Playlst

Recorded

December 1, 2018
Allemande - William Brade - The King's Noyse [from Mascharada]

closer to clearly a dance than any of Bach's Allemandes are
being older

step kick step kick
do they all stem from the same root dance as the Polka?

King Arthur Act III - Henry Purcell - Le Concert Spirituel, Hervé Niquet

Purcell liked the noise of it
up to his elbows in liking the noise of it

a shake (ornament) on shake (word) - very clever, Henry
wordpainting as blatant as possible, visceral even
as though that were so completely the point
but also distracts some from the little seminar the notes are engaged in, as notes

and then there's a Wind Machine!

Quartet in F Major op. 135 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

four clowns
each answering

to reprise is to vary
the activating symmetries

we suspect the non sequiturs
are not so non as all that

a lull? a lulling? a trap?
(left hanging in the attentive lurch)

definitely a trap
pizzicati ex machina

Caprice - Henryk Wieniawski - Itzhak Perlman, Janet Goodman Guggenheim [from Itzhak Perlman 
Live in Russia]

an encore
a remnant of the old Music Is For Fun vogue

East Arkansas Shout - Sammie Lewis [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

picked that up (the vogue above)
a draft or older version of the land of a thousand dances
pre mashed potato too

Carabina Trienta-Trienta - Epifiana Sanchez and group [from The Art of Field Recording vol. 1]

There is a slow flange quasi-arpeggiation effect concerning the placement of the strum sound upon the strings within the presence of the recording. tape wobble or intent?

December 4, 2018
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - The Sonics [from Boom]

a reimagined throwback

Punk and its progeny being a back to the roots music, from the very root of it arises a propensity to revisit older songs and goose 'em. From this trope comes some of my favorite covers and moments: The Stranglers Walk On By; The Dictators I Got You Babe; and (live): Peterman I Can't Help Falling In Love With You; and Red Ribbon That's All Right Mama.

stripping the sheen from the 50's
bringing it home

Chordially (Improvisation) - Thelonius Monk [recorded in London on November 15, 1971]

experimental
thinking with his hands
not a finished thing and clearly not a thing intended to be finished
melody notes perched uncomfortably on lumpy chord chairs

Eliza Act I - Keith Eisenbrey, Dave Jones, Aaron Keyt [December 1981]

oh golly this goes back

in the year between my graduation from the UW and my wandering off to the East
Aaron, occasionally Neal, Dave Jones, and I would gather in the basement of Dave Jones's place north of the University and record improvisations. Over the course of several such session we improvised an opera named after one of the characters in Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick. The result is easily not all that wonderful, but it has its moments and anticipates many of the activities that came to dominate Banned Rehearsal a few years later.

the overture
intoned trombone, bass clarinet, conch? ceremonial solemn
text erupts
fairy tales

If improvisation's purpose is to elicit pieces of music then we explode that idea by trying to elicit a particular known genre of music, demonstrating just how far off things can get. And it isn't due to us choosing the wrong kind of music to elicit. We do it in numbers.

we didn't have amplification per se to play with so we moved the microphones around instead
competitive cleverility
all of a sudden I realize
hey I'm in control here

December 6, 2018
Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes - Paul Simon [from Graceland]

fancy melismas and choral drums

Banned Rehearsal 275 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [November 1991]


a piano, so, Toad Hall

as none was available at that time at headquarters
thumbpiano mixed to have presence
J operates a spring contraption and is cyclically quite amused
drum and brass with flabby lip
the organ transformed suddenly into The Show
or was that the Aaronsynth?
going on for the cause of why not go on
awake!
or drift more
fat finger tunes
some tiny whisper whistles imitating cassette ghosting
J squawks discovering agency
double double reed thingy designed for the desire to be at two with one's self
pre-toddler delight
squeamish should turn their ears aside
diaper is being changed

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 3, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 971 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt


December 4-5, 2018

How Firm a Foundation - Keith Eisenbrey

I wrote this chorale prelude-ish arrangement of the hymn tune Foundation in July of 2001, the last of three little organ pieces. For the last decade plus now I've been going through all my keyboard pieces to be sure I have acceptable recorded documentation. They all work pretty well for piano too, though this one requires some carefully applied sostenuto pedal in three or four spots.

Playlist

Recorded

November 4, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 273 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [October 1991]

I am about
in tone nation
of tempo

sticks to its guns
in the red toad hall
the piano of eliza act 2

hearing J grow before our ears

becoming conscious of one's own sensations
nursery song for the young to join

I'm trying to figure out who's playing what
but the math doesn't work out
pretty certain me on piano, and Aaron on brass
so if Karen is plucking the pluckinator who's holding the baby?

domestica moltissima

a trope of complaint about free improvisation is that it always devolves into increased volume competition
this is the counterexample

a diaper is changed right there on tape

a forest of intervals none heard ever before
we wallow so in the the revel of our mis mal in tone nation

off
in all the ways
off
can be
off

Pressure Drop - the Specials

as the verse descends stepwise
the word repetition spreads
the pressure drops
(clever)

Carpe Diem Carpie - Wes Weddell [from My Northwest Home]

fishy fish tale
that giant golden horse trough in the sky

We Shall Overcome - Bruce Springsteen [from The Seeger Sessions]
Songs from the Voices on Earth - S. Eric Scribner - Ivan Arteaga [from Storm Sound Cycle May 2011]

an ambience created on the fly cooperatively
Ivan's friendly inquiries toward the sound around him
oracular

November 6, 2018
Finnegans Wake Part 2 Chapter 2 - James Joyce - Ollie Evans and Steve Potter and Co [from Waywords and Meansigns]

M Python radio play in a blender
overheard at its rehearsal
overheard at toothbrushing

multiplex the multiplex narratorices
over the backdrone
classroom at attention

such as it may be
studiorum upstarts
to me or not to me

the game goes on
distinctly understuttered
incipit intermissio

from the table
over a book
read by another

November 8, 2018Concerto in G BWV 1048 - J.S. Bach - New London Consort, Phillip Pickett

shuffling through the stacks for
great oh yeah I remember that's sooo cool! things

deep in the stacks
subindexed scary bass (truly)
almost forgot myself

query the first: how might this have sounded then?
query the next: given how it might have sounded then, among those possibilities, how amazing might we make it sound this time?

