Playlist

Recorded

August 13, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XIV - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Two roles: fast note role / slow note role. The voices switch. The action is all in the handoff.

Schöpfungsmesse - Haydn - English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner, Monteverdi Choir, Ruth Ziesak, Bernarda Fink, Christoph Pregardien, Oliver Widner, Susanna Spicer, Peter Butterfield

Within the larger ritual of any mass are subrituals of affect: where the fugues are; the play of solos, ensembles, and chorus; what sort of music the et incarnatus is; how to set up and word paint the et resurrectus. Haydn had this stuff down cold and played for keeps. It is this example, no doubt, that kept Beethoven looking over his shoulder.

August 15, 2017

Count Basie, most righteous hat

He Likes It Slow - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five with Butterbeans and Susie [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

Yep. It's about sex.

Business in F - Gene Kardos [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This one too, but on top of the fine playing is a subtly organized harmonic rhythm.

Lady Be Good - Count Basie [from The First Records He Ever Made]

Suggests the tune, then riffs on the suggestions as though they had been the song all along.

Lady MacGowran's Dream - Woody Herman [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Prog jazz? Classy and upscale at least, nothing jolts. A table in this joint will set you back friend.

Denial - Miles Davis [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

No past for lingering, no time for it. This boat moves.

C.T.A. - Art Pepper [from Playboys]

Harry Partch, as a beat

Sound so dry and studio controlled it's as though there is no room in which this music sounds. Kind of creepy.

Water! Water! - an Intermission with Prologues and Epilogues - Harry Partch - Gate 5 Ensemble, John Garvey

It strikes me that HP is, as a theater composer, heavily invested in the Wagnerian ideal. The music and the theatricality are irretrievably intertwined zusammenkunstwerklich. That and he clearly wants this music to transform you, radicalize you. He fairly shouts it. He offers music criticism in the form of music theater. The subject matter is everything classical, everything of which he is ostensibly not in favor. And it's fabulous too.


Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Playing the jongleur, quite well too.

Echoes - Pink Floyd [from Meddle]

The anthem that could have been subsides into bluesy noodles, not unpleasantly, but it strikes me now as distinctly less weird than it did back in the day. Boys taking their gear out for a jam.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

August 14, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 941 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

Black Lodge

July 13, 2017
Victory Lounge / Black Lodge, Seattle
Anxious Arms
Choke The Pope
Ease
Pity Party
Listen Lady
Ramona

I haven't much to say - the sheer number of bands, all playing various versions of that Ramones-y "we're a happy family" beat, ever faster ever louder, overwhelmed my ability to keep track of which memory was which. Lots of fun though! Out among the beautiful people.

Recorded

July 10, 2017

Peggy Sue - Banned Rehearsal [Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer]

Another post-session "hey let's play . . ." in which I managed to hit record first. It is spirited, but Neal's vocals are lost deep in the fuzz.

At The Funhouse - Fe Fi Fo Fums [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

It's only a minute forty, but still seems a bit padded.

July 12, 2017

Gradus 186 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2011]

Playing very softly, the highest A natural only emerges gradually as a pitch. Prior action noise could have been most anything.

Deep History - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

A bit didactic, but with a fine and intricate string band behind it.

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

This is the first of the canons, filling every nook and cranny of experiential space.

Die Jahreszeiten "Summer" - Haydn - Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Karl Böhm, Gundula Janowitz, Peter Schreier, Martti Talvela, Wiener Singverein

Languid near to a fault. Great storm though. Just a few years before the thunder in Beethoven's 6th Symphony - or in Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique, for that matter.

I'm Gonna Gitcha - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

Dixieland rhythm but with a focus on LA's solo sound. What an odd sort of act he was: singer and trumpet player, top of the game in each.

Cab Calloway

Kickin' The Gong Around - Cab Calloway [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Is this the first mention of Smokey Joe? A kind of journalism, giving us a peek at the seamy undersides of society without our needing to go for ourselves.

Derby Town - Old Ced Odom and Lil Hardaway [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Late night vaudeville wink wink nudge nudge song, veering away from the dirty words just in time.

Don't Worry About Me - Sarah Vaughan, Teddy Wilson Octet [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

The song eases down the scale and slinks back up.

You Tell Me Your Dream - Eureka Brass Band  [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

One imagines this sounding somewhat old-fashioned in 1951, but then it may have been some of those same old dudes playing that same old Dixie they had always been.

