Playlist

Preface

"Music journalism survives through the continuous propagation of compositional 'movements',
endlessly contending in mutual exclusion and hostility for some ultimate 'supremacy', the achievement of which creates, for a brief Hegelian moment, a new Establishment that is, in its turn, opposed and overthrown. In this our journalists are the victims of their own dedication to hyperbole and generality; for they are frequently left unable to describe a musical work except as a type, a pawn in an ideological conflict whose 'outcome' is the only evident substantive issue. And when works are so regarded, they are described only in terms of their most immediate 'typical' characteristics, whose significance seems to lie only in their contrast with some other, contending 'school'. Perhaps this tendency results also from the considerably greater ease of describing a composition in terms of what it is not than in terms of what it is as a unique realization of particular musical ideas."
Benjamin Boretz "2.26.68 Journalism" from "Music Columns from The Nation 1962-1968"

Texts

Live

August 10, 2019
Finnegans Wake Part 1 Chapter 2
performed from memory by Neal Kosály-Meyer
Gallery 1412, Seattle

earth side hoist
a cad with a pipe
here comes everybody
imposing cobweb crusted corks
may his hairs be rubbed in dirt

Recorded

August 10, 2019
Sonata in A minor, K. 36 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

through-composed artifice
every other aspect of experience is banished and vanished
clarity alone remains

Way Faring Stranger - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, director [April 1966]

alto solo
verse with oooo's in the upper voices
then another canon
this world of woe

Around And Around - Moe Tucker [from I Feel So Far Away: Anthology 1974-1998]

flat line delivery
except or also the "woo!"

not exactly a cover of the song
more a re-imagining of both the song and energy from which it sprang

Banned Rehearsal 103 - Karen (Meyer) Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [August 1986]



wound strings are like long guiros
longitudinal scraping
ukulele and ocarina comment
working it like sawing or sanding
ocarina player switches to harmonica

intent: keep sound going, all of space filled
an urgency to continue in like tempo
steady state

pressure applied for metamorphic hopes
not without some success

It just takes some time.

We can relax,
having managed to get somewhere.

We have entered that temple of chapels through which the Wurlitzer wanders, singing praise to noise! praise to noise!
flutes descanting in its train

Now it is time to operate some devices and make rubbings. Wagner is pelted by balloons and bells. O the glorious Rhein rising! We play the stage machinery.

Is it safe yet to emerge?
We do anyway. Clean up the mess. uh oh. Aaronsbundler.

August 11, 2019
The Other Level - Geto Boys [from We Can't Be Stopped]

porn fan fic

Wie Lieblich ist deine Wohnungen - Johannes Brahms - Atlanta Symphony and Chorus, Robert Shaw [from Robert Shaw Master of the First Art]

In Chopin the strange counterpoints that shape the melody's harmonic heaving are never whole, but persist in hints and patches only. Here they are worked out to the nth, and Brahms is desperate to insist that you hear that he has worked them out as he surely has.

Gradus 105 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2006]

resonance is what reaches out to us
binding sounds
testing the limits of contact

Is there a chaos between touch and not touch?
a touch at the limn of release?

August 13, 2019
Tre Duetti - Elliott Carter - Rolf Schulte, Joel Krosnick [from Milton Babbitt: A Composers' Memorial]

the heart of thought laid bare

{extraneous performance noise: humming, breathing, podium creaking, turning pages. The line between acceptable and irritating is personal. For me, any voiced vocal noise is a problem, (because it's pitched?). Herein I am more than willing to overlook the humming for the other strengths of the performance.}

Distracted Driver - St. Rage [at the Common Good Cafe, August 2016]



trending on twitter
eating marshmallow peeps

In 2016 Karen's YA urban fantasy novel "The Gospel According to St. Rage" was released. This was from the book release event, in which Karen and her brother, Neal Kosály-Meyer, posing as St. Rage, the fictional band within the book, sang the songs Barbara, her fictional hero, wrote.

And Hey! That book is being re-released soon! Now available for pre-order, and soon to be followed by the sequel, "Barbara and the Rage Brigade".

August 15, 2019
Sonata in C minor, K. 37 - Domenico Scarlatti - Pieter-Jan Belder

For those with ears to hear, Scarlatti thinks in naked composition with a forthrightness that neither Haydn nor Beethoven could quite manage. A perfect match of means and ends, i.e., music, as such.