Quartet in A minor Op. 132 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

thoughts circulate in contemplation of an enormity or
but we really can't just not
well
meant
(a distracting toy)
seek chapelic comfort

4 Organ Preludes - Brahms - Craig Cramer

the tug-o-war among:
the instrument
the space
the score
the performance
the sheer sound
the recording
the abstraction

[blogger's note: Bach Beethoven Brahms (alphabetical order too!)

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 5, 2018
Banned Rehearsal 969 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

November 10, 2018
Maple Leaf 181110 - Keith Eisenbrey

I recorded some birds in our backyard this morning

Playlist

Live

May 13, 2017

Gamelan Pacifica presents

Lou Harrison at 100 Years:

The Seattle Connection

featuring Gamelan Pacifica and Pacific Rims Percussion Quartet

directed by Jarrad Powell

with guests:

Heather Bentley, viola and violin

Jennifer Caine Provine, violin

Paul Taub, flute

Bonnie Whiting, percussion

Maria Scherer Wilson, cello

Wayward Music Series, Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

May Rain (1941)

Gending Park Chokro (1976)

Threnody for Carlos Chavez (1978)

Pathetan Wantah, laras pelog pathet lima (in remembrance of Lou)

Ladrang Epikuros (1981-82)

Air in G Minor (1947)

Končerto por la Violono kun Perkuta Orkestro (1959-1940)

timbre

mix at

certain edge

of the set of overtones

that particular sort of

slowing down we do at

ends - coded differently

as a structural cue

it turns everything

into a microtonal

landscape

the parts rely on each

other not just to

keep together but

to be what they

are within what

they are singing

a particular

way with the

sensibility of

how things wander

off

it is extraordinary how something so ordinary could be so extraordinary

drone

membrane of a soap-bubble lake

flute swallow-fleet

rippling swift across

Recorded

May 14, 2017

We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together - The Velvet Underground [from Another View]

What we want to hear from the cool: "Join the party!"

Banned Rehearsal 245 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [January 1991]

Jump right in. magnetic tape echo spiral residue reconfigurable membrane morphing drum we can
hear our bodies moving by their occlusion of sound. Hangs in there for a good long time not being music. Try different settings! Fluid transit intention. Now we're plucking and plunking.

My Stuff - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Female point of view as such, in contradistinction to the more typical pop-sensibility: What from a male point of view the male would love to believe is the female point of view, but probably isn't, at least not straight out, without the slow poison.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

The third take from the Jack Straw recording session of May 2005. The reverb, strangely, confines the music, envelopes it, gives it skin and face.

327 - Black Horse [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

In what social context is this appropriate? War? Riot? Steam Letting? The danger of raw emotional evacuation is that the steaming turd has a social effect, and it accumulates.

Isaiah 60:1-5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey

A recording we made at home in January of last year. What gives the composer in me pleasure is how the accompaniment spotlights the voice, following it closely, like an aura, a glow.

Paradox Bagatelles - Craig Pepples - Sascia Pellegrini

each atom spaced so as to reveal aspects of itself that would otherhow not make impact :: these atoms are all and each clearly about the thing they are all and each saying, spoken clearly :: the sense in which they are a plural of bagatelles is that those animals, those bagatelles, must be all in the sequence, lumpily interspersed, grazing.

May 16, 2017

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus IX - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Long tones are short-term drones. A florid fugue plays the surface of a sedate fugue.

Quartet in C Major, Opus 76 #3 Hob. III:77 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

Kept safely deep within this very model of a repertoire string quartet (all to be admired and copied): worries, hesitations, concerns. The finale, party crashing, wandered in from some minor key quartet.

String Quartet in F Major, Opus 135 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

Scraps of bits, unaware they are part of any sort of design. Commentary and disagreement. Full of sudden shifts, shortcut modulations, make do with where we have gotten to [in order] to get where we must go. Nothing else quite enflames the soundbox like scribble-bowing, glowing hot.

May 17, 2017

Deep Henderson - Charlie Straight [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Fat precision. Like a sloppy drunk clearing a pool table to the last spinning ball. No sophistication, but deep for sure.

Easy Come, Easy Go Love - Sunny Clapp [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Crammed (frat boy phone booth). More fat precision.

Crying Holy Unto The Lord - The Blue Chips [from Goodbye Babylon]

Appropriation of the profane by the sacred, or invasion of the sacred by the profane?

Get Ready for Christmas Day - Rev. J. M. Gates [from Goodbye Babylon]

Digging through the rhythm of language into the substrate of melody - it breaks off just before ignition.

Boyd Raeburn

Over The Rainbow - Boyd Raeburn [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Runs through more presets than a casio. Every possible arrangement of the tune in quick succession.

It Could Happen To You - Bud Powell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Same deal as above, but all by his lonesome. (Chopin!)

My Heart Belongs To Daddy - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

The image of: independence from the beat, as though just talking, except that it never wavers from being exactly where it needs to be. She may be hiding behind the male point of view's desire for what they want the female point of view to be, but she does it while openly dripping the fatal drops into your drink.

Hello Mary Lou - Ricky Nelson [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Star Vocal! Hear it Here! (a blended orchestration of echo effects) Repeat with instruments.

One Of Us Must Know - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Excuses, excuses.

Vincent - Don MacLean [from American Pie]

Well Don, I'm sorry, but "snowy linen land" is just puke-worthy. Wodehouse had your number decades ago (see "pale parabola of joy".)

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 15, 2017

Gradus 310 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Quasi-similar motion (pitch-class nearness by shortest route) as countermotion. Take that, MF! 

