Playlist

Live

November 1, 2013
Seattle Composers Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

The Rubaiyat Waltzes - Hope Wechkin

argument :: prolongation :: extension

argument:prolongation:extension

argumentprolongationextension

epitaph

-------- (sic) Amnesia - Kevin Williams

Extended technique as a way to move the sound in space - as though the dancer from Hope's piece had transubstantiated into tone.

-- I missed the first part of the title. If anyone picked that up please comment and I'll edit this post. Thanks!

Variation 16 - Phillip Arnautoff

Rainy Pass, Washington, 1984

An idea worked out to its gnarly it-ness. Like nothing so much as a century old storm-shrubbed fir crabbed onto rock at alpine's limn.

Great Expectations Suite - Kam Morrill

Strangely fitting that this was composed for a theatrical production that was never actualized.

Recorded

October 27, 2013
Spring Concert 1970 - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon

I have been archiving some of my mom's old tapes. She conducted this amateur women's chorus from 1958 or '59 through the early '70s. The sound of this ensemble is among my earliest musical memories. This concert had an Americana theme, moving from old hymns, through Randall Thompson, to Woody Guthrie and beyond. The selection becomes it's own time-capsule. It was long enough ago that Christian hymns could be included without irony in a secular setting, and hip enough to include an arrangement of Blowin' In The Wind when it was essentially a new song.

October 29, 2013
Banned Sectional 10 KEE NWM - (Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer, September 1985)

Throw at wall
see what sticks

 

Obo Roi

cornet

Sedia Response

playback time

extremists 1984

when I was in the 5th grade

mr. boom boom

 

If your order never arrives and the company to which you sent your money answers the phone they will intervene on your behalf and put you in touch with the proper agent

The Abyss (draft) - Keith Eisenbrey (November 29, 2005)

Establishes touch-points for near, middle, and far. Proceeds to narrow the focus of space as the textual content both expands (as to point of view) and contracts (as to theme).

Snohomish Piece 4 - Keith Eisenbrey, S. Eric Scribner, Neal Meyer

October 31, 2013
Mexico City - Keith Eisenbrey (September 1985)

I improvised this on my newly-completed but not yet brought-up-to-pitch clavichord as a response to the earthquake and a prayer for its victims. I have uploaded this to SoundCloud. The link above will take you there.

The Abyss (draft) - Keith Eisenbrey (November 29, 2005)

Another copy of what I believe is the same (nearly finished) draft. I wonder now if the text is too heavily encumbered by my setting.

Chamber - Wayne Lovecraft

Figures articulated by figures.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 28, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 846 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

Playlist

Tonight!
Saturday May 4, 2013 at 8:00 PM
Keith Eisenbrey and Neal Meyer at The Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Music for solo piano:
Eisenbrey - Welcome to my planet. I come in peace.
Cage - Solo for Piano

Long-time collaborators Neal Meyer and Keith Eisenbrey share a piano concert of epic stillness. Neal Meyer continues his exploratory celebration of the silence of John Cage with a performance of the seminal graphic-score Solo for Piano from Concert for Piano and Orchestra (1958). Keith Eisenbrey presents his recent contemplative pitch stereoscope: Welcome to my planet. I come in peace. Two frameworks, joined at the source, phased (in specious increments), cogs and gears, mutually warped and warping, rounding space.

Live

May 3, 2013

Seattle Composers Salon Chapel

Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

3 Pieces for Piano - Brad Anderson - Jason Kuo (spelling?)

 

An energy once begun does not stop. Big disambiguous movements. Clarity of figuration. Music's bare bones.

 

Phillip Arnautoff

2 Variations from 16 Variations - Phillip Arnautoff

Truly the most beautiful string quartet ever performed on a half size cello. The composer engages in hard-core old-school microtonal thinking, which is certainly a thing to know going in or you'll find yourself struggling to regain your bearings. But the most remarkable thing about Phillip is how absolutely he inhabits his own music, to the point where, as big as his personality is, he isn't entirely present until he plays. Stunning.

Luke 6:20-26 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey & Glynn Olive, sopranos, Keith Eisenbrey, piano

Thank you Glynn and Karen for the wonderful performance. I look forward to doing this again soon. When I got home I was thinking about the questions that were asked and realized that I had neatly avoided one with a technical response. Why was it such a particular challenge to set this text? Quite simply, I find it hugely intimidating to set the words of Jesus. It is imperative to get out of the way of the text. Getting it wrong is not an option.

Crystal Trees  - David M. Shere

A pretty little piece compiled in C-Sound, full of old-fashioned blip-bloop electro-sounds that made me smile. It ended with a  ravishing quiver of evanescent resonance hanging precisely 17 feet above the stage. I made a comment in the Q&A about a concern I had with the wide stereo separation. After thinking about it over night I offer this clarification: The aesthetic image of right and left would continue to be there even if the speakers were closer together. The farther apart they are the more the fact of right and left overshadows that aesthetic image. Image always trumps fact, so to strengthen fact at the expense of image is to weaken, or at least partially obstruct, the experience. I've been called on this myself in respect of extreme dynamics.

Recorded

April 28, 2013
Doomsome Otherings (midi orchestra) - Keith Eisenbrey

The title is a riff on 'Canonic Variations'. It started as a piece for viola and piano. I orchestrated it for a reading session with the Seattle Creative Orchestra some years ago and this was the midi version that came out of that. The original idea came from a possible mis-hearing of a theme and variations movement in one of Prokofiev's piano concertos. What I thought I heard was the music of an earlier variation returning in the middle of a later variation. So I made five variations of 50 measures each. In measures 31-40 of each variation the figuration of the next subsequent variation was used. In other words, variation 3 figuration is inserted into variation 1, variation 4 figuration into variation 2, etc., and around the horn, so to speak, so that 1 shows up in 4 and 2 in 5.

Hockets: A Recital - (2005, Keith Eisenbrey, piano):

2 Interruptions - Keith Eisenbrey
Partita - Benjamin Boretz
Intermezzo 2 - Keith Eisenbrey
Brandeis - Elaine Barkin
4 Pieces for Piano - John Verrall
Hockets - Keith Eisenbrey

Yikes! That was an ambitious program. What was I thinking? The Boretz, Barkin, and Verrall are all fiendishly difficult, and Hockets, though not technically challenging for the most part, requires strenuous concentration to stay on task. Oof!

April 30, 2013
Cicada - pH

1. Continuous throbbing pulsing thrum. 2. Picking up back again in mid stream becoming a working out of doors with alien overlords full of non sequitous entrances. 3. On a malfunctioning radio at a distance of distance picking up malfunctioning signals in a rhythm like typing. 4. Through hard crystal edges electric arcs zapping obsidian 5. The toxic pool is in the basement but it is aware, and falls off quantumly. 6. Choral, tropical, wet. 7. Mica slivers signal. 8. Resynthesizing the sound of speech synthesis.

Great album!

May 2, 2013
Banned Couple 10 - Banned Rehearsal

What is up front obscures what is down back but what is down back establishes a ground from which we perceive the up front as obscuring the down back without which the up front would not obscure and would merely be. Deal.

In Session at The Tintinabulary

April 29, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 835 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer