Playlist

Live

October 26, 2018

Cristina Valdés, piano
Meany Hall, Seattle

Klavierstück IX - Stockhausen
Pièces Froides Danses de travers - Satie
Gymnopédie No. 3 - Satie
Ein Kinderspiel - Lachenmann
Douze Notations pour piano - Boulez
Gnossienes No. 3 & No. 5 - Satie
Piano Sonata - Bartók

heaven

Cristina's performance presence ought, to my mind, to be a model for other pianists (and for more than a few violinists)
not shirking in concentration nor elegance one bit
but never bringing attention to itself, as itself, as a distraction, from the real magic that's going on
and magic it is too
say it again
heaven

Satie and Couperin, soul bros in so many ways
and both French!
imagine that

Lachenmann showed up in repertoire culture after I had pretty much given up keeping up with developments abroad
in the sense that, at least in these pieces, he is being a pianists' composer rather than a composer's composer, he reminds me of the late Greg Short

Boulez in these early pieces trying on coats, not quite the one that fits yet

Bartók this barnburner was written the year my Dad was born

Part of the reason I gave up keeping up with developments abroad was the overwhelming experience that was my discovery in 1978 or so, and exploration ever since then, though certainly less so now, of the music of Stockhausen. In a way, after that, I didn't need another or very much more music from abroad. And IX was certainly among the pieces that stuck. The overt severing of the realms, the note playing realm from the resonance billowing realm, cracked a door open in my own work, a door that was already pretty loose on its hinges, truth be told. It is fascinating, now, 40 years on, to hear that wild ass music that riveted me in my seat in the UW School of Music's lower-level listening library, trotted out into the clear air in Meany Hall, right there in public as an ever so venerable hunk of repertoire. I would be more disturbed if Cristina hadn't made it so clear that what it truly is is a poem of bone and blood, awesome magic

And now if you'll allow me an amused aside
about a week ago Cristina had, as a sort of mock-desperate joke, asked if anyone would be willing to write the program notes for her and by the way they are due tomorrow. My not entirely unserious response was to ask if she had ever considered not having program notes at all. imagine then my delight when I sit down to listen and there are no program notes! My dream came true! I must be in heaven!

Recorded

October 21, 2018
Concerto in F BWV 1046 - J. S. Bach - New London Consort, Phillip Pickett

composing to show he can
he overdid it
conception beyond any possible previous experience
see, I can write idiomatically for any and each
what you can expect should you hire me
pre-figure of Pictures at an Exhibition

Quartet in F op. 59 #1 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

the ground will begin to curve downward or drop or vanish into other grounds
the long groups that eventually seem to repeat are so repletely cross-indexed with their own internal repetitions of patterns and patterns of patterns and inner levels of levels that the grander scheme is uncanny
or, what is it that Beethoven thought a movement was? anyway?
we are being ushered somewhere into some society of some kind a refined kind
but can we trust beauty and a human face?
do we trust where we are going?
we are variously pulsed into and away in waves of envelopments
like falling into sleep

Terzetto "Ah! qual colpo inaspettato!" - Rossini - Failoni Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), William Humburg, Roberto Servile, Sonia Ganassi, Ramon Vargas, Angelo Romero, Franco de Grandis, Hungarian Radio Chorus [from The Barber of Seville (Highlights)]

hint: follow the voice closely
get right up in its face

Symphony in A (#6) - Bruckner - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Otto Klemperer

as though overturing an opera
IN YOUR SKULL!!!
even his by the book sequiturs sound like nons
naked quite starkly in his contrapuntal proclivities
a nervous keyboardist's way with figurational counterpoint
in order to proceed properly to Y one must pass through the membrane of X
it hurts but it lasts
never
lots
where you are when you are here
from within everyhuman all planes occupy every where all the time
the action is in the melodies between paired or patterned paired patterns and or patterned pairs: between
the still
within
contrary
the motion lurching through similar the stretching within obliqueness
as succinct as it gets

October 23, 2018
Sonata in F op. 99 - Brahms - Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma

the face of this collaboration is not always turned outward (usward) nor really even often
loves to linger, hold a thought in its hand, Yorick alas
tunes spill out from their vessels

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 22,2018
Banned Rehearsal 968 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Playlist

Recorded

December 8, 2015

Marion Harris with Banjo Uke

Paradise Blues - Marion Harris [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Give me some of that [fill in the blank] music: a trope of reflexive self-advertising by which popular music never ceases to tell us how much we should love it, from Alexander's Ragtime Band to Roll Over Beethoven. Apparently we are all and have always been just completely OK with commercials for a product embedded in the product.