Playlist

Preface

"So when I ask myself a question about thinking about music it devolves naturally into questions about the relationship between understanding and experiencing: not questions, for me, of either/or, but of hierarchy, of the direction of implication, and, to put it crassly, the most basic questions of personal goals and values. Are the ontologies of understanding-structures intercompatible with the ontologies of experiencing-episodes? Are they contingent upon one another, mutually, or in either direction? In another register, I may ask: is aesthetic perception distinct from extra-aesthetic perception, that is, from what I might call analytic perception?" Benjamin Boretz "fourth and long in Baltimore" Open Space Magazine Issue 12/13 fall 2010/winter 2011

Texts

Live

May 5, 2017

Seattle Composers' Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

John Kammerer and Rebeka Ko

New Music for marimba + electronics

They partly construct and partly conjure a wall-less but circumambulatable space. Oh so many crannies, meadows, brooks, and glens to explore!

Patrick O'Keefe

Morning Stroll - Emerald City Saxophone Quartet: Barbara Hubers-Drake, soprano; Molly Pond, alto; Harold Rosenkrans, tenor; Jim Glass, baritone

Patrick tells that this piece is about distractions from a stroll. Personally I think that's backwards. For me this was about scattershot distractions surprising themselves in discovering that it is a strolly sort of thing they are doing.

Jeremiah Lawson
Guitar Sonata in A major

A tender memory of a ragtime intimacy.

(On piano the energy of playing notes is vertical to the string - at an arced near-right angle.The face of the sound comes to us reflected off the lid, we hear it as though in a mirror. But here the energy of playing notes is horizontal to the string - across them at a near-horizontal. The sound comes to us directly from the soundboard. We hear its face directly.)

John Teske
ad;sr (vectorscores) - Neil Welch, Evan Woodle, William Hayes

(a short segment of a long space)

read-

ing

a-

long

read-

ing

a

long

road

read

a

long-

ing

read

a

long-

ing

road

Recorded

May 1, 2017

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus 8 - J. S. Bach - Zoltán Kocsis

A triple fugue attempts escape velocity through stretto alone.

String Quartet in B-flat Major, opus 76 #4 - Haydn - Amadeus-Quartet

We are addressed as colleagues and familiars.

May 2, 2017
String Quartet in C-sharp minor, op 131 - Beethoven - Quartetto Italiano

This recording was ripped from 1970's vinyl. (The past and its thwipdips.)

wafting smoke falling silk

the camera pans up to fade

the memory of a quartet

broken linear dreamlogic

the past is the price paid for this moment

it earns its odd threads

by sacrificing so many other paths

Playlist

Live

April 18, 2017
Strange Like Us, Your Mother Should Know, Mud On My Bra
Sunset Tavern, Seattle

Strange Like Us consists of: Kyle Sturner, vocals, guitar; Sadie Alley, vocals, keys; and Arna Garcia, drums, vocals. Darling synth sounds and solid playing all around provide a potent platform for Kyle's weaponized trans girl baritone. Add Sadie in parallel octaves for the KO.

Your Mother Should Know is, of course, Neal Kosály-Meyer and his sister (and my spouse) Karen Eisenbrey. This was their first electric show in quite a while. There were some shaky spots here and there, but they pushed through them. Karen got to try out her new headset microphone, and this may have been the first time I remember being able to really hear her vocals clearly.

We have heard Mud On My Bra (Myla and Aria Mud) before, and were eager to do so again. Aside from their stunningly tight ensemble (at the service of some fancy rhythmic games, I might add) I was able this time to attend more to the songs themselves, and to Aria's voice, within the ping of which I noted a hint of Jad Fair.

All that and our parking karma could hardly have been better: practically right outside the door, and free. Thank you so much to the woman who saw us trying to disgorge drums from the car and let us have her space when she left. And we got home before 11!

Recorded

April 15, 2017
A Matter of Trust - Billy Joel [from The Essential Billy Joel]

BJ has great control, just no range, or sense of timing. Even the count-off is performed, tamed.

Banned Rehearsal 244 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, January 1991


Consisting largely of a reading of A Cat's Life, accompanied by violin scribbles and quiet ocarinal hootings. Aaron provides extensive, if eccentric, marginal commentary. As much as I enjoy listening to my own music, and I do, inserting such a constructed form into an improvisation is an error. It remains, especially in my ear, separate from the on-progressing activity of making it up as we go along. It is persistently deaf to the other people in the room. When I get done Aaron takes over on the piano (or joins me for a 4-hands improv - recollection fails), and a truly awfully awesome sound ensues. Far superior as a part of the activity than my composition could ever hope to be.

Sunset's Wall

April 18, 2017
Taste Test - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Rotating pitch collections.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [from Jack Straw recording session May of 2005, take 1]

Each assay of the tune finds a new place within the harmonic-contrapuntal thicket.

10 Penny - Repeat Offenders [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

Attention is paid to the hollow moment just ahead of the downbeat.

Isaiah 60:1-5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [recorded in September, 2013]

This piece demands a more reverberant space to live in than is given here. It needs stone walls and a dome.

Musica Ficta - Sascia Pellegrini - Sascia Pellegrini

It is unclear from the program notes who is playing piano, but I presume Sascia is on the vibraphone. It is striking how 'on stage' the characters are, as they mimic and join, hide and seek, meld and face off.

April 19, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus 8 - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

a broad gentle downward slope
another
a grand mansion overlooking

Symphony in G (#94) - Haydn - Austro Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, Adam Fischer

Cracks in the façade, but not endangering. Rising waters, but not alarming. Yet.

String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130 - Beethoven - Quartetto Italiano

Sunset's Floor

If a quartet is both a unified thing and a suite of several differing things, then disparities of style, affect, and key can participate in a unified thing, and the same techniques with which the participants of a suite of several things can be said to become unified can be said to unify other orders of disparate parts, and each individual participant of a suite can be made of deeply disparate parts. How far can the parts be sundered and yet remain parts of a thing, not alien to it?

Katya Kabanova Act 3 - Janácek - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Mackeras, Gabriela Benacková, Dagmar Pecková, Erika Bauerová, Dana Buresová, Eva Randová, Miroslav Kopp, Jozef Kundlák, Peter Straka, Zdenek Harvánek; Czech Philharmonic; Prague National Theatre Chorus;

Ritualized sacrifice, as demanded.

April 20, 2017
Got The Blues - Blind Lemon Jefferson [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

Among many other things, the blues are a medium by which life advice is passed, and the forms and texts are entwined with the society of their arising.

Brown Baby - Eddie Edinborough, Bobby Leecan [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

It's difficult for me to hear what exactly those instruments are. Guitar? If so then it really loves those lower strings. Kazoo? If so, then just possibly the most magnificent kazoo playing ever.

I Don't Want to Make History - Stuff Smith, Johan Jones [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

It isn't just that the singers have been listening to the instrumentalists and vice versa, but they each have also been watching the dancers, and translating the dance into the sung parts of song, and the instrumental parts of song, as well.

Embraceable You - Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra, Jo Stafford and The Pied Pipers

Lights down low. Something more comfortable.

China Boy - Frankie Trumbauer [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This one is for the dance floor.

Godchild - Red Norvo [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Ken Benshoof had a theory about jazz harmony treatises. The puzzlement was that you could read what a practitioner wrote about what they were doing, but it never quite lined up with what they seemed to actually be doing. His theory was that jazz players always played "off" of something: "off" a beat, "off" a chord, "off" a tune. The treatises can only describe beats, chords, and tunes, not the nature of the "off". This is a prime example of the importance of "off" precisely calibrated.

Peggy Lee

I've Got You Under My Skin - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

Skates on the thin ice of a sensibility. The rhythm of her vocals is almost just simply saying the words. There's that ever so precise "off" again. Peggy Lee genius.

Bewildered - James Brown [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart Of Rock & Soul]

A parody of teen crooner delivery taken so far over the top as to enter a new land. Those breaks toward the end are composed just to hear the reverb the engineer let loose around it.

Pledging My Time - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Another parody of sorts, this time of delta blues. Of sorts because also a pastiche of sorts. Of sorts because also a submission, a sacrifice. The long-held harmonica notes toward the end are straight out of Louis Armstrong's toolshed. Then he does his best to conjure a synthesizer with it.

American Pie - Don MacLean [from American Pie]

This was the first record I owned, a gift from my brothers. Having ripped this from my own vinyl copy, it still has all the familiar pops on it. I find it curious, after all these years, that the first popular music song I took to independently of my parents, and that wasn't by Simon & Garfunkle, concerned itself with the past. The music of my time was the music of a past time.

Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie [from Changes One]

And of course, DB presents nostalgia as a point of view, in order to invent a fictional past.

One Of These Days - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

There is, or was, a class of youth, and I imagine they are, or were, mostly boys, for whom these crazy long spacy tracks were "so much better than that pop crap all my friends listen to" that they truly longed to infiltrate the dance mix at the sock hop with one of these behemoths. To that class of youth, these were indeed "great dance songs", and Pink Floyd was by far the best of their purveyors. In that sense this otherwise incomprehensibly titled Best Of Collection could be considered as perhaps their most archly meta of concept albums.

Banned Rehearsal 62A - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]


We are being vewy qwiet. Cassette machines sound like ammo lock and load. Gradations of multiple media transference terroir. Literally, mediations. A chorus awakens beneath waters. A cranky slide viewer. How quick the generations to the alien? One? None? The darkly glass. The layered hollows of wind. Crackly undulations. Flames of the fiery furnace. Gloriously spacious, the underlying is revealed. Remove masks. Pluck tendrils. We breathe and allow discussion.

This was side one of a two sided session as we prepared for our third Brechemin outing the next evening. My recollection is that Aaron might have been around, but didn't participate in the concert because he felt that in his absence in Berkeley he hadn't had a chance to properly rehearse. Karen was still living in Tacoma at the time, and wasn't able to come up either. Our second Brechemin show was called "A Short and Simple Concert", and the first part of this new show was essentially a repeat of that one, re-titled as "3 Compositions No Breaks". And that is what you hear on this rehearsal. First, Neal's Hunting and Gathering, then my Trance Butchered Knight for Wurlitzer Funmaker Sprite and tape, finishing with some plucking and singing.

feast on my car - Infamous Menagerie

I'm pretty sure that's the title of the song, but what is sung is clearly "feast on my heart". A manual? A labeled diagram? Every time I hear something by IM they become my absolute favorite band of the 90's.

Banned Rehearsal 421 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [April 1996]

The Funmaker 10 years later (we start in with what we have at hand and see what it makes) up to its old tricks again. Its cruddy reverb is lustworthy. And the Mighty Wurlitzer at its Wurlitzeriest. This sort of lava is hard on the feet. A near unanimity of purpose among some members is narrowly averted.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 17, 2017
Gradus 310 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Fog dark densely grown. (We may not have enough bread crumbs.)
At sea. Billows, birds, whales. Beacon. Stars. Moon. Phosphor.

Playlist

Recorded

April 9, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus 7 - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

This is a plug

All about the fugal entrances, and how each one opens a new window.

Symphony in D (93) - Haydn - Austro Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, Adam Fischer

Dramatic pauses and uneasy balances. The fart joke falls flat because it only points out what was obvious throughout anyway: dramatic pauses are the subject matter.

Grosse Fuge in B-flat - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

A fugue we enter through a hall of inward facing windows.

April 11, 2017
Katya Kabanova Act II - Leoš Janáček - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Mackeras, Gabriela Benacková, Dagmar Pecková, Erika Bauerová, Dana Buresová, Eva Randová, Miroslav Kopp, Jozef Kundlák, Peter Straka, Zdenek Harvánek; Czech Philharmonic; Prague National Theatre Chorus

Listening to this music is like reading the expression of an open-book face.

