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| Seaside, Oregon |
"So pass me that other instrument.
I've got the itch to play badly.
Scratch
the sound. Mind bleed."
George Quasha - from "Not Even Rabbits Go Down This Hole"
Texts
Special
Lockrem Johnson, March 15, 1924 - March 6, 1977, was a Seattle-based composer, pianist, publisher, one-time Coney Island Calliopist, and beloved educator who made something of a splash on the national stage with his 1951 one-act opera "A Letter for Emily" (based on an episode in the life of Emily Dickinson). He was a pianist for the Seattle Symphony, a teacher at both The University of Washington and Cornish School of the Arts, where he served as director of the Music Department in the 1960s. In short, he was kind of a big deal in the Seattle classical music world before his untimely death just shy of his 53rd birthday. I had the good fortune to meet him once a few months before that, in a long and treasured afternoon during which he gave me both a score to his Fifth Sonata and a welcome and timely boost to my teenage self-esteem. Since then I have performed his music on many occasions, especially his 24 Preludes, but also the Fifth Sonata, and the song-cycle Songs in the Wind.
Live
June 15, 2023
Odd Partials - Rachel Yoder, Greg Dixon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Evening Ritual - William O. Smith
music collects itself as an instrument
piece by piece
place by
place
till it becomes two
Cacophony - Jenni Brandon
displacement
as birdsong species dispersal
throws an aural net
over a region
Serpent Hors D'Oeuvres - Greg Dixon
modular synthesis system
lively pulses
up and down
weave
about the space
Domestic Loops - Rachel Yoder
homesome daily life cycles
filling experience
episodic chore
rhythms
Tater Dreams - Jessi Harvey
from drawings poems scores
as you will
aphoristic as spuds
self replicating
Mirror Lake III - Greg Dixon
response chamber
space plays tricks on our activations
Bell's Blues - Greg Dixon
sat back and played
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| Seaside, Oregon |
signal processing in general
is quite clever
at manipulation of a sound
as an acoustic entity
whatever the sound is
it is less adept
at manipulating a sound
through creative analysis and dissection
as music is heard
by classically trained practitioners
such as myself
a figure is a sound
and nothing else
unparsed
or::
synthesis stinks at tunes
beyond simple cycles
since it
has no conception
of what they are
or that they are even a thing
that a thing can be
they rely on us for that
(but David Dunn
. . . )
transforming itself from inside itself
the way tunes can
since
for us
tunes
are a thing
that a thing can
be}
{be all that as it may:
this was quite a wonderful and engaging show
some folks
working with tools
in their own way
to
share what they come up with
Jessi's tater drawings are darling
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| Seaside, Oregon |
June 10, 2023
Farmer's Paven, Fvb. 287 - Giles Farnaby - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
a garden of stepping stones
figures come apart in their middles
upon repetition
Introduction and Rondo in E-flat Major, Op. 17 - Frédéric Chopin - Garrick Ohlsson
begins in somber tones
passion erupts
the young folks mix gaily
hearts flutter
laughter loosens the mood
a vehicle for
pianistic display
Lied ohne Worter in A-flat Major, Op. 38 #6 - Felix Mendelssohn - Edmund Battersby
every knot is tied
each corner is tucked
all debts are paid
Preludio al Corale e Fuga sopra un frammento di Bach (Edizione minore della Fantasia contrappuntistica), BV. 256a - Ferruccio Busoni - Wolf Harden
contrapuntal ingenuity
has it out
with chromatic slippage
the light is deceptive and fickle
playing in the Garden
of the Art
of The Fugue
not a
completion
of the unfinished quadruple fugue
but
a
recomposed discussion
of its possibilitoes
pulls the final chord
out of an invisible hat
Song 7 - Charles Ives - Kia Sams, Russ Warner
something about delight
a song that finds its melody
ever
wandering
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| Seaside, Oregon |
God's Gonna Separate the Wheat from the Tares - Blind Joe Taggart [from Really The Blues]
in which
the line
between lifted voice preaching
and
teaching song
is shown
to be indeterminable
there is
also
a sense
in which
the more rigid structure of
rhyming stanzas
is a parody
of the rhythm of ecstatic preaching
Can You Blame The Colored Man? - Gus Cannon [from Really The Blues]
tells a story about Booker T. Washington
visiting Roosevelt at the White
House
in the manner of a folk tale
Don't Worry About Me (Take B) - Erroll Garner [from Erroll Garner on Dial]
lives in its inflections
Sweet Sixteen Bars - Ray Charles [from The Great Ray Charles]
and each such bar
takes its time
in partitions
of finishing
up
hanging around
and starting over
even the vampy
fill in figures
are measured in their weight
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| Seaside, Oregon |
theme and variations
or doubles
motions join
to become
strands of lines
The End - The Doors [from The Doors]
the introduction
is to establish a mindset
within which
the
necessary song
might be possible
it does
also
get the
pulse going
but
that seems more of an afterthought
or an
aside
a place for one's mind to wander
Ice cube was also saying something
about the West being the Best
but Jim goes all mythic
Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue (Live at The Roxy) - Ramones [from Leave Home]
a new neighborhood crashes the party
Color Is A Beautiful Thing - Nina Simone [from Fodder on My Wings]
concept album:
as
a one-person tragicomic argument
apology
and confession
morally uplifting
Back Room of the Bar - The Young Fresh Fellows [from Refreshments]
starry-eyed parodists of the dive bar scene
America's back catalogue in
situ
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| Seaside, Oregon |
performed in fine vim and vigor
a sunny day
in the finish
on
the tongue
notes of Billings
and of Copland's better muse
this music enjoys being itself
it glows with it
this might be nearly
if not actually
the first time I have heard
music by Lou Harrison
imagine that!