Men - Carl Ruggles - Buffalo Philharmonic, Michael Tilson Thomas

Solid, tense, immovable. Not turned to stone, but jammed tight in the pile-up of its own mirrorings. Brief as Webern but battled, recklessly muscular.

I Want My Life To Testify - Hendersonville Double Quartet [from Alan Lowe's Really the Blues]

The microphone placement leads to an odd balance, with the baritone part way up front and everything else variously behind. One imagines a live performance would sound completely different, but here it becomes a very strange piece of music indeed. The piano, when it breaks in, does so in a completely different tempo than the singers.

December 10, 2015
Hungarian Sketches - Béla Bartók - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner

Bartók's piano style is overtly orchestral, and so one could regard these literal orchestrations as lessons in how to play the piano pieces: play this tune as though it were an oboe, play the accompaniment like soft strings - keep the voices clear!

David Diamond

First Orchestral Suite from the Ballet TOM - David Diamond - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

At the end of the first long phrase a chime rings out alone in glorious chimey dissonance, uncompromised, physical, present. From that point on the music prolongs the sensibility of that dissonance, carefully weaving its chromatic counterpoint. This focus drops in a few places for some 'happy southerner' hokum, which I suppose might be read in a similar way to some of Shostakovitch's contemporaneous satirical romps. I'm not sure I buy that here, but am willing to pass over it anyway for the long moments of really stunning stuff.



In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 6, 2015

Trio 151206A
Trio 151206B
Trio 151206C
Trio 151206D
Trio 151206E
Trio 151206F
Sextet 151206 - Keith Eisenbrey
At first I thought I might just make two trios, but I decided I could fold all six instruments on top of each other successively, then combine the whole thing into a Sextet. The instrumental tracks are: viola (A, E, F), selection from the big red bag of fun (A, B, F), toy steel drum (A, B, C), amplified acoustic steel string guitar (B, C, D), frame drum (C, D, E), and alto horn (D, E, F). The selection from the big red bag of fun was a plastic mayonnaise jar, a tin can into which the jar just fit, and a wine cork. The alto horn came to us, as most instruments do, circuitously, purchased at a thrift store by my late Uncle Jim Meyer and given to us (he had one already). On the case is stamped "U.G.S.D." - for Union Gap School District.

Playlist

Live

October 3, 2015
Macefield Music Festival
Seattle

at The Sunset Tavern
The Kent 3 are survivors of the mid-90s punkish scene in Seattle, apparently well known among the junta of other survivors of the mid-90s punkish scene in Seattle. Their set is fast and tight, filling every cranny with get in your face, while

Best in the game

at The Tractor Tavern
Mikey & Matty do their best to channel the blood-harmony of the Everly Brothers. Faustine Hudson (nice hat!) is the best drummer I have heard live in ages, perhaps ever. There is a palpable negative space in her drumming, not a stroke is without effect, nor a silence without weight. All that, solid as can be, and she's obviously having a blast in the bargain. She alone was worth the trip to Ballard.

Recorded

October 4, 2015
String Quartet in C Major op. 59 #3 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

Outside the busy household a wraith bides, not invading except as an occasional awareness from inside.

Polonaise in F-sharp minor op. 44 - Chopin - Peter Katin

The mid-bit refuses to move in any direction until suddenly, whoops! it's over here, like some dumb magic trick - a sleight of tonality by misdirection of memory. Mr. Katin orchestrates admirably.

Symphony in C Major op. 61 - Schumann - Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan

Lingering on a note just long enough, persists just exactly to a metrical weight-moment uponwhere we think we might remember someotherwhere this might have gotten to, but moves elseonwards. Underneath the e-string shimmer the slow roll of slumberous hornscellosclarinets - the dreaming body beneath the dream. The last movement, rambunctious, encloses within itself the poignant end of some slow movement otherwise not present.

October 6, 2015
Piano Concerto in B-flat Major op. 83 - Brahms - London Symphony Orchestra, Janos Ferencsik, Julius Katchen

Bridges and roads of stone, not the mountains they traverse, but the views of the mountains from the bridges and roads of stone.

Waltz in D-flat major op. posth. - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

A quick stutter of waltz, giddy til it drops through the floor. Not a waltz for human metabolism.

Das Knaben Wunderhorn - Mahler - Concertgebouworkest, Amsterdam, Bernard Haitink, Jessye Norman, John Shirley-Quirk

Tone painting overdone to the point of ghoulishness, the singers' world envelops, leaves no room for us outside from which to observe, we too are brought in, immersed. Märchenwelt as another exotic location.

October 8, 2015

Prelude "en Tapisserie" - Satie - Frank Glazer

All the parts are in the box. No instructions for conceptual assembly, or what help is given mostly hinders.

Allegro Barbaro - Bartok - June de Toth

Bartok has not, as has Satie, lost his faith in stretto and splash.

Alagazam - The Peerless Quartet [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Poking out from between the patently offensive lyrics and (presumed) black-face presentation, is some pretty fun proto-beatboxing, nonsense words as drums, or up-tempo quantitative verse.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 4, 2015
Trio 151004 - Keith Eisenbrey
I improvised three tracks, one each of bells & gongs, tin whistle, and clavichord.

October 5, 2015
Gradus 276 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Neal introduces a new C-sharp, but not to anypitch else, because any other pitch is unimaginable, a perceptual impossibility. Until it isn't.

Playlist

Live

September 11, 2015
Harry and Myrtle Olson International Music Festival
David di Fiore, Organist -
University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle

Grand Jeu with Thunder Effects - Michel Corrette
Cantabile Symphonique from the Organ Symphony - Camille Saint-Saëns
Toccata and Fugue in d-minor - J. S. Bach
Sonata on the 94th Psalm - Julius Reubke
Just A Closer Walk with Thee- Joe Utterback
Sonata No. 1 in d minor Final - Felix Alexandre Guilmant
All' Offertorio - Domenico Zipoli
Etude in c-sharp minor - Octaves - Jeanne Demessieux
Come Sunday - Duke Ellington (as an encore)

David di Fiore

The close relationship between the technological feat that constitutes each individual instrument and the personality of the creative musician pervades the organ repertoire of the last few centuries in a way that echoes the relation between the various au courant electronic technologies and many of our contemporary musicians. This is front and center in the Corrette, where one could so easily imagine some young punk organist late at night figuring out how to play all the pedal notes at once and thinking "sounds like thunder! I'll make a piece with thunder in it." But it isn't such a great conceptual distance from there to the growly trills of Guilmant, or to the ballsy octaves of Demessieux, or, for that matter, to the blinding glories of the T&F in d.m. The glee and fetish of let's see what I can do with this machine arises from the same tinkering spirit that animates computer music, analog synth music, frippertronics, and every guitar player with a new fuzz box.

David has been organist at our church for over 40 years (and choir director for about 15). He has been a valued colleague and friend since Karen and I first started attending the Temple almost 30 years ago. Although we have had the pleasure, week after week, of hearing David play, and of seeing his repertoire grow both in size and depth, I do believe there was some particular fire in play Friday evening. Today was his last Sunday with us, and it is with sadness and pride that we watch as he sets off for new duties as cathedral musician for the Cathedral of St. Francis Xavier in Banská-Bystrica, Slovakia.

David: We have seen how Europe in general, and especially your many friends in Slovakia, have been pulling you to them for years now. One blogpost is not enough to say it all. We'll miss you terribly, but we also know that, for you, it's time to bloom in a new garden. Godspeed David!

Recorded

September 7, 2015
Concert Overture op. 40 "Cockaigne" - Elgar - London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis

The center of empire as seen by the center of empire. Elegant, glittering, spirited (gung ho!), self-satisfied, militaristic, pompous.

September 8, 2015
Hallowe'en - Ives - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein

This otherwise interesting study in short stringy filaments is marred (at least in this recording) by a colorless, uncontributive piano sound - as though it were speaking with it's hand in front of its mouth - and by an unfortunate and badly calibrated cadence. Sorry Charlies, if you're going to throw away a piece please throw it all the way away.

Symphony in F-sharp minor (#10) - Mahler - BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Mark Wigglesworth

Stray bits of dire stuffed into cupboards, spilling from closets, clogging the hallways - a hoarder's house of fraught incongruities.

September 10, 2015
4 Orchestral Songs, op. 22 - Schoenberg - Philharmonia Orchestra, Robert Craft

More like operatic scenes than songs, in that the singer isn't reciting poetry but instead has become a puppet for a character that speaks from within the text.

Muscle Shoal Blues - unattributed - [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Sonata 1926 - Bartok - June de Toth

an insistance
an incessance
a you will hear this
an in your face

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 7, 2015
Gradus 274 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

As notes accumulate from the gradus-global machine for use in individual session-rungs, there are moments, especially first moments, in which a chosen sonority holds within itself the degree of unstable complexity from which one could imagine an old-fashioned piano sonata emerging, some never-composed Beethoven movement perhaps, a sound poised teetering on the edge of any number of precipices. It is as though a single step had brought us into a new realm of elaborative possibilities, one foot-fall from austerity to super-abundance.

Playlist

Live

July 3, 2015

The Botherations

Dead Bars

The Kings

at El Corazón, Seattle

Golly it was hot in there! The sound system's woofer, pumping air around, actually helped. One could feel a slight cooling movement of breeze when the bands played. Being old we decided to head home before the last two acts came on: Regional Faction and Mustard Plug. I'm sorry I missed them but not sorry I got to bed before 11.

Nancy Chase in the attic apartment of The Oaks, back in the day

When we arrived The Botherations were already playing, but I think we only missed a little bit. They would have fit right in on "Nancy's Mix", a mix tape of early '80s mostly punkish rock (XTC, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Jam, Gang of Four, et al) that was given to my Bostonian friend Nancy Chase by a friend of hers and which I dubbed and brought back to Seattle. A few years ago I reconstructed the whole thing on I-tunes. I still have a soft spot in my heart for those sounds.

Dead Bars started a few years ago as a one-gig (fill up a slot) pick-up band comprised mostly of EMP employees and ilk. Something clicked and they have been touring and recording and performing as much (I think) as they can while it lasts. The personnel has shifted around, and partly come back around. The drummer at their first show bowed out early since he was already in too many projects, but has now returned playing bass. This was the first time we got to hear them sing their cover of Neal Kosály-Meyer's song Tear Shaped Bruise, and we even got a shout out. Thanks John! Always a pleasure. Next time I hope they get to play a longer set.

I learned later that this was ostensibly a ska show of which we only caught the first act. Ska is a sub-genre I am not familiar with, but I gather from The Kings that it involves a pack of horns, quick staccato off-beats (which reminded me of very fast James Brown), and lots of stage strutting. Also a wolf mask. I learned that girls and boys are not allowed to dance with each other as couples, but must dance in separate groups. Boys on the left, girls on the right.

Recorded

June 30, 2015

Symphony in C minor (#1) op. 68 - Brahms - Concertgebouworkest, Amsterdam; Bernard Haitink

Moving up down and stuck in vertiginous spaces, vast interiors (much of which fails to punch through the warm mass accumulating the midrange of this recording, though cranking the volume helps). One could read this as a socialist tract (or as something more insidious): nation-building through strenuous cooperation. The fourth movement posits the hope: the nation aspires to become a cathedral of souls.

Waltz in G-sharp minor op. posth. - Scriabin - Michael Ponti

A Chopin pastiche for sure (and dead on as such), but also more than that, like an exploded view of a Chopin waltz just before being reassembled in surreal animation.

Also sprach Zarathustra - Richard Strauss - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

Comes on like a circus barker, as though it knows it can't deliver.

July 1, 2015

Symphony in D (#2) - Sibelius - London Symphony Orchestra, Pierre Monteux

The whole is elusive. We observe attractively painted parts, in close focus, moving against each other. We surmise, connecting and moving the parts, marionette strings. The inaudible string puller is the uncanny ghost coming up behind us.

July 3, 2015

Symphony in E-flat (#8) - Mahler - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Georg Solti

Ecstasy
as location || as journey

The first movement is the glorious mountain about which the landscape of the second is spread, and of which glimpses can be seen, calling.

6 Kleine Klavierstücke - Schoenberg - Paul Jacobs

Shielded. Locked in. (key turned from the inside).

Country Club Medley - Gus Haenschen [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The drumming anchors a sophisticated piano piece to a ground of dance. What might be only subtly tracked without the drum becomes plain with it. In that sense the drumming is an abstraction of, a theory about, the piano piece.

Denes Zsigmondy

Sonata for Violin and Piano - Bartok - Denes Zsigmondy, Anneliese Nissen

Looking for that quiet intimate moment or grimly dancing as these people fight, sniping with astounding articulation.

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Washington in the late '70s I was fortunate to have accompanied several of Professor Zsigmondy's students. As I recall there was a large poster of Bartok on the wall in full view of the piano bench. This was a great and treasured experience, but the picture was not comforting.

Knoxville Blues - Sam McGee [from Alan Lowe's Really the Blues]

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 28, 2015

Trio 150628 - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on Big Red Bag of Fun; Bells & Gongs; Tenor Banjo. When I left home for Annandale-on-Hudson in June of 1982 I brought with me as luggage a small leather portfolio and a big red nylon suitcase. Since my return this unwieldy red bag has served as a place to store small noisies: lids to pots and pans; pots and pans; cookie, coffee, and tea tins - often repurposed as rattles; that sort of thing. Over the years it has become quite full. Early in Banned Rehearsal lore it was dubbed the Big Red Bag of Fun. The various bells and gongs have accumulated without much effort on my part, their individual provenance lost many years ago. The banjo arrived in the early '90s when a co-worker's girlfriend needed to trade her banjo for cash to pay taxes. $100 later it still lives here, waiting for her to come back and claim it.

June 29, 2015

Gradus 270 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

A moment could be a memory state (as in digital computing) || one must grasp the whole system in mind from the outset

A moment could be a node in an emerging structure (a beam in a bridge trestle) || one must regard each moment as qualified by its place in what will not be known until the end.

A moment could be its own ultimate self || one must regard each moment as our self 

July 4, 2015

Trio 150704 - Keith Eisenbrey

I took advantage of the relative cool of the morning to record this week's trio a day early. The instrumentation is xylophone, bodhrán, and german concert zither. The xylophone was purchased from a co-worker who was tired of storing it in his attic. The bodhrán is a recent acquisition from a co-chorister. The german concert zither came from the estate of a much-missed member of our church who passed away some years back.

Playlist

Recorded

May 24, 2015

Symphony in D Major (#2) - Jean Sibelius - BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Jerzy Maksymiuk

The problematic process of developing a synoptic stance. How to be on all sides of the mountain at once. Sinew and bone. Gaping holes. Synthesis by assertion.

La Patti Negra - Orquestra Typicas - [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

One suspects more slippery rhythm back there than remains on the artifact.

Bambino - Grupo Bahianainho - [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

To be heard on foot, moving.

May 26, 2015
A fából faragott királyfi - Béla Bartók - London Symphony Orchestra, Antal Dorati

A caldron of bubbling forces transformed into a cartoon. What would be comic turns grotesque. The dire extreme has blotted out all else. Cruelty is the spectacle. The happily ever after seems ready to start the whole thing over a few octaves higher. I used to like this piece a lot. now I'm not so sure it's healthy.

Concerto in C Major (#3) - Serge Prokofiev - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Dickran Atomian

Innocuous in the sense of being stylistically sophisticated riffs that never stray past unquestioned assumptions about how music goes. From the linear we ne'er veer. The best parts are when it gets busy fussing with its own innards, going nowhere, twiddling its thumbs, crossing its legs, waiting for us to applaud.

All I Want Is That Pure Religion- Blind Lemon Jefferson - [from Goodbye, Babylon]

One-to-one music, rather than one-to-many. The size of a private meeting rather than of a public gathering.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 25, 2015
Duet 150525 - Keith Eisenbrey

Back to my duet project for awhile. This session is hollow-body electric guitar and drumset. I was having fun with lots of microphones, 6 tracks per part.

Banned Rehearsal 886 150525 - Jenny Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


Aaron and Jenny have returned for the Summer from far-off climes.

Playlist

Live

March 6, 2015
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Jeremiah Lawson

Jeremiah presented two sets, in C Major and C minor, of his 24 Preludes and Fugues for solo classical guitar, finding a personal place among several venerable instrumental traditions at once. In response to a question he stated that working the counterpoint out on paper as though it were for voices and then transcribing it for guitar worked well because the restrictions of vocal writing were more strict than for guitar. Fancy that!

Ann Cummings

In Three of a Kind for string bass, piano, and banjo, Ann and her collaborators Jesse Stout and Ethan Subotta aspire to reinvent gamelanic polyrhythms from the ground up. The spectacular result here sounded like a giant autoharp. What fun!

Clement Reid

Each of us has their particular life within the music we know, our peculiar histories within the music that fascinates us. A large part of the value, for me, of the Salon is its function as a sharing of those histories and those lives. For me as a habitual composer of solo piano music, Clement's music underscores just how varied those histories can be. Dreams and Improvisations are composed of six (if I heard correctly) pieces fully of splashy inside-the-piano sounds and un-fussy tunes. I've said this before, but his approach reminds me of Greg Short in its easy acceptance of all manner of crazy within a familiar setting. Its strength is not in its newness, but in its imaginative amiability.

Nadya Kandrevis and Jeremy Shaskus

Part One - Creation for cello, piano, and soprano saxophone. What is clear is that something of vital importance is being worked out. The arena in which the work occurs is as personal and private as it gets, that is to say, it is of the greatest possible vastness. Some comments were made about the relative temporal segregation of the instruments. To my ear (as it was to others I think) this feature was its power. If I have a comment I would suggest drilling this segregation even further, down into the individual parts. The less like regular music this was the more I was digging it.

Recorded

February 28, 2015
Concerto in C (#3) - Prokofiev - Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrei Chistyakov, Evgenyi Kissin

A music of two lives or spiritual locations - one workaday, busy, vigorous: a public face; the other dreamy, sentimental, languid: a private face.

Concerto #1  - Bartok - London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis, Stephen Bishop

Tight canons to startle and scare. The patterns increment stepwise to plateaus. In terms of treating many of the instruments as percussion it follows the example of Stravinsky, but in a more linear concert piece trajectory - the new ensconced in the comfortably established. It gets pretty interesting when it reduces itself to little more than a field of colored impulses.

Arthur Grumiaux

Violin Concerto in D - Stravinsky - Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Ernest Bour, Arthur Grumiaux

A still picture, framed, An evoked place rather than a story to tell. Energized stasis by means of constant misdirection.

March 3, 2015
Quartet #4 - Schoenberg - LaSalle Quartet

From under a crab's carapace a tiny window looks out upon a dingy yard. What is possible is only so for a moment, at each moment it is more of a struggle.

A Pixie From Dixie - Fletcher Henderson

Sounds are arranged in pairs (brass / reeds :: piano/guitar / string bass) with a Haydnesque sophistication. We can dance because our place here is clear, socially unambiguous. Subversive role reversals occur within careful bounds.

Quartet #3 - Shostakovich - Fitzwilliam Quartet

a comic song (don't look

behind you)

chunk chunk chunk chunk chunk chunk

see

I'm being good 

looked didn't you

lament is perilous

(if it can be imputed to the soul it can be pathologized)

back to comic song

good boy

unwilling to ever

ever ever

leave

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 1, 2015

like the one on the left -
but I think I paid more for it

Silvertone 150301
Silvertone 150301 folded
Silvertone 150301 folded rubbed - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on my first electric guitar, a hollow body with three pickups. Pretty sweet.

March 2, 2015
Banned Rehearsal 880 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

No accompaniment from the snowy east this time.

Playlist

Live

September 27, 2014

Dead Bars 
Kraken Bar and Lounge, Seattle

In mid-dues, like a marathon runner at mile 8, still having a blast but shedding inefficiencies, getting that look in their eyes, finding their groove for how to do this thing.

I'm sorry we couldn't stay for the other bands.

October 2, 2014
Broken Bow Ensemble
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

min - John Teske

The species of motion (contrary, similar, oblique) duly debunked. Method: moments are concatenated clouds, not reducible to individual pitch-qualia. Neural maps, mapped to orchestral complexes. About, though not constructed of, differentiation of voice, note, color, person.