Love Me Or Leave Me - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

A study in the careful placement of voice within tessitura. Sounds to me like she was gunning at Sinatra.

Wailers House Party - The Wailers [from The Fabulous Wailers At The Castle]

That completely unmistakable fat guitar with B3 sound. Brilliant.

Temporary Like Achilles - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

The first song on the album that doesn't leave a bad odor in the air.

The Grave - Don McLean [from American Pie]

They were sincere times I guess, but this spends a lot of energy saying words with lots of meaning, then grinding the meaningful into the dirt with a boot heel.

CIA Dope Calypso - Allen Ginsberg, Stephen Taylor, Jon Sholle, David Mansfield, Arthur Russell [from Holy Soul Jelly Roll]

Torn from the headlines! The fun of the word play overpowers the disgust we feel we ought to feel.

Another Brick In The Wall - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

The whole sound sits at a level, like the surface of a lake, like a J. J. Abrams lens flare, nothing beneath, nothing above. Cool and sheer.

Banned Rehearsal 64 - Banned Rehearsal [Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer]



Cornet overpowers the equipment but not the sound, sheared away, skidded across, re-writing itself
onto the tape from the tape as it cooks on the reel. Steadfastly not entertaining. About 30 minutes in there is a truly wonderful collective chord that emerges with drums and bells, like bootsqueek in fresh snow.

July 14, 2017

Night Of The Subaru - Infamous Menagerie

There is an extra partial beat thrown in there just to knock the whole thing out of plumb.

Sonic Brilliance 16 - Banned Rehearsal [John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Holden K, Aaron Keyt, Kia M, Neal Kosály-Meyer - May 1996]

Banned Rehearsal spent much of the 90's negotiating our continuance in the face of parenthood. For a while we had the kids join us for a pre-session. This was one of the more successful sessions, because the kids essentially made their own game of it. Life of the Dragon, accordion slain. To say we'll say something is to have done it (for the 5 year old crowd). Then Neal takes them outside but was somehow broadcasting back inside the studio, and interviewing Aaron and Anna from in the house. Too many minors on board to share the sound, but if I were to share a Sonic Brilliance this would be the one.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 10, 2017
Gradus 315 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Neal invited a fellow blogger, Kent Karnofsky, over to listen. He curates Community Noise. I believe his article will be posted shortly before Neal's upcoming {August??} performance {at the Chapel??}.

Neal composes with raw subtleties, pursuing the inflections of distinctions as they arise.

Playlist

Recorded

June 25, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 611 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2001]



Even as it has been recently, my 1981 synclavier piece Aku, then, was upfront in my thinking-about. Here it is again: playing in the background, an articulate teapot whistle, sizzling along with an occasional recorded pronouncement [from my 2001 text piece Confessions of a Polyphonist]. But again, all in the background. Presence and balance. Balancing presence to those present. Bells pick up pitch material or project their pitches into the prerecorded space || of course it's all prerecorded now || teapots and kazoos comment: a group composition discussing the brought in sound on its own terms,  double sudden amp feedback.

A Choice of Weapons - The Sermon [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

Action movie scene: the guy off the street hero being introduced to the weapons cabinet. This is that music, and it's not just the title.

Banned Rehearsal 784 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 2011]



Tinclatsky puppet theater music. Don't know where that word came from, but I wrote it in my journal

so I thought I'd share it. The Mighty W in its latter days of glorious to the end. Melody in extremis, avoiding exit lingering long on the sense of ending soon.

June 27, 2017
Suspended - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

The rhythmic sense plays with the difference between mass and weight. The mass is clearly present, everything is affected by it. It wheels in Kubrik-ian grandeur, there is simply no earth to which it is bound.

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

Forward at all moments. Forward within all moments. Dogged. Imperative. The cathedral organ just eats this music up, or is it the other way around?

Quartet in G Major opus 76 #1 Hob. III:75 - Haydn

Nothing is hidden, it is all made plain. Life is rich! Enjoy!

Don't Forget To Mess Around - Louis Armstrong [from Hot Fives & Sevens]

Packed in a poke.

Hell And What It Is - Rev. Emmett Dickinson [from Goodbye Babylon]

Murmur like bees beneath singing low murmuring hymns, burners lit.

I'll Be Rested (When The Roll Is Called) - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Goodbye Babylon]

Just two voices I think, but each so distinctly rich with formants they frequently confound numbering. A shaker. A guitar.

