Playlist

 Preface

"There are scores for players, there are scores for composers. A score for players you read as an invitation to enact, creatively, an intention, an idea, an image, a narrative, a sound, a structure, a quality, a complexity, a feeling, perceived as pre-existent, as implicitly in the score-code, however many sonic details are inscribed, or must be invented in the playing. A score for composers you read as a specific inducement to discover within yourself, to converge upon with your co-players, to invent, without preformed expectations, an intention, a meaning, a sensibility, a trajectory, a vision, a landscape, a music unknown before and unimaginable ever except under the influence of the scoretextimage."

- Benjamin Boretz "Notes for Open Space CD 6 (1994)" from "Being About Music Textworks 1960-2003 J. K. Randall Benjamin Boretz Volume 2: 1978-2003"

Texts

Streaming

November 14, 2020

Michael Nicolella

classical guitar
comfort food 

subjects of our conversation:
the close affinity of guitar and keyboard
(guitar the elder)
differentiation of manual function
the ratio of pulchritudisinousness to aptitude for classical guitar
the utter impossibility of doing what he is doing as he does it 

when we all go back to live concerts we'll have to remember not to talk during it
the notion of instrumental contrapuntal arrangement
who invented more than one string per sound board? 

across the encore universe 

conceptual question with electronic instruments: are they centered on making a sound or on the subtlety of the interface with which they are operated

Wayward in Limbo

With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially “live” performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere.

- from the Wayward Music Series website at https://www.waywardmusic.org/.

S. Eric Scribner

the membrane upon which we live
is a spherical drum
whose voice sings
under our mad careers
howling and humming 

we want patience
for hearing these foundations
for hearing where to plant our posts 

attend to the constants 

whatever he's doing
even when there are extra-musical reasonings prompting it
he's always focused entirely
on what the sound he is making
is sounding like

November 15, 2020

Blake DeGraw

1. for Orchestra

2. Slath

3. for Viola

4. Six Vowels

Mensuration Canon for Six Voices

flocks
of morphing birds 

longer shapes
are shared 

details of rhythm
on what would be the note and measure level
fend for themselves 

aesthetic static
luscious vocal sound in six vowels 

canon of the signal
a metaphor
for canon of the pitch token information

Recorded

November 14, 2020

Seizième Ordre (Sol) - François Couperin - Kenneth Gilbert

let us imagine a ceremony
ornate nuptials perhaps
flowered maidens
cockaded youths 

we are admonished
solemn but kind 

now we dance a stomping dance
now an old folks dance
or an inspection
a test time tune for developing an answer 

a song is offered
for edification 

and we exit dancing 

counsel is had among the elders
or droning speeches 

back outside
whew 

the party should look pretty
dress accordingly

November 15, 2020

The Sorceress - George Frideric Handel - The Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood, Kiri Te Kenawa

mostly little symphonies alternating with songs with more songs as it goes 

I discover that this is a modern assemblage of works taken from his oeuvre
I should have known
as it is far better put together as a large group than what I have heard of GFH himself

Concerto for Harpsichord, Strings & Continuo in G Major, Wq. 16 - Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach - Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Malcolm Hamilton

deep in the works
a chaos agent is kept
for later use
whence
it needn't always be heroic
nor a battle

Sonata in B-flat Major Hob. XVI:18 - Franz Joseph Haydn, Christine Schornsheim

could be blatant pastiche of CPE Bach

Symphony in D Major, K. 133(133) - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Jaap Schroder, Christopher Hogwood

he tells little stories with the harmonic rhythm
one must behave
after all is said and done
as befits the china and silver service 

vigorous and royal

November 17, 2020

Sonata in C minor, Op. 10 #1 - Ludwig van Beethoven - Wilhelm Kempff

it is preposterous
that such a passage as that first section
that repeats
could serve
as a repeatable stability
to which one might return
how can we return
where we never
quite
were

Sonata in G Major, Op. 40 #1 - Muzio Clementi - Howard Shelley

never tires of trying to delight and amuse
decorative, genteel, avuncular,  patient 

occasionally loses himself while playing with an interesting puzzle or a clever turn of figuration

Sonata in F minor, Op. 77 - Johann Ladislaus Dussek

melodic focus
Italianate
á Bellini 

or a firebrand

November 18, 2020

Impromptu in C minor, Op. 90 #1 - Franz Schubert - Murray Perahia

foursquare phrasing
stands firm
on an emotionally unstable surface
or in spite of
or is permeable
or sinks down into
or is the surface
over unstable depths
a tight leash
a tenuous thread