October 3, 2014

Macefield Music Festival (day 1)

Boss Martians - KEXP Mainstage (parking lot of Hattie's Hat Restaurant)

We caught the last half of this set as they were playing a cover of Ricky Nelson's  Hello Mary Lou. I don't believe I heard enough of them to really get a bead on what they are, though first impressions are of a competent surf-rock cover band (with some original stuff?) riding a sound that hints of digging Crocodile Rock as much as I do.

The Sonics - KEXP Mainstage

By the time the old guys got on stage the sky was dark and a halfmoon hung high over the building next door. Their presence gave a sense of family reunion to the whole festival - the grandparents and their myriad progeny. They held tight to the strength of their signature rip-tide sound, from the opening "Hey hey hey hey hey Cinderella!" to the final "She's a witch!" Larry Parypa's guitar playing is as ferociously effective as ever, and Gerry Roslie, though occasionally forgetful of a line or two, still flips easily from warble to field shout. The voice of a 20 year-old from a mop of grey with granny glasses.

Inly - The Sunset Tavern

We got to the venue in time for their last song - an a capella duet. It was like arriving at a potluck too late for anything but a 1/4 piece of pie. We'll need to find them again sometime.

Star Anna - The Sunset Tavern

Star doesn't sing the blues. The blues inhabit Star, and she sings.

We were beat and I didn't want to think about anything else, so we went home.

Recorded

September 30, 2014
Concerto No. 2 - Bartok - BBC Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis, Stephen Bishop

The mix is a bit piano-heavy, but the performance is invigoratingly reckless from all parties, entrances spilling over each other like greedy shoppers over a clearance rack.

Cancao do Marinheiro - Heitor Villa-Lobos - New York Chamber Symphony, Gerard Schwarz, Robert Bonfiglio

This is from a weird album of music for solo harmonica and orchestra by Villa-Lobos that was given to me at some point. Some of the song arrangements work better than others. This one is pretty fabulous, with high string tones messing around with the harmonica's upper partials.

Nague - Machito and his Afro Cubans [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Klangfarben-meter, prestissimo. Sixteen maximally differentiated moments within each fly-by-quick measure, always in perfect control.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 29, 2014
Banned Rehearsal 870 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt,  Neal Kosály-Meyer

Check it out.

Playlist

Upcoming This Very Evening

 

Your Mother Should Know

Canals of Venice

Bucktoad

August 10, 2014, 7pm, at the Skylark. All ages!

 

Recorded

 

August 3, 2014

Asrael - Josef Suk - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Vaclav Neumann

 

I was thinking about the titles of musical works and the degrees to which, and the ways in which, those titles, and our various understandings of them, color our experience of episodes of musical experience. Specifically I was interested in how a title, if allowed, groups its instant work into a literature of like objects. Symphonies can be compared to each other, as can concerti, string quartets and piano sonatas. The flowering of program music in the 19th Century, among other things, forced a door (or merely removed the illusion of a door) between concert music and allegory, mapping explicit ideas from outside into the pure (or stagnant) realms of music. Titles such as Symphonie Fantastique reveal the dialectic: pure symphony or story told? Is there a program? Why do I need a program if it works as pure music? If it doesn't work as pure music how could it work as program music? Asrael is deeply invested in this dialectic, but the spectacular elements of Berlioz and Liszt have vanished. Death is not played here at the remove of the big screen. The sublime is for keeps.

 

August 5, 2014

The Gong on the Hook and Ladder - Ives - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein

 

I was going to say "talk about your spectacular elements" but there's something more going on here. Not a picture, but a poem or conceit, concerning or from an imaginary point of view. We are the title object and we have a sound comprised of our receptions, through our life's duration, of the sounds of our surroundings. We are what we have heard.

 

4 Impressions - Griffes - Olivia Stapp, Diane Richardson

 

I wonder if the vernacular ghost of Stephen Foster lurked too closely behind Griffes to allow him anything but this starchy oh so artsy style of song writing.

 

Concerto in C - Prokofiev - Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, Antoni Wit, Kun Woo Paik

 

All sorts of things can be strung along a steady riotous pulse.