Chock House Blues - Blind Lemon Jefferson [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

I kept wondering if, as has been suggested of the contemporaneous recordings of Robert Johnson, this was recorded at a slower rpm than we hear as playback. There is probably no way to know for sure, but the possibility of it might be determined by a comparison of other recordings. Did his voice always sound so weirdly high? If you bring it down a step or so does his voice sound more like it does in other recordings? Is it a likely guitar key? Can the probable tuning of the guitar be ascertained by figuring out which notes are on open strings? Are there other recordings of the period that we know were sped up, i.e., might it have been a common practice? Is the weirdness confined to this time period (ca 1926)?

Hard Times Stomp - Red Perkins [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Sheik of Araby - Milt Brown [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Lovely, fat, almost clarinet-like guitar sound.

Apollo Jump - Luck Millinder [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]
Children's Dances - Zoltán Kodály - Jenö Jandó

Classy teaching pieces. The lesson hidden under the fingerwork is about the deftly shifting attention's focus from one voice to another.

April 13, 2017
Just One Of Those Things - Charlie Parker [from The Cole Porter Songbook]

Breathless momentum, stripped down arrangement.

John Verrall

Autumn Sketches - John Verrall - Kimberly Davenport

The ground is solid rock, but neither level nor even. Up is on a different slant than Down. Any attempt at parallel is doomed from the get go.

Ain't No Use - Sarah Vaughan [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

Precise placement of voice. She dances inside her instrument.

19th Nervous Breakdown - The Rolling Stones [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

An instrumental with a backing vocal for an excuse.

99 Lbs - Ann Peebles [from Original Funk Soul Sister The Best of Ann Peebles]

In the same sub-genre as 60 Minute Man. The song is so brief as to barely get started. Perfect at every moment.

Changes - David Bowie [from Changes One]

An assemblage in lieu of a song. Tactic: garble the narrative.

AKU (cassette version) - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey, Christopher Mehrens

Realized on Synclavier, courtesy of the University of Washington Department of Systematic Musicology. Chris and I spent hours and hours laying down these tracks. The reel to reel master tape deteriorated into something else entirely, so this is the "safety" copy I kept on cassette tape. There was a certain amount of institutional grief involved trying to schedule a time to play this for the composition faculty at our weekly Friday department workshop. Looking back on it now, I have to wonder what I was thinking, to play this for exactly that group of people? Over 30 minutes long, it pretty much forgoes anything like regular musicality in favor of design. The synclavier could only play 8 sounds at the same time, so in a fit of maximization I decided to base the whole thing on a sequence of 8 numbers. This sequence (I've forgotten what it was) determined the relative amount of time each patch would be present in the mix, the relative density of notes within each patch-track, various settings of complexity of wave form and envelope for each patch, and (my favorite) the relative amount of time from the end of each patch-track to the end of the piece. The notes were a hodgepodge of things, quotes of myself and others, "that'll do" doodles, and carefully stacked pitch piles. And then I had to arrange it so that there were never more than 8 sounds playing at once. I had charts all over the place.

In Session at the Tintinabulary
April 10, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 932 170410 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy

Steve brought over a little purple guitar and played it.

Playlist

Live

March 24, 2017

Floating in the high cold air - Lori Goldston (with friend)
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

LG

feedback of the box :: an additional hyperbow with which to pull each string's particulars into relief. Geologic. Ample. Generous as a long prairie drive.

LG wFriend

silent harleys flocked wheeling :: floating west to the foggy gray sea

roadless road trackless track pathless path

the deep pressed feel of pressed deep

smeared cyclic rhythm abstract :: surface of an ad hoc medium

elicits out of nowhere a baritone saxophone solid as amber

mind body spirit pull away

shore side

an anthem

Recorded

March 21, 2017
Taking Me Home - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Delivery on the flat line, punk nouveau.

Jeremiah 17:5-8 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [recorded live at University Temple United Methodist Church, Seattle, on November 6, 2004]

Mt. Rainier National Park - ca. 1975

I'm perhaps inordinately pleased with how delicate and transparent a thing this turned out to be.

Cell Block 21 - The Hollow Points [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

A cinematic chorus from a punk rock musical. Our hero lands in prison. Video unnecessary, it's all there in the music - though perhaps if Busby Berkeley tried it . . .

Xtet: Last Dance for Milton - Elaine Barkin [from Milton Babbitt: A Composers' Memorial]

clear lines

clear abruptions

episodes of interruptions

stabilities flourish here and there

but persistence is not deemed necessitous

It makes perfect sense now that I think about it, remembering all those crazy pages of scrawl-doodled commentary {(Igor's goriest, etc.), how like precision scores they are, as in: play this tune exactly so, at an angle to the page, hand drawn, fanciful, from the idiolect} that Ars Antiqua and its "proprietary squiggles" would appeal so deeply.

Self-Righteous Fool - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

Curve balls so subtle you'd be past 3rd base before realizing you had struck out.

March 23, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus VII - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Collisive. A time-scale shredder. Armor up before listening.

Symphony in G Hob. I:94 (Paukenschlag / Surprise) - Haydn - Academy of St. Martin-In-The-Fields, Neville Marriner

If the image of the music is the exploring of the most pleasing aspects of something, what is the something we are exploring the most pleasing aspects of? A discourse of the spaces between sets of tunes?

And herein we find that brilliantly square one fingered tune (Pa-Pa Hay-Dn's Dead And Gone) that lurks behind Beethoven's Eroica variation theme.

String Quartet in F Major op. 135 - Beethoven

A telescope extended and collapsed at once, in networked dimensions. And waddayaknow? There in the midst of all that "Es muss sein!" is PPHDDAG inverted, in three quarter profile!

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 20, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 931 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Yellowstone National Park, 1998

Playlist

Live

March 9, 2017

Honey Noble and Carbon Quartet

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Carbon Quartet consists of Rulon Brown, soprano sax; Nick Torretta, alto sax; Kevin Nortness, tenor sax; and Chris Credit, baritone sax. They performed pieces by Astor Piazzolla, Jun Nagao, Eugene Bozza, and Nikolai Kapustin.

This concert was, to the best of my recollection, my first experience with a live saxophone quartet, and I found myself comparing the sonorous qualities of the ensemble with other instrument-choir groupings. It compares favorably with string quartet in many aspects, perhaps falling short in the subtleties that arise among the specific colors of each string. But the dynamic range is wide and supple, and the articulation palette is rich. The sound has focus and authority, each instrument clear in its timbre even while blending into an unmistakably choral unity.

They were obviously having a blast negotiating the quick, complex arrangements, to the point where my perverse imagination wondered whether a really slow tempo would be socially successful. I know slow notes are hard on wind players - especially in the upper registers. Would it simply not be fun enough to bother?

Honey Noble, a singer-songwriter project of Katie Jacobson, performing with a large crew of electrified musicians, dancers, actors, lighting, and projected video, presented The Monster, a play / song cycle / dance / light show that struck me as eminently worthy and crazily promising, but unfinished. What I was digging the most were the multiplicity of axes along which it extended itself, the relationships among the planes of its exhibiting. Onto the Big White Wall in the back a frenetic video was sometimes projected, a dancer in a beige body suit stood nose right up close to the said BWW. The various electrified musicians (I recognized Greg Sinibaldi with his electric wind instrument) draped in ugly hospital gowns, sat circled around the back of the stage. The short bits of acting took place stage front, as did most of the singing. The dancer and two supernumeraries (minions? acolytes?) invaded the audience space down the center aisle and around the back to either side. All in all an attractively active setup. Katie sang mostly from front and center, which, considering the dramatic themes (self-obsession, self-possession, self-destruction, self-integration) worked just fine.

What struck me as perhaps unfinished were the joints between things, which could, to my mind, go either way - toward accepting them as such, stepping out of character, setting each up like a new tableau, "thanks for your patience guys while we reset the stage how you doing tonight"; or finessing them so that each seam lives in its own gut wrench, choreographed, composed, inevitable.

Recorded

March 7, 2017
String Quartet in C-sharp minor op. 131 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

In the land of sentient sequences, the fulcrum of movement and stability remains contingent on self-generating hair-triggers.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 6, 2017
Gradus 308 170306 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

The newest G-natural. A tool of pulling, a tool of hammering on the side of itself to loose the recalcitrant rod of itself plunged deep into the heart of itself.

Playlist

Recorded

February 12, 2017
Morris Clyfford - Arthur Margolin, J. K. Randall [from Inter/Play]

Two voices, call them Plain and Fancy, make attitudinal micro-adjustments to each other, each chomping at the bit to engage, but neither desiring the other to give up an inch of what they are. Dog bark in the next room joins the rhythm, and suddenly the co-agonists find themselves occupying a mutual corner. That's just about when the tape ran out.

Who We Hatin' Now, Mr. Reagan?- The Center for Disease Control Boys

Broad political comedy, mostly for each other.

One7 - John Cage - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Muttered in secret || DECLAIMED!

February 14, 2017
I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

I love the quick-echo between the vocalists. Grooving on the texture of close-packed material.

Banned Rehearsal 608 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey,  Anna K, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Spiral up incline slow vista shift toward intimate familiar || radio fog dissipates, as the.

Do the Stomp and Drag - Glorious Day [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

In punk-face: If you are treated like a zombie you may as well dance the dance.

Isaiah 6:1-5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [recorded at University Temple United Methodist Church, on December 21, 2014]

The recording linked above was done in the studio. The live version was recorded during the Offering, which adds a great deal of extraneous noise.

High Plains Drifter - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

The pages of this hand-scrawled book, a bit narrow for the lines, are full and generously so. The letters give each other room to sing.

February 16, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus 6 - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Two fugues crammed so tightly together that stray bits extrude suddenly into oddly contoured voids. Quartz in schist.

Menuet in D Major I and II Wq. 116/3 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

Lighter than air, the glance into minor thrills, a mutual stillness.

Symphony in D Major (#96) - Haydn - Austro Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, Adam Fischer

What might break out into the open from within the polite.

Quartet in B-flat op. 130 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

Gets going by never quite having been got going so that each :: place from which :: never is a place deflected || from this we persist || systemic flaws and their extensions

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 12, 2017

Ghosting Doubles (first) (after Amy Denio's "Ghosting") - midi realization

I had been working since late last year on the next part of a long project, an extension of my Etudes

d'execution imminent, and had gotten pretty far along on a hunk of sound generated by a pretty ferocious chart. When I heard Amy Denio's fabulous solo accordion piece, Ghosting, recently I immediately thought that I would use that as the basis, in some way, for the next part. But on Saturday I had, as Ben put it once, "a better idea", and the above is the first of three (?) sets of doubles upon her tune. For those with a quick ear, the middle voice in the above is a simple transcription of Amy's original. ("Ghosting", copyright Spoot Music, ASCAP, is used by kind permission of the composer.)

I rather like the bald, frill-less, un-finessed midi sound of this version, though I do plan on learning to play it myself as well.

February 13, 2017

Banned Telepath 54 Seattle 170213 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

February 15, 2017

Banned Telepath 54 Anchorage 170215 - Aaron Keyt

Banned Rehearsal 929 (170213-15) - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Aaron's bit is a wonderful 19-second long Moog-App twiddle. Neal speaks of cabbages and death. Steve and I find a new way to torture the atomatone. Karen rings bells.

February 17, 2017

Partita - Benjamin Boretz - Keith Eisenbrey

Kingston Bridge, New York, ca 1982

I have been attempting to learn this piece of Ben's, composed in 1955, for decades now, on and off. This version, recorded yesterday morning, is a pretty good picture of how well I'm doing this time around. I think I could still fix some of the more egregious bits of rushing, and clean up a not-quite-together attack or two here and there, but beyond that I'm not sure I'll ever play it much better. It always has been just a bit past the limits of my available technique.

Playlist

Recorded

February 5, 2017
Der Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus V - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Strenuous clarification: like ripping out brush.

Menuet I & II in C Wq. 116/15 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

Exact.

Symphony in D Hob I:96 - Haydn - Academy of St. Martin-In-The-Fields, Neville Marriner

How very like a concerto this is, playing orchestral configurations off each other, punctuated by big tuttis that wipe the slate clean. Or: as asides, the tuttis act as interlinear translations of what is more politely said in the smaller ensembles. Or: How very like a machine of men Haydn's orchestra is!

February 7, 2017
Grosse Fuge in B-flat Op. 133 - Beethoven - Quartetto Italiano

Cramming the entire universe into a fugal frameworkspace, but the second subjects will have none of it. Dissonance flickers throughout like old movie aperture instability. Has anything ever sounded so busted up?

Brother Low Down - Bert Williams [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Occupying a middle ground between comedy act and musical act. Certainly leaning toward the music, but just as certainly not letting go of the shtick.

The Bible's True - Uncle Dave Macon [from Goodbye Babylon]

Bunny Berigan

Elbow room between voice and guitar. Unhurried whooping.

Wild Man Stomp - State Street Ramblers [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The tune ascends stepwise just only so far before whumping back in line.

Mama Don't Allow - Bunny Berigan [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Such a soft touch!

The Star Spangled Banner - arr. Stravinsky - CBC Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Fesitival Singers, Stravinsky [from The Original Jacket Collection]

Square shouldered and muscular. Clean lines and sturdy feet.

Something to Remember You By - Benny Carter [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The figuration is subservient to following the melody whither-so-ever it goes, breathed seamlessly from player to player.

February 9, 2017
Ezz-Thetic - Miles Davis, Lee Konitz [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Independently tethered to the same anchor. An arbitrary aesthetic completely worked out, the ultimate 'screw you'.

Jesse Belvin

Goodnight My Love- Jesse Belvin [from Original Oldies from the 50's vol. 13]

Fancier than it lets on to be, the voice is as controlled as Billie Stewart, but doesn't whip out the flash. Jesse is on top of the song's every twitch.

What'd I Say - Jerry Lee Lewis [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]

I love the authoritative sound of the piano at the opening. Sitting tightly wadded at torso's end. Nothing gets out.

Ain't Too Proud to Beg - The Temptations [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Spacious enough to imagine that it goes on much longer than it does, as though it were merely a sample or advertisement for an experience we might have.

Fearless (Interpolating You'll Never Walk Alone) - Pink Floyd [from Meddle]

Sprawling, relaxed, whole.

An Alice Symphony - David Del Tredici - Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Oliver Knussen, Phyllis Bryn-Julson

(the orchestra tunes) (the singer says words) (the orchestra blats scenes) (we hear of cruelties) || the argument duly announced and duly made present. A hint of Peter and the Wolf in its film-cue characterizations. What is salutary: instruments playing their notes never transcend their actualities - until they do - and until they evaporate back into  (the orchestra tunes) (we understand absurdity as a form of cruelty) (we witness integrity violated).

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 6, 2017
Gradus 306 170206 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Stars blink on as though night appeared as dawn. Some constellations are habitations, distant or near. || the flooding waves ripple closer || dikes and levees permeate the ripples || reflexive co-infusion

Playlist

Recorded

January 14, 2017
I Fought The Law - Bobby Fuller Four [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Nice triplets in there. I love the dipthong on "law", curling back on itself as though hitting resistance. Almost appropriate: Karen and I recently watched "I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang", which has some truly amazing sound events in it, as well as a fascinating view of the connection between the penal system and slavery.

Samuel Barber

Prayers of Kierkegaard - Samuel Barber - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Andrew Schenck

The solid tonal sensibility loses grip in places, it works to break free, struggling slowly, manages to unsettle the more settled.

John, I'm Only Dancing - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Technically perfect song-writing. The voice pushes at the instrumentals, as though it were trapped in their cage.

You Better You Bet - The Who [from Face Dances]

Postural pullback, only to return to full frontal, hiding the low point of tenderness from prying eyes. Or letting it hang.

Violin Concerto - Henri Lazarof - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Yukiko Kamei

Icy spreads its arms and twists 

acrobatique 

aerialesque 

orchestral circus stage 

big top fire breathing peril 

here come the clowns sardonic 

self regarding self 

chatty nervous

Janaury 16, 2017
Adagio (3rd Movement from 11th Symphony) - David Diamond - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

Triumphal weariness, as settling to the ocean floor's deepest trench, through its subtle gradations of dark.

Good Things - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Held close, stiffly still, simmering under pressure.

Work Architecture Unity And The ("17 Crags" 010511) - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Anna K, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Second go at it. A sense of enforced singularity of event, severing any particular participant's interest or curiosity. Salutary to the extent we find a way to do what we always do but spread over thinner space. Or: an exercise in leaving space so that we can't always fall into the always-going-on-ness, leaving space for sharper corners?

Judith Shatin

Homemade Music - Judith Shatin [from Open Space 21]

Intervals Between Events: A Study.
Intersections of sets of distances between events as motivic cells. Clearly, so as to index the sets.

The Dancer - Patrick Marland [from Hendrix Uncovered]

Easily lovely. the bass is subtly amped, close the fingerboard.

January 17, 2017
Finnegans Wake Chapter 1.3 - Steve Gregoropoulos [from Waywords and Meansigns]

Spoken with attitude. 'scuse, with AttiTude. The music allowed to attempt to overpower, the vocal imitating the lingo of partisan journalism. Drunken sbrawling squalities. Text just one ring of a circus co-occupied by dueling Captain Beefheart Impersonators, infiltrated by multiple iterations of the Chaotic Noise Marching Corps. Babble of neverending political speech. Each music change: to enter a new room.

