelle de Guillaume Tell - Franz Liszt, Ashley Wass
images take time to experience
developing as they unfold themselves
they are never wholly all at once
grandeur is a process
Sonata in F minor, Op. 14 - Robert Schumann - Peter Frankl
1
surging passion
tender regards
playful this
dramatic
that
the affects flow impatiently through its spirit
this music
can't hold still
2
vigorous ride
a pleasant glade
impatient with endings of
phrases
3
a solemn copse
in some seasons
elsewise
in other
in the manner of variations
4
time for lickety splittings
and drifting along
and
plunging down
6 Romances sans paroles, Op. 76: II. Elévation - Cecile Chaminade - Mark Viner
firmly rooted
Norwegian Peasant Dances, Op. 72: No. 3, Wedding March from Telemark - Edvard Grieg - Håkon Austbø
from back
when peasant
was more openly used
this music depicts the whole wedding
march included
as well as
celebrants officiants and witnesses
Echo, Op. 89 - Mel Bonis - Veerle Peeters
this music
is the fluidity of a dancer's arms
2 Poèmes, Op. 71: II. En Rêvant, Avec Une Grande Douceur - Alexander Scriabin - Dmitri Alexeev
a syntax of ordered sonorities floats by
Of Thee I Sing (Incomplete) - Sarah Vaughan [from Sarah Vaughan Sings George Gershwin]
tempo is calibrated
from a Western late 19th century rubato
flexibility
rather than
to any kind of demotic
oops she said a bad word there
Boys, What I Was Thinking - The Beatles [from The Beatles Anthology]
the talking bit
short fat hairy legs
the particulars of the roomsound segregation
on display
counts
for hi fidelity
I Confess - The English Beat [from Nancy's Mix]
pop's nod
to fusion
to MTV aesthetics
producer composed
Pay The Bubba - U-Men
playing in an empty room
shredding collectively
Phyllis Is My Only Joy - King's Singers [from Chansons d'amour]
arranged politely as needlepoint
Disco 77 - Goodness [from Goodness 1995-1998]
which was the new and hip
for those of my peers
who hip were
the song itself
is more like a warning
Die Another Day - Madonna [from American Life]
the sounds are not only segregated from each other
they are segregated
from the song being made
you'll know it's actually over when it fades
A Short Piece for Piano X2 - S. Eric Scribner [from Soundforms/Multiples]
easy passage by concordance of sonority
Bad Kids - Lady Gaga [from Born This Way]
aestheticizing a lifestyle
ready to wear
Perpetual Motion 2 - Tom Swafford [from Violin Improvisations]
once it gets its steam up
there is no end to the down of his downhill
but
we can stop keeping up at any point
and step off
Once Upon a Time - Steve Layton [from Bedtime Stories]
oddly haunted
to sleep
a vision
hush of night
thunder
of dread
rain of drear
ushered out through the furnace room
electrocop sirens arrive
with drum agents
the scene has been
scrubbed clear
and raw
rain will heal
My Man's Gone Now - Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong [from Porgy and Bess]
opening her chest voice
Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be) - Bill Evans [from Some Other Time / The Lost Session from the Black Forest]
independence of times in syncopation
a slow steadiness grounds it
We Walk - REM [from Murmur]
the soundtrack of a generation
is a dreamlike substance
Held Up Without a Gun - Bruce Springsteen [from Neal Kosály-Meyer's A Springsteen Miscellany]
for banging heads to bob to
Hungarian Dance #9 - Johannes Brahms - Itzhak Perlman [from The Art of Itzhak Perlman]
workmanship typical of its era
school of Mendelssohn and Schumann
You Are My Joy (Reprise) - Aretha Franklin [from So Damn Happy]
show finale
bring in the choir and the sparkly garments
The Good Old Days - The True Bugs [from 25 Songs]
let's have a beach fire song
cuts off rudely
just as everybody
would join with voices raised
such a pity
Tangled Envisioning - Waxahatchee [from Cerulean Salt]
let's write in my diary
as though to a companion
blue lined notebook paper strumming
Third Floor Blues - Brenda Ray [from Original Songs/1950s Music]
a living situation
troubles of the environment
Side Two Intro - unattributed [from Dirt Cult Records: You Don't Have To Be Cool]
an articulation of purpose and place
'Round Midnight - Thelonious Monk [from The Complete Columbia Studio Solo Recordings]
we are along for the ride
Cynthia - Bruce Springsteen [from Tracks]
dedicated to the muse
phoned in accompaniment
Incessant Mace - Soundgarden [from Ultramega OK]
thick heavy oozing
in sepia and tintypes
captions in English and Creole
In The Wee Small Hours of The Morning - Glenn Tate [from Days of Wine and Roses]
does any other time of day
have its own wee smalls
or are they
only in the morning?
do we flip
at twelve fifty nine
from the huge large hours of one
to the wee smalls of the next?