it gives itself all the time it needs
to say its whole piece
{we do not speak our native tongue
but
we live within it
as
it lives within us
music
like elegant homes
do I become fictitious
by
and while
listening to music
Song 7 - The Humidiflyers [from The Humidiflyers Fall 2002]
jamming
as a compositional tool
for becoming a sound
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| Seaside, Oregon |
Gradus 126 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [September 24, 2007]
during which
an iteration of my Lids Film
is playing over the
stereo
and
to which
the construction project to our North
is
at this present hearing
adding intermittent nail gun and
general loud banging
there remains
however
quite a lot of
space
empty of all
but the constant background
of air
filters and traffic
in the end
I'm not convinced the two main strands do anything for each
other
mutual transformation badge not achieved
Raise Hell - Brandi Carlile [from Bear Creek]
curriculums vitae
tough bar brag
talking oneself into bravery
Remington Rand - Keith Eisenbrey [August 13, 2017]
we had in our possession
an old manual typewriter
that had
belonged to my folks
we were about to give it away
so we recorded
a snippet of its sounds
Pitch Collection 2 - Sascia Pellegrini [from Atoneide 2]
many collect pitches
many curate collections of pitches
this
curation of pitch collections
ungroups
and insists on
an
articulated path
these pitches can have no names
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| Seaside, Oregon |
if the game in question
deals with metrical and diatonic cross purposes
it behooves the composer
to make each such meter and diatonic tune
bit
as clear as possible
Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit - Luther Magbay [from Goodbye, Babylon]
hymnody:
a freefloating collection of sacred stanzas
among a
freefloating collection of melodies
indexed by syllable count
just
grab a matching pair from the book
and sing lustily
C'est La Vie - Sarah Vaughan [from In A Romantic Mood]
she isn't given much room to play with
the song sung straight
she
nails it shut tight
and nearly disappears
When I'm Sixty-Four - The Beatles [from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band]
and waddaya know
I happen to be sixty-four my own self
I am
however
never still out at quarter to three anymore
no
grandkids either
Hearts of Stone - Bruce Springsteen [from Tracks]
my complaint in regard to Springsteen
is that he excels at misreading
his own songs
generally
by overinflating each one
into an
amorphous blob of stadium filling monotony
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| Seaside, Oregon |
and in regard to the Dylan of this album
is that
he sounds like he
hates his own song
just add accents willy nilly
so the folks know
the brand
At The Fireplace - Itzhak Perlman [from Tradition]
pretty and in good taste
Scenario - A Tribe Called Quest [from The Low End Theory]
a sequence play
of individual lists
of references and word games
and presumably in-jokes
et cetera
rhymed together
into the semblance
of a thing being said
Spit Shine - Alvin Joiner [from 8 Mile]
bad boy boast
competitive rough neighborhood
for cred
Aleta Two-Step - Back Burner [from Simmer On]
fingering patterns
traded around like baseball cards
Track 2 - The Hunting Club [recorded live at Sound Effects Coffee Shop, Seattle, October 26, 2012]
between episodes of regular
a new tempo
this song/arrangement
needs a studio
She Walks In Beauty - Steve Layton & Sound In [from Further Journey]
Seaside, Oregon
spoken texts
piled thick in puddles
robotic filter
Rock Bottom - Robber's Roost [from Rage & Reason]
guitar vocal bass(?) and tambourine
who needs more
June 14, 2023
The Old Spagnoletta, Fvb. 289 - Giles Farnaby - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
metrical puns are not eschewed
Curley Headed Woman - Burnett & Rutherford [from Really The Blues]
a blues stanza
aims at the last line
banjo fiddle and vocal
each serving a different
and only partially hierarchic role
In The Mood - Jerry Lee Lewis [from Rare & Rockin']
straight eighths in the left
but pounded out with specific metrical feel
Money (That's What I Want) - Little Richard [from The Explosive Little Richard]
arranged as a stage show
horns and backups
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| Seaside, Oregon |
from the sessions
non-performance events
of conversational music
thinking
these discs arrived in the mail just yesterday
heretofore not heard (by
me)
though some of these sessions
ended up on the Inter/Play tapes
this was at the root of what was happening at Bard
when I showed up a
few months later
this one starts down in the De Profundis regions
of both Crumar and
piano
each event means business
there is no out from these deeps
the microphones and recordings
(on cassette tape)
were used
principally
for their own
Ben's and Jim's
edification
I'm eavesdropping
there's Sophie barking
I'm hunching we're at Princeton
rather than
Red Hook
they have become a single instrument
a conjoined thought
Play In the Sunshine - Prince [from Sign O' The Times]
dance track
assembled in the studio
Secret Garden - Madonna [from Erotica]
time to play the wide-eyed innocent
June 15, 2023
Meditation from Thaïs - Jules Massenet - Joshua Bell [from Masters of The Bow]
demonstrating
what has always been clear anyway
solo violin
is a stand-in for solo voice
Banned Rehearsal 726 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 8, 2007]
knock! knock! knock!