Thermodynamics - Howard McGhee [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Fleet and light, pedal to the metal just to the moment before entropy might kick in.

Criss-Cross - Thelonius Monk [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

Ah. Room to breathe! A little english with the hips, airborne.

I Didn't Know What Time It Was - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

The very model of a through-composed performance. She picks you up at the start and plops you down at the end. You have been taken for a ride and never knew it 'til you woke in the ditch.

Running Scared - Roy Orbison [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Probably should have studied more how Peggy did it before he tried that trick. He's got a certain amount of power and range, but finesse? Whazzat?

Just Like A Woman - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Is it just me or does he spend an awful lot of time telling you who you are? Turn the mirror around Bob.

Winterwood - Don McLean [from American Pie]

A pretty voice, but it gets old fast.

Fame - David Bowie [from Changes One]

A cage of rhythm locked down tight, dried vine vocals entwining.

Shine On You Crazy Diamond / Wish You Were  Here - Pink Floyd [from a collection of great dance songs]

Utterly without hurry :: an aspect of PF that continues to endear.

June 28, 2017

Thanks to Steve Kennedy for the images

Banned Sectional 5 AK NWM - Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [January 1986]

Yowl and hiss. Subtle flange (equipment issue) like wind several walls away. Consistently not leisurely. Busy, but unhurried, intent, methodical, keeping at it, focused. Happy to be a fly on the wall even these 30+ years later.

My Home - Infamous Menagerie

Sample hyper-slowed, joined occasionally by drumming. On some edge between a what-happens-if-we-play-along-with-that and a truly weird-ass instrumental you hear the next morning and wonder what you were thinking. My people!

Banned Rehearsal 423 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Holden K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [May 1996]

Recalibrations and re-collaborations, divergent but mutually visible threads. Wonderful as a struggle, but still a bit of a struggle.

June 29, 2017
Barbara H (cover of Fountains of Wayne song) - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey,  Isabel K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 2001]

Put a push-pin here, partway between drop of a hat covers of Wild Thing to full on full on Your Mother Should Know rock and roll.

Two-Part Invention - Gavin Borchert - Keith Eisenbrey

Gavin's piano music somehow seems conscious of itself, or perhaps its voices are conscious both of each other and of their own processes. Old-soul music.

The Way West - Brian Cobb [from Campfire Songs]

. . . is to regiment forward, to prolong the day ever so incrementally. Sun Chaser.

This Little Light of Mine (Autoheterophony) - Keith Eisenbrey


What is the question to ask of this? What itch does it scratch? Cram the familiar together, wad it up tight, press it hard. Hope to find some aspect of it that is elicited only so. In a sense it's like Lucier's I am sitting in a room, except that the room in this case is a space composed of my music ear and the recording device.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 26, 2018
Gradus 314 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

I got to thinking about perfect pitch (I don't have it). Even here where the pitches are few (just four pitch-classes to choose from, named up front) I have to calculate what any particular instance is from the nearby intervals. I can't imagine what it might be like to know a pitch by a name directly, instantly (and I allow how I might be (probably am) completely misunderstanding what having it is like). Plus side: I can hear pitches just fine, but I hear them without name, without category, can divvy them up however ad lib.

Playlist

Recorded

June 11, 2017
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus X - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Sequences establish a rhythm of (usually) stepwise motion, allowing cross-rhythms of modulations and quasi-modulations - as though another music were going by in the background at a different tempo.

I love how the grandness of the denouement is fully established within what is really a quite thin texture. We hear it as grand because, in order to hear its logic, we imagine each note as sustaining at full volume - virtual grandiosity with virtual sustain.

Quartet in E-flat Major, opus 76 #6 - Haydn - Amadeus Quartet

Not sure this is really what's happening, but what I wanted to be happening is a sequence of variations occurring within single iterations of a larger theme and variations - both T and V constructed out of shorter Ts and Vs.

June 14, 2017
Birdwell Blues - Nolan Welsh, Louis Armstrong [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

A tale: police harassment. "You know I been here before." Truth.

Don Redman

Trouble Why Pick On Me - Don Redman, Red Allen [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Unexpected wonders: that voice, those perfectly executed parallel trills thrown in just for fun, showy tonguing, a tightly organized arrangement.

Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind On Jesus) - Roosevelt Graves and Brother [from Goodbye Babylon]

Keeping it lively, everything is slap. Slap guitar slap vocal.