Etude in A minor, Op. 10 #2 - Frédéric Chopin - Alfred Cortot [recorded in 1933]

in Rock & Roll High School
a paper airplane
flies through the school
camera on its back

Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44 - Robert Schumann - Quatuor Via Nova, Jean Hubeau

piano can take the bass line
liberating the cello 

the drama of affect
and the drama of tonal rhetoric
are in cahoots 

sudden turnaround to frenetic activity
(had heard some Schubert) 

drama on a large stage 

stunning coda in the 2nd movement

Elijah Part I (end) - Felix Mendelssohn - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus, Robert Shaw, Thomas Hampson, Barbara Bonney, Henriette Schellenberg, Florence Quivar, Marietta Simpson, Jerry Hadley, Richard Clement, Thomas Paul, Reid Barteleme

amply annotated
makes the whole rather ponderous 

birth perhaps of the self-conscious masterpiece genre

Variations on 'Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen' - Franz Liszt - Alfred Brendel

rather than duplicate
in ultra-grandiose modern noise
the spectacle of a baroque oratorio
get down inside
explore the particulars
of where it didn't go before

November 19, 2020

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 16, 2020

Banned Telepath 65 Tintinabulary - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer

November 17, 2020

Banned Telepath 65 Toad Hall - Aaron Keyt

Banned Rehearsal 1014 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Keith Eisenbrey · Banned Rehearsal 1014 201116-17

Karen and Keith at the Tintinabulary, pulling Anna and Neal in by phone in a can from Outpost Lake City, Aaron at Outpost Toad Hall, we do what we do and make the noise we make.

Postscripts

its conditions by prejudices behind

which lurk in ambush just as many classes

that got acquired at previous historical

inverts

his desert

of grid mounted objects

Playlist

Preface

So creativity isn't a compliment, a valorization, it's an analysis of the state of things; and the realization that music creates its object on that ontological level liberates composition and redefines analysis as creative rather than exegetic, and certainly as not authoritative ("persuasive") or coercive. 

- Benjamin Boretz "Unconnecting the Dots" Open Space Magazine issue 19/20 fall 2015/spring 2016

Texts

Live

March 1, 2019
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Poem in Praise of Menstruation - Kaley Lane Eaton - Kaley Lane Eaton, voice; Ha-Yang Kim, cello

orbital cello intones ellipticals 'round its open strings
naiad voice sings its river

Is It Pretty Enough? - Lily Shabbabi

for electric bass, played by a young gentleman whose name I didn't catch but who bore an uncanny resemblance to a young Marlon Brando - the bass's sound fed through a software gizmo that made me lust after a more intricately contrapted sostenuto pedal on grand pianos, lifting individual resonances at will (if only there was no need to filter it through loudspeakers).

This Is The Understanding That The Self Is Time - Liam Harbison - Liam Harbison and Matt Walker, electric guitars

granular intonation oh so exquisitely just off - I want it
fragile acoustic prefigurements

Carolina - Ha-Yang Kim - Ha-Yang Kim, piano

joined at wrist and ankle
in difficult cooperation

[NB - I didn't catch the title, if there was one] - Blake Degraw

I didn't catch the names of the performers either, but I think there were two Jeffs and a Noel, who played a viola with 7 league boots (impersonated by 16 loopers on a synthesizer)

Tracks - Neil Welch - Neil Welch, tenor saxophone

high speed reedless hypertravel
oncoming outgoing sidewhipping flutterweight
rip your face off if you're not careful

Recorded

February 24, 2019

Swiftly But Gently - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

the title is one third of the poem
reluctant to fade out
but it must

O - Benjamin Boretz - Keith Eisenbrey [from Preludes in Seattle, June 2006]

dyads together mark
or can mark
group units
parentheses made of notes
as punctuation made of words stop
raptured in the middle of its making

a thought about scores and intention and liberty to transgress:

Who is a score for?

hint: us

If I intend to take a score as seriously as the score takes me

as a heartfelt, fully considered utterance

in the form of an invitation to engage

and I do so take it

then it behooves me to engage it likewise heartfelt 

and likewise fully considered

and

with equal freedom to create as had the composer

and so

it is not morally possible to perform any score as the composer intended.