January 19, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus V - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

How they do crowd upon each other! At the end (and this is frequent in these fugues) there is the sense of "OK, now we're ready to really dive in, now that the preliminaries are over."

Alla Polacca in C Major Wq. 116/4 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

The purpose of ornamentation is to skew counting, to turn tables on the concept of number. These little pieces are about meter in a way that little else is again until Chopin's Mazurkas.

Symphony in E-flat Major (#76) - Haydn - Hanover Band, Roy Goodman

It is not simply that he moves in the unexpected way (surprise!) but that he gauges each unexpectedness so carefully, veering just so far along the circle of fifths, just so much further at the structural hingepoints: Where we have gotten to determines the depth and yaw of the veer. The slow movement has a focus that allows a huge dynamic range (a model for Schubert's late sonatas?) Then an extra fancy last movement.

Ave Verum Corpus - Mozart - University Temple Chancel Choir, Keith Eisenbrey, director, Howard Wolvington, organ

Last Fall our choir director, Chris Vincent, was in Italy and kindly allowed me to take the choir for a few weeks. He even let me conduct this justly famed anthem from late in Mozart's short life, for which I remain ever so thankful. What a pleasure! Listening one becomes so rapt that it is not until it winds down into the cadential trill that one realizes what a ride one has been on. A bit like life that way.

Sonata in A-flat Major Op. 110 - Beethoven - Rudolf Serkin

An earnest attempt to clearly play what is clearly there. He makes some interesting connections among the tempi in the fugal bits.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 16, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 927 170116 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Aaron is back from the far north for a few weeks. Hurrah!

Playlist

Recorded

December 15-18, 2016

Die Zauberflöte Act II - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Bohm

An allegory of the patriarchy in all its splendor and misogyny. As wonderful as the individual numbers are, and even as well as the Act II works as a sequence of pieces (somewhat better than Act I), the thing itself fails as drama, in part because the characters are motivated by the necessities of the allegory rather than by their personal interactions. They aren't making it up as they go along, it is made up for them from above. I also have trouble with the disjuncture between the sung sound and the spoken sound. The sung sound is so huge, so developed in itself, so wedded to its accompanying harmonic processes, that when characters simply speak I can't reconcile the sung and spoken voices into single persons.

December 22, 2016
Sonata in A-flat Major,op. 110 (#31) - Beethoven - Wilhelm Kempff

1. Figuration playing over the surface of what is held dear. Clouds on sky.
2. The perfectly wrong tempo, WK nails it throughout. I wanted to jump up and down.
3. Between-ness, one person, a singular voice, profane. (Alternating with:
4. The fugal sacred, corporate, universal. (Neither looking back to the other, but each finding cause, common or un-, within each, to be found to be having been moved back into the other.

In Session at the Tintinabulary
December 19, 2016
Gradus 304 161219 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

A new G. Anew! G! A gnu, gee! (Agnew) )Gwenga.( Eeg! Ungag! Wen, Ag; Wen, A.

Feeling felt. Bone of wood flesh of felt. Felted hammer fleshed bone wood resonanced wire.

The exact timing of an attack in relation to where the wire is in its vibration cycles can make such a difference in color as one could imagine a voice: back or front of palate, raised, lowered, the tongue just so.

The piano is an empty mansion, of which to approach is to inhabit. Guest or haunt? This music is some where. Some. Where.

Playlist

Recorded

November 26, 2016
Sonata in A, Op. 101 - Beethoven - Artur Schnabel

There are no straight paths. Grumbly trills. The pianos of Beethoven's day possessed a wider assortment of tone colors from top to bottom. Moving material into a different register didn't simply change the pitch level, it also changed the color of the sound. B doesn't rely on this bare effect, but also composes his own color shifts at every level of detail, putting his thumb on the scale, as it were, so we don't miss the point. This is part of why these pieces seem to shift so easily onto modern instruments with their more even tone-quality from top to bottom.

Barcorolle in F-sharp minor, Op. 60 - Chopin - Alfred Cortot [recorded on July 5, 1933]

Chopin loved finding deliciously odd pivot points for his multi-step modulations. Changing keys is a dance move.

Some Of These Days - Sophie Tucker [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Her voice is simply too big for the recording technology available at the time.

Shake It and Break It - Ladd's Black Aces [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Some fancy stop time shenanigans in there.

November 29, 2016

Sippie Wallace

Jack O' Diamonds - Louis Armstrong, Sippie Wallace, Hersal Thomas [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

According to the notes I have, this piece was recorded on the day my dad was born: March 1, 1926. Heavy beat, but touched lightly, in an instant, like perfectly synchronized eye blinks.

God's Getting Worried - Virginia Dandies [from Goodbye Babylon]

About (y)our wicked ways.

Romeo et Juliette Cinquieme Tableaux - Prokofiev - Orchestre du Theatre Bolchoi de Moscou, Algis Juraitis

The topsy-turvy world of R&J is a dramatic composer's dream, just begging for extremes.

Portrait of a Guinea Farm - Claude Thornhill [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This is a very strange thing indeed - somewhere between a tone poem, a novelty song, and a fugue.

December 1, 2016
We're Through - Sarah Vaughan, Dicky Well's Big Seven [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

Trying to arrange the cushions of consolation just so. It's so hard!

The Rake's Progress Act III - Stravinsky - Orchestra of St. Luke's, Robert Craft, Jayne West, Jon Garrison, Arthur Woodley, John Cheek, Shirley Love, Wendy White, Melvin Lowery, Jeffrey Johnson, Gregg Smith Singers

Pulling the rug out from under is standard operating procedure. This is theater in all its artificial glory, perfectly believable even with artifice tipping its hand at every moment. Ties everything up and puts a bow on it.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 28, 2016
Banned Telepath 50 161128 Anchorage
Banned Telepath 50 161128 Seattle
Banned Rehearsal 923 161128 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steven Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer (Seattle); Aaron Keyt (Anchorage)