 

August 6, 2014

Mass - Frank Martin - Robert Shaw Festival Singers, Robert Shaw

 

A completely devastating piece of work. Clarity and inflection are painted here, not words.

 

Liberty Theatre, Toppenish, WA - July 2014

August 7, 2014

Piano Concerto 2 - Bartok - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini

 

The concert abstract in your face. This is built of bricks and so it is.

 

Carmina Burana - Carl Orff - London Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, Eduardo Mata, Barbara Hendricks, John Aler, Hakan Hagegard

 

It would be easy to dismiss this work as an overblown Les Noces wannabe, were it not for the fact that it seems to be establishing itself culturally as a kind of sinner's Messiah: On Christmas we sing-along with Handel, but on New Year's Eve it's Orff all the way. A series of short pieces, strongly pulsed, constructed with such narrow pitch material that the particular slant each has on the idea of tempo is the real point, strung together for contrast and sequential impact. One would almost think it's a '70s concept album stripped down to bare punk and re-imagined as though the universe had never heard of rock and roll.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

August 3, 2014

Takemine 140803 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

The blogger on woodchips - Seattle - August 2014

Trying something a little different: playing two sessions following each other immediately and then layering them. End result is three little improvisations. Not sure yet where it might go.

 

August 4, 2014

Gradus 248 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

A Short History of Pitch-Class Colonization in the New World:

 

expand realms

start over

consolidate gains

hegemonize

start over (armored)

threaten

unify

fill

distill

start over

segregate

visitate

investigate

celebrate

occupy

monopolize

regularize

classicalize

explore

reconfigure

dissect

continue

defoliate

isolate

apply policy

republicanize

summarize

slumberize

 

Playlist

Recorded

June 29, 2014

Hoh Rainforest - Olympic National Park

Tone Roads 1 - Ives - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein

 

mock fugue gnarly tree

tangle of woody stems stops

that's how far it grew

 

Violin Concerto - Frederick Delius - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Vernon Handley, Ralph Holmes

 

colours: non lethal :: warm weightless :: cushioned

diaphano-sonorous

blows softened, sans joint-jolts.

 

Concerto in C (#3) - Prokofiev - Nürnberger Symphoniker, Ainslee Cox, Jorge Bolet

 

Front-loads his big tune, though he does soft-pedal it how the clarinet splits itself in two a few measures in, and never does gush it the way Rachmaninoff can't resist. Bubbles up youthful bursting forth out of doors FAST or brought up short by some hard surfaced lyrical upwelling.

 

Mamie Smith

Royal Garden Blues - Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Boneyard Shuffle - The Red Heads [from Allen Lowe's Really the Blues]

 

July 2, 2014

Piano Concerto #2 - Bartok - Orchestre de Paris, Lorin Maazel, Sviatislav Richter

 

Musical material is musical material. Look at the brick and it says "brick". Unable to let on that there might be more going on than he planned. All those arch-forms and putative Fibonacci game plans - why do I get the nagging feeling that these are all there not entirely for heart-felt musical reasons but also partly because they can be explained in program notes, because they are the sorts of things journalists can understand, but which are, as to the musical experience, a smokescreen or a brick wall?

 

July 3, 2014

Symphony #1, op. 17 #2 (Exile) - Alan Hovhaness - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

 

A fascinating, if not entirely successful, take on a folk-idiom symphony. It seems to progress, or at any rate shift along, like a series of block-prints, related more by their stylistic voice than by any particular thematic or dramatic undercurrent. The ending took my breath away: two clarinets on a perfect fourth: a softly fading linger.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

June 30, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 864 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Banned Rehearsal: abusers of microphones

 

Our session was out on the porch since it was so nice out. Steve brought along his recording of our concert (mine failed due to user-error). During the first of those two sessions Neal opened all the chapel windows wide, causing a certain amount of wind noise on the recording. Unexpectedly, the effect of this was to take me back to our early days when we would often break the fourth wall, so to speak, picking up the recording microphones, put them in cans, rub paper on them, pretend they were dinosaurs, and in general abuse them no end.

 

July 4, 2014

Ain't No Easy - Keith Eisenbrey

track 1 - wood drum

track 2 - vocal

track 3 - hollow-body electric guitar

track 4 - buzz banger stick

track 5 - electric toy reed organ