we stand outside
chatting with the nervous
wooden wind chime
we assist
in the dragging of a large object
from a location
to a location
it scrapes along
in the
open
we can take it apart
an angel passed through
conversation resumes
an electric guitar
in a state ecstatic
perorates on a narrow ledge
held to the earth
by quiet strands
of cowbell
and
guitar of lesser amplification
we parade forthrightly
in solemn
garb
Paul - Tea Cozies [from Bang Up]
harmonic rhythm of stanza
goes and goes
finally cycles back
In dulci jubilo - Keith Eisenbrey [recorded at The Tintinabulary October 31, 2019]
in which
a systematic method is used
to harmonize each note of the
chorale tune
but
which systematic method
is alien to
diatonic practice
in several syntactic dimensions
Key of Life (Coming To You Now) - Mikey and Matty [from And It Came To Pass/Not To Stay]
advice from the brothers Gervais
June 16, 2023
Lachrimae Pavan, Fvb. 290 - Giles Farnaby - Claudio Columbo [from The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book]
modes and moods
moving through moods and modes
perpetual
modulation
distinct linguas franca
can be comparable in many ways
and the
distinctions need not to be absolute
to be a valid distinction
such as
between Renaissance tonal practice
and Baroque tonal
practice
I Am Resolved - Ernest Stoneman, Kahle Brewer [from Really The Blues]
or
between late 19th Century European tonal practice
and Blues
tonal practice
or as hymnody
for instance
be it resolved
that those distinctions above
are not to be
construed
as distinquishments of worth or merit
Wells Fargo Wagon - Meredith Wilson [from The Music Man, Original Cast Recording]
as a kid
part of my piano lessons with Victor Smiley
was always
"Social Music"
I believe the piano arrangement of this song
was
the first of such musics I learned
that
or Gary, Indiana
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| Seaside, Oregon |
Ulysses full of woe and wiles
the sirens of home-port pubs
are not
to be trusted
I Won't Hold You Back - Toto [a Rescued Record]
the soulful B-side
low budget Julian Lennon
(Karen tells me I have
likely got it backward on both counts)
oh so cliche
Beat Your Drum - David Bowie [from Never Let Me Down]
disco
the love story
from outside its inside
music may change
hi di ho
Triumphal March from Aida - Giuseppe Verdi [from World's Greatest Choruses]
it's a parade!
costumes!
music!
floats!
royalty!
guilds!
pretty girls!
handsome guys!
Another brass
band!
In Session at The Tintinabulary
June 1, 2023
Sinfonia 2 (midi) - Keith Eisenbrey
I waited a few weeks before posting this.
I am finding that my process
of composing these Sinfonias involves revisions that arise in learning to make
them "go" on clavichord.
I used a harpsichord patch for the midi
realization because it is generic.
My clavichord recording is
below.
June 11, 2023
Gradus 383 - Neal Kosály-Meyer
closely packed
more loosely packed
circling figures
with such a plenitude of notes in play
one could
make of it
a music
that
in its self
doesn't need its
particular limits of available notes
to be an image
that projects
into the experience
of an innocent listener
given the diatonic resemblance of the collection
many a listener might
miss the limits
as such
if they do
does that move against
the notion of the greater piece
or
is it simply immaterial
as is the greater piece
but
there is an opportunity in this
through the nature of the
project
to invent a playing of the piano
that is so utterly unlike
playing the piano
as to turn that whole notion on its head
to
change the subject
at any rate
it seems unnecessary
to shape it musically
June 15, 2023
Sinfonia 1 (piano) - Keith Eisenbrey
Here is my recording on piano of my first Sinfonia, in the latest version
that is
as revised as of March 29, 2023
June 16, 2023
Sinfonia 2 (clavichord) - Keith Eisenbrey
as promised above
Postscripts
Skaldmud's Doodle Gallery
some listening journal doodles from 1995