Symphonie in C minor - Camille Saint-Saëns - Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, Michel Plasson

spacious
not room to breathe
but briefly
room to recall

oh the Schubert oh the reminiscence
via Mendelssohn and Berlioz and Tchaikovsky I think
the elan of chops standing in for invention
check in with past glories for the I recognize that bit jollies of the cognoscenti (the cogknows?)

but
something about the way it builds from scraps prefigures Sibelius
and it is never not lively in transfigurations of its idée fixe
every moment of every moment is melodically charged
Busoni was soon to till this same field
then it goes gleefully oratorical-finale-fugue-ish on us
Bach obsessed, but aren't we all?
grandiosity to the max maximum maximaxiest
music designed for the architecture it was meant to fulfill

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 12, 2019
Gradus 354 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

molecular soup hanging just above its atomic base
free floating melody and harmony parts
flotsam with potentialities

Postcripts

the sprung based as we have certain conditions

must be industry sinks the rapidly

to impose him sink state that it has no

pitch bent mind time
want to stop
go for a walk

Playlist

Recorded

October 28, 2018
You Need Jesus on Your Side - Deacon A. Wilson [from Goodbye Babylon]

each phrase in verse or chorus is a vector of rhetoric, preaching in the structure of preaching

Footnote to Howl - Allen Ginsburg [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

hideous human angel ho(w)ly the fourth dimension kindness of the soul

Variations for Orchestra - Elliott Carter - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, James Levine

films projected on all the walls around us
but not always on all or more than one
we seek out wheretoward to attend
balancing systems of rhetorical affect
with systems of pitch

as rhetorical affect is used to clarify the pitch
the patterns of rhetorical differentiation are exploited with the hard edged systemic rigor image

to keep it civilized

clearly
the actual facts of the system
are so many red herrings

Soft Winds - Oscar Peterson, N. H. Orsted-Pedersen, Louis Hayes [from The Great Connection]

playing the recognizableness of a tone
oh that's this
knows he's on to something
but doesn't allow much high art pretension to show

Trust Your Mechanic - Dead Kennedys [from Plastic Surgery Disasters - In God We Trust]

not a happy surfer's surf rock wave
rather a rocket car g-forced blubber face

Banned Rehearsal 83 - Karen Eisenbrey (Meyer), Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1986]

soft ball
some background noise
like a distant subaquiescent engine
softball game
repetition brings comfort
from this stability
we make inquiries
kitchen vicinity acoustic
running water
harmonica and softball shaped clay ocarina
proximity effect as improvised compositional device
at the half house pushing to 100
my tub filling in a microphoned house
running water to which we warble
mitt glove!
sneaks upon one in two
Karen to be always being present as transparent image of presence

all oc
oc mit

improvisation as conceptual multimodular composition thinking
bathtub clangy delight
Neal supplies the "the"
article to which the all is applied
and why

among our finer moments even though talking in it
extraordinarily focused on its soundworld
one channel is where Neal goes to play by himself
a guitar chord plucked?
NO! clavichord tangented
a new sound

Fear Bitterness and Hatred - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

67ish mini big guitar

"...woe my road is spoken..." 060604B - Keith Eisenbrey

string quartet for robot string quartet
getting there

Dark Star - Youth Rescue Mission [from Youth Rescue Mission]

grownup song
nicely layered backing vocals

Something of Mine - St. Rage [Karen Eisenbrey and Neal Kosály-Meyer vocals and instrumentals, recorded and produced by Keith Eisenbrey - April 2016]

in a can luscious

October 30, 2018
Concerto in G BWV 1049 - J.S. Bach - New London Consort, Philip Pickett

spendthrift rubato
if you want it straight go down the street
3 magic strokes and they appear
lofted free
shadow lines scribble and scribble cleared outside
extra dry tremolo shiver guiro

Finaletto "Di si felice innesto serbiam memoria eterna" - 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)]

over before you know it
time to hit the road

Grosse Fuge in B-flat op. 133 - Beethoven - Alban Berg Quartett

tries an ill-fitting subject on for several sizes
various success
fugue and continuous granular variations
it will never fit
none of it

Trio in E minor op. 114 - Brahms - Walter Barylli, violin; Franz Koch, horn; Franz Holetchek, piano

clearly, this was ripped from vinyl, but by whom?

single thread music
3 distinctly produced sounds become one melodic thread

November 1, 2018
Your Enemy Cannot Harm You (But Watch Your Close Friend) - Edward W. Clayborn [from Goodbye Babylon]

replacement of (words) by (fancily vibratoed high guitar)
rather a bleak sermon

Pent-Up House (excerpt) - Sonny Rollins [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

head repeat serves a stabilizing function like binary form repeats in classical
especially as here where the phrases skew off meter

Visions of Johanna - Bob Dylan [from Biograph]

cultural imprint
his luck and talent and skill to have hit upon a rubric in which any can find themselves

until you step back a tidge

Just Squeeze Me - Oscar Peterson, N. H. Orsted-Pedersen, Louis Hayes [from The Great Connection]

differentiates threads of tune by how they hang in the swing

Log P - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 1981]

keyboard dueting

perhaps too compatico
nice vibrato on the stop tones though

Adeste Fidelis - London Symphony Orchestra, et al [from Listen To The Joy]

I hope they all got paid.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 29, 2018
Gradus 341 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

November 12, 2016
The Campbell Brothers
University Temple United Methodist Church

This evening of friendly bluegrass-infused music was given as a benefit for the alley ministries of University Temple United Methodist Church. My long-time partner in the tenor section Dave Campbell was joined by his brother Rick Campbell - both switching variously among guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandola, and mandocello - and by Paul Elliott and Pete Goodall (on fiddle and bass respectively) for a mix of old songs and new, including covers by Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. As seems to be typical with bluegrass, displays of instrumental virtuosity are interwoven with bouts of competitive self-deprecation, raised to nearly a blood sport. Many thanks to all concerned. I understand the concert raised nearly $1000!

Recorded

November 13, 2016
Hubcap - Sleater-Kinney [from Call The Doctor]

Fragmentary and unfinished - in a strong, Schumannesque way. 3 parts are repeated, with a coda of back-around-to-the-top-again to hint at cycles and cycles.

me in the 90's

Doomsome Otherings (edit from a reading) - Keith Eisenbrey - Seattle Creative Orchestra, Roger
Nelson

Through most of the 90's I was working in a self-consciously neo-classical style, with strong echoes of Arthur Berger and 50's era Benjamin Boretz or Elaine Barkin. Doomsome Otherings (my alternate rendering of "Canonic Variations") was originally written as a viola and piano duo in 1994, riffing on what was probably a mis-hearing of the variations in Prokofiev's Piano Concerto in C Major (#3). What I thought I heard were bits of earlier variations plugged into place in the middles of later variations. So I constructed a set of five variations (or a theme and four variations, depending on how you look at it) into each variation of which, at a set place within its schema, is inserted a bit of the surface style of the variation 3 places in front. The harmonic structure of the whole set proceeds more or less independently by a schema I couldn't explain to you anymore because I can't remember it. I believe it had something to do with transformations of pentachords in two strands proceeding at different rates. I made several unsuccessful efforts to hire players to record it for me, so when the Washington Composers' Forum held a contest for orchestral readings in 2000 I decided to orchestrate it. It's probably just as hard to play as an orchestral piece as it is for viola and piano, but Roger Nelson and crew valiantly pushed through. Many thanks to Christopher Shainin for editing the various starts and stops into a single whole. I'm still pretty pleased with the piece. Any hard-core violists out there?

Don't Care If I Die - The Earaches [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

anger at existence.

Floorplan - Youth Rescue Mission [from Youth Rescue Mission]

Warm string kodakmoment sound, but flatfooted and begrieved - there are actual living spirits in that quiet shady street!

November 14, 2016
Cançoes Profundas - Steve Peters - Steve Peters, Rafael Carvalho, Lesli Dalaba, Beth Fleenor, Paul Kikuchi, Joshua Parmenter, Naomi Siegel, Greg Sinibaldi

Now that's what I call a baptism! Extreme inundation. You, pilgrim, have been duly dunked.

forth comes human-babble

tongues of deep :: we mimic, talk back

a cathedral a bell we stand inside

clapper voices

the sky a bell we stand under

clapper drums

distillation of ocean roll and roar

water to water :: an island enclosed

clock tick or windroar as time

alternates crisscross in the ether

thin signals from shore

shipcalls shorecalls birdcalls whalecalls

geography as memory :: memory as geography

(Thanks for the CD, Steve!)