*see below*

fingertips - Paul Lansky - Mihae Lee, piano [from Milton Babbit: A Composers' Memorial]

many masks
many thoughts
about many masks

Banned Rehearsal 911 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [assembled from Telepaths 49, June 2016]

one of us - Steve, I think - finds toontown sounds and brings them into our world

faustforest bansheewhale
a bar walks into a banned rehearsal

*composer has a thought of how the score goes

but has no certainty that that thought

is the score's clear intention

anymore than we the performer can

in intention's reverse*

and here it is
delicious placements with recorded space

on banjo - me, I think - I never tire of playing with number
tambourine playing
fully part of the melodic and liquid planes in tonal games

a giant in the grass

Paduana IX and Galliard IX - William Brade - The King's Noyse, David Douglass [from Mascharada - Music at the Bückeburg Court of Ernst III]

instruments arose as intermediaries between song and dance
between sung and danced
singing and dancing
the voice to dance and the feet to sing
body to singing dance and dancing sing
or so the story has been told

Minuet in C Major Wq. 116/5 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

rhythms cross so awkwardly
I surmise that forte piano is using a literal "una corda" effect
old man B was an architect and craftsman nonpareil
young dude B was a molecular physicist and
a prodderpoker into dark corners

Shot Down - The Sonics [from Boom]

ringy snare
the quintessential punk drum solo

Loverman - Thelonius Monk [from The London Sessions]

hang on, I'll catch up
not to worry

left-hand voicings to die for

BuzzBomb - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters / In God We Trust]

BB, flight of the

Underneath The Bunker - REM [from Life's Rich Pageant]

tango time
waddayknow! he's sayin' words back under there

Ever Since My Accident - Melvins [from Kill Rock Stars]

ratio: crazy drum / sticky tongue vocals

Sugar - Thee Emergency [from Can You Dig It]

precise vocal pitch
gospel joy of pain

February 26, 2019
Spherics - S. Eric Scribner [from Storm Sound Cycle, May 2011]

amplified sounds of sounds of a distance

in elsewhere's elsewhere
the near presence of distance accumulates

February 28, 2019
Home - Bicycle Face [from The Wonders of Female Strength]

---- is where . . .

cat does something on your zafu (turn it over)

---- is how
----'s a place

around you 

inside

with ukulele

Paduana XI and Galliard XI - William Brade - The King's Noyse, David Douglass [from Mascharada - Music at the Bückeburg Court of Ernst III]

fanfares and responses lyric and profligate
rhythm fixe and the rhyme of its reception laid bare
an event mis-heard corporately

Minuet in F Major Wq. 116/7 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

the small rooms
the rooms with queer corners

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 25, 2019
Banned Rehearsal 976 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Playlist

Preface

"First (1.0) 'a pitch' is stipulated to be 'atomic' - that is, indivisible into components not equivalent to the whole of itself. This designates the 'basic' vocabulary of entities for music, i.e., 'pitches'.

Next (Df. 1.0) two pitches are designated as distinct if there is any third pitch such that one of the two, but not the other, matches it, or if the two do not match each other.

If there is no such third pitch, and the two pitches do match each other, they are equivalent pitches, and are assigned to membership in the same pitch-identity class (1.1 and Df. 1.1; note again that 'pitch identity' is, properly speaking, a relation, not a 'property' - the latter, insofar as it is applicable here, as a notion, is only so in the 'property' of 'being a pitch')."

Benjamin Boretz Meta-Variations: Studies in the Foundations of Musical Thought 1969

Texts

Live

September 1, 2017

Seattle Composers' Salon

Chapel Performance Space

Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Steve Scribner - Untitled Tondish Music

Folk music of a fictional culture, but a real fictional culture, in that there is actual solid fiction (books!) in which that culture arises. Karen and I got to play squiggly percussion in the second one.

Patrick O'Keefe - Sonata for Piano

Like listening to familiar musics through someone else's ears. I hear 30's Stravinsky, some Debussy, some Shostakovich, but not quite the SD&S's with which I am acquainted. Someone else's, and at other slants.

Cole Bratcher - Transit Maps

We visit graphic aspects of San Francisco and Copenhagen. Work in progress on a fascinating project that hits squarely on two of my geek-outs: music and maps. We are all waiting eagerly for Tokyo.

Blake DeGraw - Diler, for strings

Four string players, each playing a single string, attempt to match the pitches of a track heard only by them. See Preface above. Theory hits the pavement. Damn!