I'm Through With Love - Sarah Vaughan [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

Nothing wrong with this performance (it's flawless) but it fails to convince me, it never lifts off.

Walking My Lord Up Calvary Hill - Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper [from Goodbye Babylon]

The Passion according to just folks.

A Woman Alone With The Blues - Peggy Lee [from Black Coffee]

Sung as a single thought, a through-composed line. Tubular bells!

Now Is The Hour - Leo Diamond [a Rescued Record]

Rather bizarre, but it sounds like he was quite an interesting guy - trying to make the harmonica acceptable for the hi-fi crowd. The 45 that found me had suffered considerably, with much of the fi scuffed off the top.

Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Kind of a mean-spirited blues when it comes right down to it.

Everybody Loves Me Baby - Don McLean [from American Pie]

In spite of his apparent attempt at humorous self-laceration, this still comes across as narrow and airless.

Young Americans - David Bowie [from Changes One]

Thick and taut, a line pulled past where it ought to break but that just won't.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 12, 2017
Gradus 313 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

June 15, 2017
Etudes - Keith Eisenbrey

These are five little pieces from 2000 that started life as clarinet duets: "Coiled", "Fragment", "Dance" "Air", and "Misterioso". I arranged them later as piano fingering puzzles. I was in the early stages of working with mod-17 pitch sets, essentially asking myself the question "What would regular music sound like if the modular interval were 17 instead of 12?" So, yes, this is what I think regular music is like.

Jerseyville Illinois - Your Mother Should Know [Karen Eisenbrey, drums; Neal Kosály-Meyer, vocal and piano]

In anticipation of a hoped-for pro-studio recording project I recorded three demo takes.

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)

Playlist

Live

November 4, 2016

Seattle Composers' Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Jeremy Shaskus - Who's Who Cues - Porter Jones, trombone; Jim Knodle, trumpet; Jeremy Shaskus, tenor sax

statements

comments

bare statements

bare comments

comments bare

statements bare

statements bare comments

comments bare statements

right down the middle for a beautiful strike

Neil Welch - Exit Cycles - Danielle Sampson, voice; Neil Welch, tenor sax

A dance on perilous glass

a dancer on each side (up/down) of the perilous glass

leaping landing sliding stopping

just so

against each other's

stopping sliding landing leaping

to quiver the plane of the perilous glass

Daniel Webbon - St. Helena - Daniel Webbon, drums and electronics

a chorale goaded by drums, its notes shoved into place

Keith Eisenbrey - Corollaries - Keith Eisenbrey, piano

four telemetry readouts from a probe launched through a twisted conceptual void.

Recorded

November 1, 2016

2 Nocturnes op. 62 - Chopin - Claudio Arrau

staring down stillness

the center holds

tonality here is an image of how the body shifts its center haunch to haunch

Poor Mourner - Fisk University Jubilee Quartet [from Alan Lowe's Really The Blues]

This music is older than the blues,

like psalm tone singing, or as though Gregorian chant or pre-Gregorian chant had been passed down separately from euroculture, received from an older source.

There'll Be Some Changes Made - Ethel Waters [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Big soft beats, ictus cushioned in warm felt.

November 3, 2016

Comet Chop Suey - Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five - Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, Lil Armstrong, Johnny St. Cyr

Where is it exactly that LA's cornet playing lives?
In the fraction of time between when the embouchure forms the pitch and the valve forms the pitch.

Jesus is a Mighty Good Leader - Skip Johnson [from Goodbye Babylon]

Sings on three levels: first, the center tone; second, several subsidiary centers that are pulled back into the center tone; third, the slithery scoops decorating each center tone.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 31, 2016

Banned Rehearsal 921 161031 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Preface

"Phenomenology takes it upon itself to describe the appearance of phenomena and to do so on an originary background which has to be established in a theoretical manner (or perhaps, in a sense, as some sort of a fiction) as soon as we feel its presence behind all concepts. This pure presence, [. . .] far from being just a mere base or a unified and inert undercoat, is on the contrary a product of a preexisting, if not always identifiable, sensory mobility. In other words it is a given, not in the sense of a gift which somehow was previously given to us, but as the "givenness" of something which has always been in existence. Before we can even begin the process of distinguishing ourselves from the world, the famous Husserlian "there is" (es gibt) of the world - of which we became part of by birth - is a given. Our consciousness, incapable of making distinctions or judging, is given to us at the same time as the world; the world shaken by rhythms and movements of the originary, which are incessantly composed, decomposed, and recomposed before they become stabilized in a synthesis of sensory elements, so that ultimately, under the influence of the formation of categories of judgment, they may be arranged under the concept of an object." Marie-Claude Lambotte "the movement of the "originary" in art", translated by Dorota Czerner, The Open Space Magazine Issue 11 Fall 2009

Texts

Recorded

September 25, 2016

Märchenbilder Op. 113 - Schumann - Gérard Caussé, Jean Hubeau

It is exactly when Schumann seems to be falling back on direct repeats and square rhythms that he goes most splendidly askew. In a Boretzian locution, these are program musics, the subjects of which are 'folk songs arranged for concert performance'.

Nijinsky

Petrouchka - Stravinsky - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

Not the music to accompany a dance of a puppet show, but a puppet show in its own right. The mythic and the orchestral puppet show face each other across the chasm of the dancers bodies. For instance: the opening, where our attention is being pulled from here to there, from this sight to that sight, as though by strings. Not quite coercion, but not quite seduction either. We discover ourselves to be witnesses. The murder occurs while we are there.

Sounds of Africa - Eubie Blake [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Part of the deep undercoat for Art Tatum and Cecil Taylor.

September 27, 2016

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

Louis digs his voice out from deep in his chest.

Travelin' Railroad Man Blues - Alabama Sheiks [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

This is me. This is my calling card, this my placard.

Romeo et Juliette Deuxieme Tablaeau - Prokofiev - Orchestre du Theatre Bolchoi de Moscou, Algis Juraitis

Grand Russian Ballet of the Tchaikovsky stripe, flagrantly flirting with the resurrection of Empire.

September 29, 2016

Take The "A" Train - Duke Ellington and His Orchestra - Rex Stewart, Wallace Jones, Ray Nance, Lawrence Brown, Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton, Juan Tizol, Otto Hardwick, Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard, Ben Webster, Harry Camey, Fred Guy, Jimmy Blanton, Sonny Greer [from Ken Burns Jazz]

A thought experiment: Listen to this as though the rhythm section were silent and it becomes deliciously disjointed.

Who Put The Benzedrine . . . - Harry Gibson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

. . . in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine? In celebration of somebody's awakening.

Black and Blue - Dickey Wells [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

A soliloquy. Sometimes he looks in your eye. Sometimes his eyes drop to the floor as he mutters under his breath.

Too Marvelous For Words - Art Tatum [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

This is not a pitch/rhythm space into which one enters lightly. The song is captured at exactly the moment of critical fracture, bursting from within.

The Marcels

Blue Moon - The Marcels [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Doo-wop is, in its inception, an imitation of instrumental music, but one that allows an interplay of attitudes toward that imitated music in the multiplicity of texts involved: lyrical, nonsensical, onomatopoeical. It's a bit like those old polyphonic works in which each part is in a different language. The song that floats on top isn't the show, it's just the excuse.

Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 - Bob Dylan [from Blonde on Blonde]

Arrangement by whoeverwasthereatthetime. Bob in full-on Revival Preacher mode.

Half Moon - Janis Joplin [from Pearl]

Love the yodel lift at the ends of phrases, and how carefully it is paced.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 24, 2016

Corollaries (Down's Up) 160924

Corollaries (Down's Down) 160924

Corollaries (Up's Down)  160924 - Keith Eisenbrey

The house was pretty quiet on Saturday so I recorded the other three Corollaries. Lately I have been considering my attitude toward notes as tokens or atoms of musical thinking. Among other things, this particular project has focused instead on the intervals, and on the gaps between notes in general, as the location of intentional design. In other words, rather than composing patterns of pitch in which the intervals, though considered, are subsidiary, I composed patterns of intervals in which the pitches, as it were, fall where they may.

September 26, 2016

Banned Rehearsal 919 160926 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

introducing our new friend, Excelsior!

More need not be said. We have a new friend. "Oh the glory glory glory on the horizon!" (Shelby Earl).

Playlist

Live

September 2, 2016
Seattle Composer's Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Ian McNight
Airship Pirate!

Narrative, like a slide show, or like a viewmaster card with music.

Carson Farley
Contrasts

Wandering within a container. Dreamy.

Jessi Harvey
Pieces of the Puzzle

A struggling and a wrestling.