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

These gears are in such a tight space they really should seize up. But these cogs are subtly twisted. Creation as machine.

Sonata in B minor Hob XVI:32 - Haydn - Anton Nel

Delicacy and fineness of feeling achieving a state of decadence.

November 16, 2016
Die Zauberflöte Act I - Mozart - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Karl Bohm

Of all Mozart's well-known operas I struggle with this one the most. Sometimes I can convince myself it all hangs together, but most of the time I can't. I was doing somewhat better this time, considering it as a parable of repression and resistance, patri- and matri-archy, animal human and civilized human. What is missing entirely are the characters that seem to have stepped living and breathing out of the past. These figures were 2D then and are still so. He could sure write a stunning tune or two though.

Sonata in A Op. 101 (#28) - Beethoven - Wilhelm Kempff

My favorite part: how those repeated chords stretch out at angry angles to any world the ostensible beat might inhabit.

Barcorolle in F-sharp Op. 60 - Chopin - Vladimir Ashkenazy

Bachlike, the melody falls to the ground in parts, spreading a single beat (from a phrase-functional standpoint) out over several measures. From theme to theme is a journey and a struggle. Before the new is achieved the old must be dismantled, and the new must be strapped together from the old's parts.

November 17, 2016
King of the Bungaloos- Gene Greene [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

It is difficult to separate the musical value from the icky. On the one hand the proto-scat, in-your-face onslaught of nonsense packs a punch, but in the context it comes across as yet another infantalization of African-American experience and aspiration. In the end all I can cling to is my extreme discomfort and dismay.

Harlem Strut - James P. Johnson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

JPJ struts out a whole song and dance routine, complete with band and backup singers. In a way he does for Vaudeville what Liszt's transcriptions did for Beethoven symphonies.

Georgia Grind - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five - Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, Lil Armstrong, Johnny St. Cyr

Finds multiple x-tuple subdivisions of the shifting meter, each on, and creating, its own rhythmic plane. We have our work cut out for us, holding it all together. Those cats blowing on stage aren't letting on how they do it.

My Pretty Girl - Fletcher Henderson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

A similar effect to GG above, but with whole instrumental groups playing at angles to each other, rather than individual soloists.

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

I couldn't help but wonder how amazingly diverse "symphonic form" would be if we all took this deeply imagined and delightfully bizarre sequence as permission and model. Such fun! The guitar standing in the corner happily reverberates the up-in-the-air ending.

Tryin' to Be True -Modern Mountaineers [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The only way to tap the beat of the whole is to join in as an independent player, because that's exactly what each of them is doing. You just got to dance and that's that.

Ballin' The Jack- Art Hodes [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Deep focus on all of the above.

The Rake's Progress, Act II - 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

An opera infesting a symphonic narrative. Or: a narrative symphony dancing with an opera. I love how at one point the harmony resolves to an old-fashioned perfectly balanced triad, followed immediately by the words "I wish I were happy!"

stray notes:

The first female words of the act: "How strange".

Into the idealistic heart a knife thrusts and twists. (Why nobody really likes satire, as in "likes").

The orchestra interludes work like a curtain: it does not change and it tells you nothing.

Zeitmasse - Stockhausen - Arthur Gleghorn, Donald Muggeridge, Donald Leake, Donald Christlieb, William Ulyate

3D space created on a 2D surface by careful use of perspective alone.

November 18, 2016
Double Concerto  - Elliott Carter - Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, Arthur Weisberg, Paul Jacobs, Gilbert Kalish

Bicameral. Two concertos partially conjoined - but not at the soloists.

We Could Be Happy - The Cryan Shames [a Rescued Record]

Just darling! Like the Fleetwoods if they were all guys.

Pillow of Winds - Pink Floyd [from Meddle]

More warm glow music with slidy bass.

Montreux/Berlin Concerts, Cut 7 - Anthony Braxton - The Berlin New Music Group, Gerald Humel, Anthony Braxton, George Lewis

As though AB and GL were clambering to the top of EC's DC (see above), all its clatter and spite. At the top they share some sounds. The ground softens, the trees green themselves and darken. A harp closes the book. At the very end of the track, just before the applause is faded out, somebody on stage (AB? GH?) says "Somehow we got through!"

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 14, 2016
Banned Rehearsal 922 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer


Includes birthday greetings to Anchorage Aaron.

November 15, 2016
Slow Blues - Keith Eisenbrey

I have been revisiting my 1999 solo piano piece Slow Blues. The recordings I made shortly after its completion are all about 30 minutes long. I feel it moving along a bit faster now that I have gotten better acquainted with it, and this version, though still 'slow', clocks in at a bit under 18 minutes. I am taking my original dynamics and pedal marks to be suggestive guidelines rather than prescriptions. Partly this is because my current piano (an 1890 8' Chickering) responds differently than the one I had then (a 1975 6' Yamaha). For any composer-tech types out there who are interested, this is the first piece I wrote that used each mod-17 M-transform in sequence, (M0, M1, M2 . . . M16, M0) as the structural basis for a whole piece. It also takes a significant lurch out of the neo-classical, or, perhaps, slips suddenly through a crack in the floor.

Playlist

Recorded

September 20, 2015
Reach Out I'll Be There - The Four Tops [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock and Soul]
Maggie May - Rod Stewart [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock and Soul]

Both of the above songs enter full blown after a completely distinct introduction. TFT use the instrumentation of the introduction as an underpinning that appears in bits and pieces later, but never dissolves into its parts. RS simply juxtaposes his straight-ahead folk-minstrelsy after several mock 17th-century lutish phrases, perhaps suggesting that the song's situation is really just another antique, but decked out now in t-shirt and jeans.

Head On - The Stooges [from Metallic 'KO - Open Up and Bleed]
Sex Bomb - Flipper [from Nancy's Mix]

These songs also paired up nicely. For all their street raw (TS) or sophomoric (F) bluster, the pacing of exactly how events are placed for maximum effect is compositionally right on.

September 22, 2015
Quartet #4 - Elliott Carter - Pacifica Quartet

In order for a rhythm to count as, say, 5 against 7, the receiving ear must count 5 and count 7 and register the frame within which they coincide, else they are simply disjunct pulsings. Our desire to rationalize is exactly that, a desire, that is, something irrational. Success: the grid of meter is vanished. Now must contend with an index-less world.

One7 {The Ten Thunderclaps} - John Cage - Neal Kosály-Meyer

[recorded at the Chapel Performance Space on January 26, 2013 - see my blogpost of January 27, 2013 for my thoughts then]

mutterclaps
munderclaps
intermittently voiced
a world divided into timespans, utterly arbitrary, voided of intentional specific meaning, though the clock-time-driven arbitraritude itself is loaded with something intentional. The speaker projects as far as the interior of his skull. What leaks out is what is left for us. Spoken words residue of utterance. A frontier has been crossed between music and theater, i.e. this is much more like a theater that has a musical intelligence than it is like a music with a theatrical.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 21, 2015
Gradus 275 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

NO|W|
|T|HEN
NO|T|
|W|HEN

What might be the sound of a mono-parametric sound? - or what is the conceptual basis of 'event'?

Playlist

one of Elaine's hubcapifacts

Recorded

August 11, 2015

Two Emily Dickinson Choruses - Elaine Barkin - New England Conservatory Chorus, Lorna Cooke DeVaron

Working out ways to be exactly between two magnetic poles, or tracing the network between quantum states. Disequilibreous.

Neal back in the day

Ecclesiastical Musings - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Lugubrious long sighs on a murky bed shaken every few semi-moments by a rude corvid scribble.

String Quartet #4 - Elliott Carter - Julliard String Quartet

Clouds across the plainscape

birds about their business

fireflies and phosphor

precipitate 

particulate 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 8, 2015
Trio 150808 - Keith Eisenbrey
Dubbed solo improvisation on tractor clutch (two steel gears suspended in a frame), ocean drum, and child-sized electric guitar.

Playlist

Recorded

July 12, 2015

Sunday morning in Zillah, WA

String Quartet #3 - Elliott Carter - Pacific Quartet

Paralax in a hall of mirrors.