Recorded

Charlie Rich

August 26, 2017

Who Will The Next Fool Be - Charlie Rich [from Sun Records The Definitive Hits]

Relies on vocal charisma to hypnotize. Circles around twice, no more, needs nothing so fancy as a bridge. About a girl or about music? Always a tricky question.

City Midnight Junk Strains (for Frank O'Hara) - Alan Ginsberg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

Bumps around drunk in an empty room.

I Shall Be Released - Bob Dylan [from Biograph]

Trapped by wordmeaning, more interested in rhythmplay, ripples in a pebble pinged pond.

Miama 2017 - Billy Joel [from The Essential Billy Joel]

Prog Joel. Imagines he has more range of personae than he really does.

Music with Or Without 12 Chairs - University of Washington Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble [May 1981]

The class of clowns.

Breakout - Swing Out Sister [a Rescued Record]

A totally Vegas ambitious arrangement over funky bass and tight brass.

Banned Rehearsal 251 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [March 1991]

tossing noises into a bucket of noises the cats are concerned. Amnehitabel? Concerned. Anarchy: concerned. we must be picking up from something old ugly floral drapes are mentioned 3 bags full

::] city truck outside as I listen beeping clearing sewers? [::

funmaker staccato hits magnetic ghost reel tape

Thought experiment for sound engineers: imagine the worst, the at all costs to be avoided horror of a soundquality, not just unmarketable but quick turn it off before you vomit bad soundquality. Now, imagine the most sophisticated transparent playback apparatus that money can buy reproducing exactly that same worst horror. Is there a difference? Where, exactly, would the difference lie?

improvisational composition designing with readily apparent qualities cumulating funmaker drone reminds of Frippertronics ah that Wurlitzer button that pulls the pitch down almost but not quite a half step

improvisation: the art of redeeming one's, and each other's, sudden decisions. Falling, a la Buzz L, with style

August 27, 2017

Sonic Brilliance 18- John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, John H, Aaron Keyt, Holden K, Kia M [June 1996]

intents made together in a room to hear how it goes. A theory of the man in the oat box. Must be hiding.

Banned Rehearsal 614 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 2001]

etched with care || a percussion sequence arises
what if we go with it, without regard for redemption?
deep dynamic registers linger languorously

August 29, 2017

Class Notes - Michael Dellaira [from Open Space 21]

Although: barely a minute long
Although: figuration could be any midcentury bebop wannabe piano player in late evening lounge mode
Although: all that and more or less
Rich in: melodic twists of chords
And: Nothing here is quite just one thing

Gradus 187 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 2011]

3rd A-nat from the bottom behaving as a point of reference, the high notes, all A-nats, nestled or floating in its active or imagined or remembered partials. Parent floating child; I rattle a rattle! I had forgotten. Are these hiatuses Cage silence or something else? division markers? resets? reminder? absences?

Each A-nat, being itself unhooked from pitch class inclusion renders each of its aspects unhooked to an extent from any sort of class inclusion, i.e. staccato notes don't form a class with other staccato notes, nor quiet ones with quiet ones, nor loud with loud.

2nd rung: it centers a bit higher on a still low mid A-nat.

#2Pretty4Jail - Strange Like Us [from Strange Peeps]

seething writhes around an electrohummy spacefilling wad that squeezes the vocals off to the sides. Immobile, constrained, plea though they plea.

August 30, 2017

Qui Passe for My Ladye Nevell - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

Upon these inflections of tetrachordal-metrical correlatives, the ear dances rice on drum.

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

Playful puppy. Weary hound.

How Do You Like It Blues - Art Sims and His Creole Band [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Mid 20s, getting sound into the grooves was work, or the sound makes it seem so, striving to be recorded, to achieve groove.

I'll Be A Friend to Jesus - Wade Mainer [from Goodbye Babylon]

Formulae stubbornly adhered to. The barest of variance tells.

Save It Pretty Mama - Frank Signorelli [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

In a similar spirit to Art Sims above, but more chill and relaxed about getting it into groove. And yet, very conscious of that 3' deadline at the end of the record.

Signal - Stan Getz [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Stan Getz

Precisely beveled throughout. Every join tight as tight can make it.

Chorale Variations - Stravinsky - CBC Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Festival Singers, Stravinsky [from The Original Jacket Collection]

The big magic picture book of Chorale Preludes. Each page turn renews.