Hunger (End) - Tom Baker - Maria Mannisto, Jesse Canterbury, Greg Campbell, Brian Cobb, Tom Baker
in extremis and beyond
story told in music like diary entries
a
radio opera
fantasy of dying
I Wish You'd Haunt Me - Red Ribbon [recorded live at the Comet Tavern, Seattle, March 5, 2013]
rage and grief contend
Around The World - Christina Aguilera [from Lotus]
globefucking in the ultrafast crowd
an advertisement for
the world
in which pop music
is presented
as seeing itself
Diabelli Recomposed (continued) - Various [streamed May 11, 2023]
39
as a lullaby
or a fond goodnight kiss
{a musical comedy
made entirely of Diabelli variations}
40
grumpy
and grumpy about it too
41
heckled from under the lid
with old fruits and
raspberries
42
caught up in its own comfort
43
with limbs tied at the ankles
Midnight Hour (unreleased) - ? and The Mysterians [from The Best of ? and The Mysterians]
in stereo no less
he says so
the real benefit of stereo
isn't the placement of sound
it's the
roundness of it
not direction but expanse
Alligator Crawl - Canadian Brass [from More Greatest Hits]
imitative dance
from story enactment
to all the rage
a mask
and motions
Rolland Fischer - U.S.A. Western [from The World Sings Goodnight]
singing cowboy movie star song
singing the chattel to sleep
Joy To The World - Whitney Houston [from One Wish: The Holiday Album]
Handel was probably not unaccustomed
to singers taking liberties
of a kind
but probably not these kinds
and even Handel
didn't uptranspose so bodily
driving notes in circles
I'm Looking For Love In All The Wrong Places - Dead Bars [recorded live at The Comet Tavern, Seattle, March 5, 2013]
the bewailed life moment
Life's Amazing - Choke The Pope [from Who Cares]
report from the front lines of ironic disdain
Hanging - Megan Ihnen [from Sleep Songs - Wordless Lullabies from The Sleepless, volume 2]
the drama of drawing breath to sing
the moment
between
fully
drawn
Nomos gamma - Iannis Xenakis - Hague Radio Orchestra, Arturo Tamayo]
music is a substance
a material
and its art
is in material
manipulation
using all the latest thought
its status
of latest and greatest
is in the emphatics
of its
eschewal
of tradition
vehemently new
harshly new
music
as manifesto
Planina, Stara Planina - Bulgarian State Radio & TV Female Vocal Choir [from Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares 2]
a stanza takes effort to push through
or to drag along
Dissident - Pearl Jam [from Rearviewmirror]
this music is mid struggle
...other serious issues... - Frieze of Life [from Nuclear Frog Pond]
in an ensemble
of strongly differentiated instrument sounds
it is
more difficult
for pitch-material
to migrate from one voice into
another
and avoid hierarchic thinking
4Real - Mariah Carey [from E=MC2]
selling a persona
with help from a quick tongued mouth
Cats Across The Way - Canals of Venice [recorded live at The Comet Tavern, Seattle, March 5, 2013]
followed by general chatter
Track 9 [from Unlabeled Christmas Album]
vaguely Celticky
but sans grime or blood or words
Third Child - Bettye Crutcher [from Written in Their Soul: The Stax Songwriters Demos]
personal history
as a minor curse
Flights of Fantasy - The Ventures [from Walk Don't Run]
snarly guitar and hand drums
Party For Your Right to Fight - Public Enemy [from It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back]
language rhythm
pushed across the tops of the music beat rhythm
U Not Like Me - 50 Cent [from Get Rich or Die Tryin']
tough guy boast the
sound has the beat part
the talk part
and the colorist part
mandolin if I mistake not
If You Can See Me - David Bowie [from The Next Day]
the song is found in scattered rooms
in which we find ourselves
transmitted
immediately
Moon - Whitney Ballen [from You're a Shooting Star, I'm a Sinking Ship]
question
within a body of popular American music
do songs of
personal devotion
to an other
appear more frequently
in
albums produced
by female presenting artists?