Creative Orchestra Music - Anthony Braxton

Tone-paintings brave enough to flirt with mimicry - foghorns, passing cars, bird calls - but not so much composed as pre-arranged - discussed beforehand. Another way to think of it is that they are doing what western concert music could do, but with an ensemble that has a different, more all-hands-on-deck attitude about how things fit. As an album it is arranged prosaically (fast, slow, fast . . .), a strategy that works pretty well. Anything less plain would distract unnecessarily from the individuality of each cut, would seem to suggest that each was a part of a larger composition, rather than a thing on its own.

July 14, 2015
Edge of Seventeen (Just Like a White Winged Dove) (live) - Stevie Nicks

This benefits greatly from being incomprehensible.

That Was Your Mother - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]
Psalm 63 - Michael Leese

Harp and four (I think) voices. Tunes that slip around to find their locking place.

Banned Rehearsal 410 - January 1996 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

pushing at a heavy thing to shove it somewhere

the best of constricted space

dealing with heat

every cranny filled

circling birds

sound crammed in

introducing the sax

break apart to reconfigure

into a new crammed

recorded hot to not miss a possible subtle sound

sacrificing in glorious cassette fidelity the distortion of big sounds

careful she's gonna blow

out of the canyon into the meadow

still moving mountainous

then to the broad valley

all spent but guitar bird

[historical notes: At the time we were attempting to name our sessions. This one is All The Bells and Whistles or Aaron's Sax Solo. In 2002 I listened and wrote: "quite the full-blown racket, when the chimney gets in the act w/ all those bells & the guitar. whew! → last bit of this is FINE - big & loud."

Waltz No. 1 - Billy Joel
Freedom Rock - Girl Trouble [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]
Qixingshan (String Quartet #2) - Benjamin Boretz - Momenta Quartet

All motion is glacial. Only the weight of it forces flow. Activity brings stasis, perpetually poised to begin. and fragmented.

back to the distant past

July 15, 2015
Dolcissima mia vita - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

written with a microscope

Konzert in G BWV 1049 - J.S. Bach - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan

reason answers to reason - immediately

Sonata in G minor Wq. 62 #18 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

breathes actually

Keyboard Sonata in C Major Hob. XIV:7 - Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

constraints aren't upon what but upon how

Symphony D Major K248b(250) "Haffner Serenade" - Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood, Jaap Schroder

atmosphere of intrigue and secrets now and then
but mostly back to the afternoon in progress

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 12, 2015
Trio 150712 - Keith Eisenbrey
 

This last Sunday's dubbed trio was for plow wheel, cymbal (unmounted (bottom half of a high hat, I think)), and steel string acoustic guitar (hand made by my brother Paul).

July 13, 2015
Gradus 271 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

(047) trichord positioned as source (from which we disintegrate) (or which is clotted up only occasionally, if ever, to re-emerge).

Playlist

Recorded

June 6, 2015

Preludes and Fugues (selections) - Shostakovich - Shostakovich

Rather than being at one with, and ever-creating, the tonal world in which they exist and persist, these float precariously, as on a boat perched on an obliquely gravitic tide. The sea lists around us, emptier now than in the ever-referenced past.

Blue Suede Shoes - Carl Perkins [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Each part alike aware of its balance and bounce.

Come On - Chuck Berry [from The Best of Chuck Berry]

Rock solid everything but guitar, which blows like the wind all over wheresoever.

When a Man Loves a Woman - Percy Sledge [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

How he wished he never loved thee, let him count the ways.

String Quartet #3 - Elliott Carter - Julliard String Quartet

A rain forest seen in all its particulars, from all frames of reference, at all removes, in each scale of magnitude.

Night Moves - Bob Seger [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

One of those cleverly disruptive lexical shifts that is more effective than it ought to be, as moves moves from noun to verb, as night moves from adjective to noun, the syntax of each word lurching to the left, as the song's voice moves from active ("working on my night moves") to lyric imagery ("the night moves").

Go Wild In The Country - Bow Wow Wow

a calibrated whine/tantrum.

Word Up - Cameo [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Clarity preserved by tying up all the resonances in tight little bunches, shrink-wrapped.

June 9, 2015
Syrens - St. Elmo's Choir

An album of sea-shanties (mostly I think of English origin) arranged for female voices. Reminiscent in a way of the more famous Bulgarian folk songs that made such a splash a few decades back.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 7, 2015
Duet 150607 - Keith Eisenbrey

I improvised on toy steel drum and then on wooden transverse flute.

June 8, 2015
Banned Rehearsal 887 - Pete Comley, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


Our first porch session of the summer, recorded using a four-track zoom, two channels aimed at the porch, the others aimed into the neighborhood.

Playlist

Live

March 7, 2015
Semele - Handel
Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle

Tricked out like a check-out line bodice ripper, chins and pecs and heaving embonpoint blazoned full screen in old-school cinematic glory, a full frontal demonstration of how to sell a museum piece as hip and happening. Behind all that, some gaudily fancy singing and an ably paced mix of ensemble and solo spin a demoralizing tale. Best to keep to your place, don't get uppity. Not generally being a big fan of Handel, I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy the music quite a bit. All that coloratura filigree was strangely enthralling.

Recorded

March 9, 2015
Quartet #1 - Elliott Carter - Composers Quartet

fibrous, tough, entwined
to reach where the ancient sky endures

March 10, 2015
Honky Tonk - Bill Doggett [collected from Dave Marsh's the Heart of Rock & Soul]

A lesson. Over a circular pattern Mr. Doggett shows how it is done.

Structures 2 pour deux piano - Pierre Boulez - Alfons and Aloys Kontarsky

It starts as a perverse study in the sound of piano tone as it decays - perverse because it is almost entirely staccato for the first long stretch. Long tones are allowed only at the edges, as it were, on the inside curves of tightly bound pages, where the ink accidentally runs. The subject is more overt toward the end, though I suspect I could hear the end as a complimentary perverse study in the cutting short of sound.

Sequenza 3 - Luciano Berio - Cathy Berberian

De-texting, de-syllable-izing, de-lexicon-izing language, voice, presence. Odd echoes of Handel (see above).


In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 8, 2015
Takemine 150308
Takemine 150308 folded
Takemine 150308 folded rubbed - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvisation on acoustic steel string guitar, with computer assisted manipulations.

March 9, 2015
Gradus 261 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

illumination limited
cavern immense
muted, not feeble
delicately pending
sounding the tie-rods driven into the heart of the rock

So quickly we have climbed far past the point at which the explication of all possible sub-rungs within a rung has become impossible within the time allowed. The deeper in we go the more quickly we accelerate, the smaller we become.

March 12, 2015
Half a Bus Closer to Home - Karen Eisenbrey and Neal Kosály-Meyer

As part of Karen's St. Rage fiction project her fictional band wrote fictional songs, some of which have been actually written. Her actual garage rock band, Your Mother Should Know, in disguise, recorded this one.

Playlist

Live

Siri and Steve

January 10, 2015
Siri and Steve
Egan's Ballard Jam House, Seattle

A year ago in September we caught this classy act at a little winery in Langley and it was with great delight that we find them now a bit closer to home. Siri is a cousin of mine, sharing a set of great-grandparents on the McAbee side. They play a selection of '60s hits - Paul Simon and The Beatles are prominent - as well as some original songs. The volume level is grown-up low, the vocals are supple, un-pushed, and well balanced. They blend easily with the intricate instrumental arrangements - cello and guitar both playing off and deftly imitating each other. A wealth of sound in 10 strings and a bow.

Recorded

January 11, 2015
Symphony #5 - Paul Creston - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz

This is safer as a symphony than as a dinner party. They're everywhere! Nervous jitters, sliding off the table from nowhere, repeatedly. Taking runs at what starts as somewhere, were it not for it going on to where its going on is the subject. Long wandering lines of thought turning vaguely pressure cookery. Gonna blow!

Klavierstück IX - Stockhausen - Aloys Kontarsky

Still points that don't bring stillness, but index our velocity as we whip by multiply angled attack decay envelopes. Planes intersect - subtemporally grounded.

Symphony #6 - Roger Sessions - American Composers Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies

For listening up close. Every size of joint and color precisely measured to fit and tell. Strenuously carrying the Vienna torch.