Little Miss Sad One - The Fleetwoods [from The Very Best of the Fleetwoods - Come Softly To Me]

Weakened by a weak bridge, with a little cliché riff at the end of it (said bridge) as much as to say at last that's over.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 28, 2017

Banned Rehearsal 942  - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

March 2, 2017

James Falzone & Bonnie Whiting

Utterances - music based on text, spoken word, and translation
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Bonnie Whiting: percussion
James Falzone: clarinet, piano, shruti box, bells
with special guests:
Beth Fleenor: bass clarinet
Ivan Arteaga: alto saxophone and clarinet
Neil Welch: tenor and soprano saxophone
Steve Treseler: tenor saxophone and clarinet
Eric Vanderbilt-Mathews: alto saxophone and clarinet

Prelude - Bonnie Whiting and James Falzone, 2017
Amazonia Dreaming - Annea Lockwood, 1987
Sighs Too Deep For Words - James Falzone, 2017
Exercise No. 4 for Hands Right, Left and Deserted Mouth - Susan Parenti, 1984
The Room Is - James Falzone, 2013
Perishable Structures That Would Be Social Events, IV. Varése - Bonnie Whiting, 2017
White (part 1) - James Falzone, 2013
Your Thoughts While Listening - Richard Logan-Greene, 2015
White (part 2) - James Falzone, 2013
Toucher - Vinko Globokar, 2013
Grace and Chance (at the same time) - James Falzone, 2015
Postlude - Bonnie Whiting and James Falzone, 2017

The event as a whole wholly subsumed its constituent parts. Not that each part was not utterly distinct in its own integral event-ness, but that each part gave itself up wholly, in all of each of its integral event-nesses, to the passage of the event as a whole. That is, each event's moments were lifted into a status within the whole event that outshone their narrower moment-hoods. This doesn't just happen. Serious lifting was involved.

One hell of a band too.

March 3, 2017
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Sheila Bristow :: two songs: Strong Wisdom and Leap Into Love, for mezzo-soprano, piano, and cello. Melissa Plagemann sang, Sheila played piano, and Meg Brennand was her usual magnificence on the cello. Sheila has been working on this set for some time now and we have heard earlier versions of at least one of them at other Salons. I admire her straight-ahead, get out of the way of the text, illustrate clearly without over dramatizing things approach to song writing. Although her style is nothing like my own, the attitude is like, and refreshing. The entire cycle will be presented at the Chapel on April 8.

Steve Eric Scribner :: Tree and Stone (Artificial Version), for paper tree parts and chair stones (performed by the audience); and The Sherványa Nocturnal Music, for piano, harp, and other plucked instruments (peformed by Steve, piano; a harp player whose name I was too dead tired to remember to write down; and Karen and me on miniature kora (bug-guitar) and three-string ukulele). I was involved - in the sense that I plucked a few notes quietly through most of it - so my only comment is that I think I had the best seat in the house. The paper sound from the audience was luscious.

ComManD :: Thaumaturgy, for percussion, saxophone, dance, and electronics. Being, as I say, pretty much dead tired from a wicked week at work, I didn't manage to catch all the names, but Ivan Arteaga operated, to some extent, as spokesperson. They are working on some fancy computer-enabled ideas of collaboration, interaction, and mutual sound manipulation. The image that struck me strongest was the dancer, tricked out with accelerometers at wrist and ankle, somehow being both marionette and string-puller at once. Weirdly fascinating.

Blake DeGraw :: Electronic Quartet for Humans, for four saxophones. I recognized Jeremy Shaskus, but the other two names escaped my enfeebled note-taking. Adam and Justin was all I got. Bursts of sound from four sides projecting an image of a surrounding space. Bursts of no sound from all sides projecting an image of a withheld space.

Recorded

February 28, 2017

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus VI - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

This stands in front of you several times over all at once. Resistance is not futile, it is presumed, vanquished. Nothing like music as usual.

Symphony 95 - Haydn - Austro Hungarian Haydn Orchestra, Adam Fischer

First the overture. A domestic crisis with fatherly advice. Fatherly advice activated, public acclamation follows. Wrap it up.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

February 27, 2017
Assembly Rechoired 56 170227 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey
There was rain. There was snow. There was thundersnow. And then came the overturned propane tanker on I-5. Traffic was beyond a mess. In honor of our compatriots trapped in traffic Karen and I carried on with noise. Since before our marriage (the first two were in June of 1986) we have called any improvisation session with just the two of us and no other Banned Rehearsal regular an "Assembly Rechoired". This is #56. Karen played the Excelsior and I bumped around several noisy items, at the end pouring all the ping pong balls out of the bucket into the chimney. And back.