Kurzwellen - Karlheinz Stockhausen
in this version
there is some vinyl noise that accreted
barnacles
on its hull
the specificness
of the ritual
offends reproduction
what is strange now
is that this stuff
that was the happening
stuff
at the time
should be so distant from me now
like the
shoes I once wore
the formerly familiar
pretty terrific Stockhausen of its time
a music
of the interception of broadcast transmission
worldvoice
communication
for those able to afford it
and the spies and
hobbyists
listening in at home
this has improvisational vibes
does rehearsal time show?
is it
as much about
the sense
of the work
of rehearsal
time
required
to get this
exactly
so
and
the insanity
of wanting
to notate it
guessing it is a score
to be realized as a collaboration
in which
one thread
has a name attached
identity of the named role
confers no special status
to the
individual
possessed
of said name-attached role
or
a
specious synecdoche
these sounds are made at each other
snarl to snarl
we find ourselves
in a dim
and nitre-coated foundation chamber
castle crawl space
we meet our new neighbors
learn of their toils and grumps
this one
is mimicking
one of Stravinsky's galumphing puppets
and the short waves come along
to take us to a new station
we
modulate
we twirl the dials dreamily
to:
when will we way
back today Mr. Peabody?
today
we will twirl to it all
sez
Mr. Joyce
when it was familiar
I studied for clues
now that it is formerly
so
I can listen without reference to its importance
as a longtime collaborator
and listener to 45 minute sessions
that
aren't this
this one seems lengthy
I wonder if it is because
the events in it
are so localized temporally
that is
there are many
exactly different sounds
in quickish sequence
but now it is done
the great thing about a good demo
is that there is no more to the
production
than absolutely necessary to the music involved
if it
needs more
why bother with it?
Sarabande (multitrack) - Keith Eisenbrey - Jim Knodle, Keith Eisenbrey [from Jack Straw Cultural Center Blind Youth Audio Project 2003]
same performance as the "stereo" version {I think}
this one sounds like two folks in a room
doing this music
one of the projects' youth participants
while we were in the booth
putting this together
sang my crazy 17-tone tone row
back at me
pitch perfect
I was stunned
nice piece past me!
Sheryl's Bane - Mikey & Matty [from Harbor Island]
is porch music
a different genre
than Alki beach fire music
nice job backup singers!
I hear you backing it up back there!
Some Folks' Lives Roll Easy - Paul Simon [from In The Blue Light]
an intimate arrangement
for an intimate venue
Chelsea Morning - Fairport Convention [from Meet On The Ledge]
one of my high school friends
was a huge Sandy Denny/Fairport Convention
fan
at this distance
this sounds like a strangely psychedelic-adjacent world
what's with the motorcar sounds?
H'un (Lacerations): In Memoriam 1966-1976 - Bright Sheng - New York Chamber Symphony, Gerard Schwarz]
a pitched drama
a strong sense of how its pitches move against each
other
crowded shoulder to shoulder
weakens here
as it gets dramatic
resorting to dramatic texture
not dramatic doing
Cello Set 1 - Brad Hawkins, Jesse Canterbury [from Brad Hawkins, Jesse Canterbury]
where
we are
in it
is
where
it is
So Lonesome and Blue - The Swearengens [from Waiting On The Sunrise]
all regret rolled into one
New Red Pants - Slothrust [from The Pact]
power suit
looks to kill with
trouble to trade away
On Neal's Ashes - Allen Ginsberg [from Holy Soul, Jelly Roll]
deathfirst into memory plunging
In Concordiam - Stephen Albert - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Ilka Talvi]
multiple curtains sweep open
our host explains the layout
a lumpy
prop is dragged on stage
the winds explain its workings
our host
remembers Stravinsky's Duo Concertante
and other fine moments
sung upon it
this piece is well-composed
and clearly storyboarded
it fits the
bill perfectly:
a new work
with nothing overtly new about it
an easy piece to like
ends on a high note
59-Year Old Defense Intellectual - Doug Haire [from The Crawford Opera]
inside the machinery of the machine
Crashing Waves - Lori Goldston [from Film Scores]
from a distance above
their slow progression shoreward
No Strangelove Ocean - Participants [from Waterloo Region Contemporary Music Sessions 2018]
its reverberant container
is part of its being
incorporating ones
own vitrine
if coaxed
it roams
empty display galleries