Sheila Bristow
Two Songs: Leap Into Love and The Finding

An attractive lyricality, reminiscent of late Griffes.

Recorded

August 28, 2016
Polonaise-Fantasie in A-flat Major, Op. 61 - Chopin - Artur Rubinstein

Cherkassky

Each of the opening arpeggios is like a finger brushing the reverberation of its three preceding chord-strokes - as though their reverberations were harps - as though the piece were creating within its space, from within the substance of its notes, instruments and players.

Fantasiestücke Op. 111 - Schumann - Shura Cherkassky

In which meter is re-conceptualized as entirely plastic, like heat-pliant steel, but weightless.

Petrouchka - Stravinsky - London Philharmonic Orchestra, Bernard Haitink

The circus is a metaphor of the universe, or an excuse to trot out the musical fauna for display and study - of how and of what it is made. The grim oppositions of every kind of material: Outside/Inside :: Puppet/Master :: Circus/Theater :: Audience/Dancers. The gloriously polyphonous thrum. He even gets his big tune in there as a distraction to be suddenly interrupted by the interior drums let loose. I love the desultory tambourine bang just after the fatal thrust. Et tu, Igor?

August 30, 2016
I'll Be Good But I'll Be Lonesome - Southern Negro Quartet [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The best way to get a good recorded sound in the early days was to compose around the limitations of the tech. Still is.

Johnny Dodds

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

Each successive chorus a careful notch less restrained.

Creole Rhapsody - Duke Ellington and his Orchestra - Freddie Jenkins, Arthur Whetsol, Cootie Williams, Lawrence Brown, Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton, Juan Tizol, Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Harry Camey, Fred Guy, Wellman Braud, Sonny Greer [from Ken Burns Jazz]

That the legitimacy and prestige sought so strenuously, of which this music is so clearly deserving, was never achieved in the legitimate and prestigious world is not simply a matter of DE not being white and/or dead, though it is surely due muchly to that, but is also a clear indication that legitimacy and prestige were never real to begin with. (Which may have been his point all along).

August 31, 2016
Peter and the Wolf - Prokofiev - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, David Bowie

The quintessential free-range kid. I love how the introduction of the characters one by one (masquerading as an introduction of the orchestra) is echoed at the end by the parade of all at once, and how incrementally the story emerges in tandem with the incrementally complex orchestration. SP isn't just telling a story, and isn't just demonstrating an orchestra, he is also explaining his musical thinking. Bowie nails it.

Swingmatism - Jay McShann [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Two heads collide: a sly one and a cockeyed crazy one.

Pete's Lonesome Blues - Pete Johnson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

I got to thinking: As we listen through the imperfections of the recording tech do we filter out the noise or do we fill in the sound's envelope with the music we invent as having been heard?

Salt Your Pillow Down - Dickie Jones and Benny Leaders [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Got your big fat tube-amp guitar sound down solid.

Curtis Lee

Roll Over Beethoven - Chuck Berry [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart Of Rock & Soul]

The lyrics are a red herring. The action is in the rhyme between voice and guitar, leaning forward off the beat.

Pretty Little Angel Eyes - Curtis Lee [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart Of Rock & Soul]

Competitive do-wop-she-bop. Beat that!

September 1, 2016
And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma - Harry Partch - Gate 5 Ensemble

Charisma trying on outfit after outfit. Constant motion without arrival. Fascination without obligation.

In Session At The Tintinabulary

Dad's 1957 Nash Ambassador - Whidbey Island 1964 (we're building a cabin)

August 27, 2016
Shucking Corn 160827 - Keith Eisenbrey  


Although it is clearly just that, shucking corn, it also sounds, at times, like muppets making out in the back seat of dad's Nash.


August 29, 2016
Banned Rehearsal 917 160829 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Preface

"Blake proposed seeing not with the eyes but through the eyes -- not, that is, with the limits of the natural organ as habitual frame but through an open channel. Same with ears, the open channel, passing through "the doors of perception." This stance is listening through sound to the core, as if the actual sound were a leak from another dimension asking to be tracked back to an original, which, however, never shows itself." George Quasha - "Hearing Speare Hearing Through Sounds Themselves", The Open Space Magazine Issue 10 Fall 2008

Texts

Recorded

August 7, 2016

Kid Ory

You're Next - Louis Armstrong - Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds, Lil Armstrong, Johnny St. Cyr [from Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens]

How it moves from its empty foreboding chunk chunk opening harmony into summer weather, as simply as remembering what's for dinner that night.

Creole Rhapsody - Duke Ellington - Duke Ellington, Cootie Williams, Freddie Jenkins, Arthur Whetzel, Joe Nanton, Juan Tizol, Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney, Fred Guy, Wellman Braud, Sonny Greer [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

The opening musics reenter after the virtual record-flip break through a fissure made sneakily by the pattery snare drum, which leads the finish, thereby tying together an otherwise episodic amble.

Romeo and Juliette, Premiere Tableau - Prokofiev - Orchestre du Theatre Bolchoi de Moscou, Algis Juraitis

Prokofiev lives in the troubled harmonies that occupy the middles of his phrases. Squarely in the Berliozian Romantic tradition, the music both amplifies and inhabits the dramatic scene.

Jig Walk - Pee Wee Russell [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Pretty sure it is just drums, piano, and clarinet, but the clarinet uses what are nearly multiphonics, with an assist from nicely particular registrations of the piano's chords, to impersonate backing horns.

You Go To My Head - Sarah Vaughan - Sarah Vaughan, Clarence Brereton, Buster Bailey, Russell Procope, Bill Kyle, John Kirby, Bill Beason [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

Long vocal line with surprise rhymes sprawling over a sumptuously cushioned accompaniment.

Red Rodney

Mark - Red Rodney [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Let's move this along boys, we have a lot of notes to fit into three minutes.

August 9, 2016

Havana Moon - Chuck Berry [from The Best of Chuck Berry]

Just under the radar, CB's voice relaxes into a smoky smooth bluesy basso at the ends of phrases.

Hide Away - Freddy King [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

In a way the Beatles did this track a loving disservice by referencing it so often. It's tricky to hear for itself.

Kicks (Remix) - Paul Revere and The Raiders [from The Legend of Paul Revere]

A pretty great song weakened by the author's message lyrics.

One Of These Days - Pink Floyd [from Meddle]

A seventies dorm room Bolero.

Mi-Parti - Witold Lutosławski - Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jacek Kasprzyk

Clouds of strings circle and envelop, or call forth and let evaporate, the unsustainable potent violence of the dead, ascending in glowing ash.

Elimination Dancing - Bow Wow Wow

Unimaginable without the virtual stage show, costume changes, the works. Power punk glitz.

The Boy In The Bubble - Paul Simon [from Graceland]

Turns around on itself so many times you would almost think it wasn't meant to be not a lullaby.

In Bloom - Nirvana [from Nevermind]

A canvas of solid colors, not primary, in dynamically proportional blocks and stripes. Strong and messy verticals.

August 10, 2016
Banned Rehearsal 416 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer, March 1996


We gather our tools, weigh them in hand, cross-calibrate, coalesce into: e-guitar, tenor sax, bass line (on the mighty W), drums, t-bone, various percussionals. Pressure is applied from angles low in the mix :: slowly squeezing violin and cornet out of guitar and sax, a residue of drone coats the wreckage. A late hurrah.

The Farthest Shore (Kalessin) - Keith Eisenbrey


This is a midi generated realization of a flute trio I wrote in 2001 for Sarah Bassingthwaighte, who took it to some little town in Russia with a bunch of flute students. It was apparently performed as a flute nonette, though the only record I have of it is the program with my name transliterated into their alphabet. I looked around for a scan of it, but was unable to find it. Alas, my sound files are quite well organized and indexed, but the image files are not. More to do.

In Session At The Tintinabulary

August 8, 2016
Gradus 295 - Neal Kosály-Meyer 

Playlist

Recorded

June 28, 2016
Low Down Blues - Sissle's Sizzling Syncopaters [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

What could be imitated, but not re-invented? Referenced, but not owned?

Louis Armstrong

Come Back Sweet Papa - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

One gets the impression that Louis, with varying degrees of success, was doing everything he could to teach his band how to keep up with him. Sweet Papa isn't coming back.

Violin Concerto in D - Stravinsky - Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Sacher, Anne-Sophie Mutter

A text book in how to unpack a tonality. Grooving on those ostinati, each chunk of their respective chunk chunk chunks facing in a new direction.

Trio - Cage - Seattle Percussion Collective [Greg Campbell, Denali Williams, Dale Speicher]

wind up toys
blank face percussive envelopes
measure our remove

Blue Serge - Duke Ellington [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

A movie-star affect, the way it turns its face aside at every of its last moments.

You Go To My Head - Sarah Vaughan [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

The lyrics veer toward being nothing but a list of words that rhyme, in particularly rhythmed places within the meter. Veer so far as to be nearly without meaning except to the extent that their rhyme is their reason. But the resulting near vacation of the expressive space allows colonization, gentrification, by Sarah's oh so deliberate pacing of tones.

not mc, but rather me, some decades past

June 29, 2016
The Mighty Casey - William Schuman - Juilliard Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

It has some nice moments, and telling touches: the greek rhubarb choruses, and any of the instrumental interludes after the game gets going, are my personal favorites. Otherwise it would be pretty much a train wreck were it not for how it almost allows access to the sense of cosmic time shift that provides much of the aesthetic awe of baseball in the wild: that heady range of magnitudes between the scales of seasons, games, innings, ups, pitches, and the moments of shattering air.

Chamber Music for 13 Players - Arthur Berger - Columbia Chamber Ensemble, Gunther Schuller [from Music of Arthur Berger]

The pirate games that pitches play when our backs are turned.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

June 27, 2016
Banned Rehearsal 912 160627 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

We celebrate the 32nd Bannediversary on the porch of the Tintinabulary.

Playlist

Recorded

March 29, 2016

Colin McPhee

Tabuh-Tabuhan, Toccata for Orchestra - Colin McPhee - Eastman-Rochester Orchestra, Howard
Hanson

Importation into symphony-land, without irony. Accidentally prefiguring aspects of a later pop minimalism. For a moment, a hint of the Great Gates of Kiev, but in the end I couldn't help thinking that equal temperament has never sounded so bland.

I Found A New Baby - Benny Goodman [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

The masters trade bitty licks lickety split, arranged to sound impossibly, miraculously, spontaneous.

You Won't Be Satisfied (Until You Break My Heart) - Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billy Butterfield, George Koenig, Bill Stegmeyer, Jack Greenberg, Artie Drelinger, Milton Chatz, Joe Bushkin, Danny Perri, Harman 'Trigger' Alpert, Cozy Cole [from Louis Armstrong and Guest Stars]

Sometime in my late teens I was introduced to the music of Louis Armstrong so I went to the record store to find some more. This grab-bag album of tracks (mostly from the 40's), is just full of winners, including this one of Louis and Ella at the tops of their games, hardly working (or so it seems) trading off verses.

Tease Me Baby - John Lee Hooker [from The Legendary Modern Recordings 1948 - 1954]

His strum is swift and weighty, like a cross-bow strike.

March 31, 2016
I'm In Love Again - Fats Domino [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

More trading off licks, here between vocal and sax, both of which hold more or less still in melodic space while the harmonies move under them.

Arthur Berger

3 Pieces for 2 Pianos - Arthur Berger - Paul Jacobs, Gilbert Kalish

From the catalogue of a master compilator. It is as though everything he was digging about the music he heard around him finds its way here in quirky completeness: tempo tricks, prepared piano sounds, intricate chromatic play between the vertical and the horizontal, Webernesque pitch statis - all of it laid out there with his inimitable sensibility of touches, times, and colors. Time's passing sculpted or bent.

Land of 1000 Dances - Wilson Pickett [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

A study in interjections, the song itself having fallen away.

It's Too Late - Carole King [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

I found myself really digging the tiny-echo backing vocals at left and right, barely audible at the ends of phrases.

Say Goodbye to Hollywood - Billy Joel [from The Essential Billy Joel]

The king of monochromatic vocal production. There is a way to sing and that's all there is.

Clubland - Elvis Costello [from Trust]

A latter-day land of 1000 dances presented as a present tense fiction.

Love For Sale - Talking Heads [from True Stories]

Framed by: CountOff at start and KissOff at end.

Study 50 - Conlon Nancarrow [from Conlon Nancarrow: Lost Works, Last Works]

Some stray dude holding forth at a bar, with illustrations, and a replicator. By the time one escapes there must be 20 or 30 of him in there.

Ballintubber Abbey - Amy Denio [from Tutto Bene]

Focus.

Sonic Brilliance 14 - [March 1996 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Holden K, Neal Kosály-Meyer]

Introducing children to synthesizers. I want that bubble sound.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 28, 2016
Gradus 287 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Neal is on the verge of G natural, to imply a modulation, or that we weren't in A to begin with.