January 13, 2015
String Quartet #3 - Elliott Carter - Pacifica Quartet

poked with a thousand needles

conversing on the side

swaddled with many wrappers

a thousand sleepers tippytoe

on Mt. Pilchuck, Spring 1977
(I still have the hat, not the shirt)

January 15, 2015
Magic Man - Heart

It was probably at about this time that I first saw a synthesizer in person. I was in a high-school music class (rumor was that the Wilsons had gone to Sammamish also) and a recent alum who was studying at Bellevue Community College brought one over for show and tell. I don't remember much what I thought of it then, but the sound of the synth on this track can't be far off from what I heard. Unfortunately the "gee whiz kids listen to our new synth" spotlight doesn't fit very smoothly into the mix, marring an otherwise terrific sound. Such were the times.

Let The Power Fall - Robert Fripp

With a limited but luscious vocabulary of (guitar?) sounds Fripp renders digital delays archaic 10 years before they were invented. Its activity is to find the music inherent in an apparatus where the apparatus is defined to include as an essential part the personality of the operator. Like Cage and his notations.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 11, 2015
Crestline 150111
Crestline 150111 folded
Crestline 150111 folded rubbed - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on tenor banjo (four strings, tuned like a viola, C, G, D, A). I am quite pleased with my electronically 'rubbed' version, so I thought I'd share that one on my Soundcloud site.

January 12, 2015
Gradus 257 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

I want that first chord! Neal plays two 20-minute rungs each session, each rung a different combination of notes. He is at a point in the project where nearly every A-natural and E-natural are in play - a plateau of riches where internal distinctions subsume global progression. Temporally local subsets within each rung that are distinguished by number of tokens come across as being different not in size but in focus - narrow or deep.

Playlist

Live

October 4, 2014

Macefield Music Festival (day 2)

Fauna Shade - KEXP Mainstage

A young 3-piece band from Everett opened the festivities with an effects-heavy 60's stoner vibe. I thought the vocalist had a nice but under-utilized upper range. Time to branch out from sounding like music they like to finding out what music they might be.

Solvents - Conor Byrne Pub

Roots-rock from Port Townsend. The amplified violin works well as a stand-in for both lead guitar and harmony vocals.

Dead Man - Sunset Tavern

Fabulous two-man sit-down geetar blues.

The Swearengens - Conor Byrne Pub

The drummer of this country band had the most infectiously joyous ear-to-ear grin, and the swing dancers on the floor in front of the stage were lots of fun. Country moshing.

The Maldives - KEXP Mainstage

We caught just the last two songs.

The Posies - KEXP Mainstage

A little drone with red and green lights hovered over the audience. This veteran band still jumps around like teenagers.

Carolyn Mark - Macefield Market

We caught the last half of Carolyn's set. Folk-rock I guess, or maybe hillbilly blues pop, if they have hillbillies in B.C. Loved the slap bass.

Ryan Caraveo  - Tractor Tavern
Ra Scion - Tractor Tavern

We were pretty tired so we sat down by the bar for a beer and heard the last part of one set and the first part of another. My response to hip-hop is still somewhere between "mystified" and "puzzled", but eventually I may find a way in. Another first for us: a bouncer's forced ejection of an over-inebriated barfly.

Recorded

October 7, 2014
Piano Sonata - Elliott Carter - Paul Jacobs

Marbles and dominoes spilled out onto the floor. It is clear these twists are made of notes. In general the fast parts are the weakest, sounding like many another neo-classic noodlist, but the more spare moments are treacherous. Watch your step if you have bare feet!

Duo for Cello and Piano - Arthur Berger - Joel Krasnik, Gilbert Kalish

Arthur Berger

As if drafts of itself were remembering each other back through erasures and offsets and arrows or were held in 3D by a translucent prismatic gel, palimpsestually cross-referencing the Immediate.

Kleines Lied - Paul Dessau - Indian Springs School Chamber Choir, Tim Thomas, Diane McNaron

October 8, 2014
Nocturnal - Edgard Varése

Varése before his brow so beetled o'er

Isolation. Connections (dis).


Night Time - The Strangeloves [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

stomp stomp stomp stomp shoved around by a just loud enough bass guitar.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 5, 2014
Deagan 141005 - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on xylophone.

October 6, 2014
Gradus 253 - Neal Kosàly-Meyer

each moment a join
each join a token
each token a still point