Echo Carol - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey [December 1968]
effectively clever
if somewhat plodding
String Quartet #1 (Already It Is Dusk) - Henryk Gorecki - Kronos Quartet
pop the lid loose
stand back
this music sticks to its unmoving straight line
judgment is delivered
in stern motions of the bow
we are furioso
or
we are depressed
and oh so
scrubbing tirelessly
The New Diabelli Variations (beginning) - Various - Quake
1 Theme
the ditty itself
2 Jazzbelli (Mary Cassat)
heavily swung 20s style piano
3 Scherzetto on a Theme of Diabelli (Rhododendron)
the others of
the ensemble cavort inside the harp
4 Variation, Fughetta (Hucbald)
flute and strings tell the weary
tale
strings played by violin and cello
5 Nightmare Prelude (Hal L'ouene)
on a starkly lit stage
for solo piano
some notes are banged out
in honor of the
deceased
who is shot
right there on stage
the emergency
vehicles wail in the street
6 Chantibelli (Sue Donim)
as if it were the opening
of a
lonely Shostakovich symphony
7 With Humor (I.M.A. Funnyman)
the clowns arrive
driving
tiny cars in tight circles
Stubborn Man - No Man's String Band [from Let The Truth Be Told]
music for liquor selling establishments
must promote the lifestyle
of customers of liquor selling establishments
it's a social
contract
Waitin' For The Bus To Come - Lisa Puteska [from Untitled Album]
singing the act of its title
b/w with Aaron Keyt's
If I Don't Ring That Little Bell
The Crowded Air - Milton Babbitt - Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Gil Rose
all the stations tuned
in all combinatorial sets of stations
we
squeeze through their twisty interstices
feel free to make any in-head
connection that helps
Inside The Wallingford Transfer Station - Chris DeLaurenti
we hear the sounds of waste being transferred
from ours to ours
heave ho
away ye go
into our greeting arms
pebbles in our pond
big wheels
high slung
off road
bone jarrer
Love Made Me Blind - Kara Hesse [from Sojourner]
fond memories no regrets
Desire - U2 [collected from Neal Kosály-Meyer's Bo and The Beat]
a musicological collection
a locus and its spread
The Artist - Shelby Earl [from Swift Arrows]
self-portrait as dialog
Bailey - Denise Glover [from Gaps In The Stories]
public blessing
witness
memorial
Sferics - Alvin Lucier
what it might be the sound of
does not immediately appear
two
no
three strands
a crackle
a whapping (quiet)
a
high squeak
as of distant birds
but not from a distance
related to the crackling
as if
across a threshold
the whapping
is regularish
the crackling
is inconsistently
consistent
a multi-stranded sound
of uncertain origin
would what I hear change
were I to know these sound's origins
mechanical or conceptual?
Coronach (slight return) - Princess [from Selling Sulphur]
ritual sway dance
as though calling up cartoon spirits
with spooky
moves
long silence
then we're back
but have jettisoned the gear
The J Stomp - Blazzed [from Blazzed]
stomp dancing across the street
against the light
without benefit
of the cross-stomp
Woody - Donald Erb - Ross Powell
ah
for clarinet
title explains itself
this music explains itself with strings of notes
gets up pretty high
E-flat clarinet?
nice tone up there
however
Porque les vas - Chaotic Noise Marching Corps [from Smashed at Smash Putt]
power march into town
hoorah a parade
from bar to bar
we crawl and quaff
public figures like our pirates
The Old G---- - SeaStar [from Sinners and Angels]
casts hexes
In Session at The Tintinabulary
August 2, 2026
Lisbon - Keith Eisenbrey
Postscripts
Drops
Keith Eisenbrey 34: 2024-2026 Arrangements of Shape Note Tunes (Part 2: Common Meter)
Hymnals find me. For decades I had been wondering how I might make use of all those notes. In July of 2023 I decided that each Sunday morning I would make short piano arrangements of each tune in the oldest hymnal on my shelf, The Christian Minstrel, from 1846, which arranges them metrically. Since mid-2024 I have been working through the "Common Meter" (86.86) tunes, and am happy to share them with you now. Part of my discipline is to spend no more than an hour or two on each one, from first transcription of the tune to finished recording. When I got to the 100th tune in the book I amused myself by writing its arrangement with exactly 100 notes.
recordings of my compositions (and more!) can be found at keitheisenbrey.bandcamp.com - free to download or stream.
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