Playlist

Recorded

January 21, 2017
Carolina Shout- James P. Johnson [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

James P. Johnson

the dancer and the bard
the arms and the legs
earth's bind and weightlessness

Sail Away Lady - "Uncle Bunt" Stephens [from Anthology of American Folk Music]

A fiddle tune doing that check in with the open string thing fiddle tunes do.

I'll Lead a Christian Life - Elder Golden P. Harris [from Goodbye Babylon]

Fiddlevoice: holding it in the mask exactly static, high in the sinuses, even when at the bottom of the tune.

Romeo and Juliet (supplement) - Prokofiev - Orchestre du Theatre Bolchoi de Moscou, Algis Juraitis

I guess these might be the parts of the project that wouldn't fit back in the box. A melody is a piece of magic. How could one not believe in magic, given melody?

Rockin' Chair - Roy Eldridge, Graham Young, Torg Halten, Norman Murphy, Babe Wagner, Jay Kelliher, John Grassi, Mascagni Ruffo, Sam Listengart, Sam Musiker, Walter Bates, Milton Raskin, Ray Biondi, Buddy Bistien, Gene Krupa [from Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

Snare drum finds a place to sidle in.

(I Wanna Go Where You Go) - Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra

Clarinet, with a long pointy finger, picking at the spots just after the moments where the realization of a moment occurs.

Bud Powell

Dusky and Sandy - Bud Powell - [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

If one imagines a stepped dynamic universe (pp, p, mp, mf, f, ff) as an even metric, like a steady beat of increase, the dynamics in this are in a syncopated relation to those steps.

Etudes for String Orchestra - Frank Martin - L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Ernest Ansermet

Lights are on all over the house. What is thought but the play of lights on all over the house? Europe's rowdiest orchestra at the top of their form.

Gypsy Woman - The Impressions [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Rising repeatedly from narrative to rhapsody.

January 24, 2017
I Can't Turn You Loose - Otis Redding [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

A slow harmonic rhythm with intricately fiddly internal articulative rhythms. The instrumentals define a solid long sequence, ellipsing around the big motions in orbital metrical flow.

Clarinet Solo - [unknown concert waltz recorded ca. 1971] - Paul Eisenbrey, JoAnne Deacon

From my mom's archives, a tape of my brother playing a solo concert waltz (with cadenza!) in about 1971.

Hambone - The Phillips Wonders [from The Art of Field Recording, volume 1]

that ol' bo' diddly, all done by hand clapping, collapsing in laughter.

Lover's Walk - Elvis Costello [from Trust]

Narrow bounds. Nothing will escape.

Banned Sectional 05 KEE AK 860103 - Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, January 1986

Eschewing anything flagrant. Notes played regular, lists spoken as decided. Hanging in there, unflamboyant.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 23, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 928 170123 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


January 26, 2017
Entracte (170126) - Keith Eisenbrey

I wrote this little (17 bars of 4/4) piano duet in about 2000. My idea was that others could write
independent but equally sized duets so that the parts could be mixed and matched. Neal bit, sort of, but playing his "Piano Fore-Heads" with anything else was perversely impossible. Gavin Borchert came through and we played the various combinations toward the latter part of Polestar's presence. The recording of our performance is, alas, not in my collection. I made this dubbed recording yesterday.

Playlist

Preface

"The time has long gone since the monumentality of the written text, having found its niche in the great halls of literature, could experience such achievement in proxy for its poet as ultimate bulwark against the flotsam of history and the underlying tussle and torque of time. Neither Keats' Urn nor Yeats' Singing School nor even the dusty owls of Robert Duncan's grim Museum, can hold out any longer against the utterly transitory character of even the most heartily well-wrought artifact. The artifactual nature of reality itself is now felt to be so keenly ensconced in its fleeting identity, that 'the work of time's' subjection to time's ravages hardly evokes a whimper. You must find a way to live with a moment's grace and let the matter of durative identity take care of itself as it can." Charles Stein "Magic Without Tears in the Writings of Lissa Wolsak" - Open Space Magazine Issue 12/13 fall 2010/winter 2011

Texts

Recorded

December 26, 2016

Fletcher Henderson

That Devilin' Tune - Stella Mayhew [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

An oversize stage presence in the service of cringe-worthy minstrel-show lyrics.

Unknown Blues - Fletcher Henderson [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Loose-jointed piano playing.

Panama City Ltd. - Ada Brown [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Delicious horn section.

I'm Crazy About My Baby - Fats Waller [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The sophistication of the performance leaves the song far behind.

December 27, 2016
Romeo et Juliette Act III - Prokofiev - Orchestre du Theatre Bolchoi de Moscou, Algis Juratis

Clearest bliss layered on clearest bliss, but viewed from an angle that fragments each line, especially in secret, where intricacies are worked out.

Nat Cole

Just a Sittin' and a Rockin' - Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Sets up shop and stakes a claim.

Somebody Loves Me - Lester Young, Nat Cole, Buddy Rich [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

All three of them are fabulous, but Nat Cole's piano playing is astonishing in the way it folds rhythm and tune together.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 25, 2016
UTUMC - MCC Coffee Makers 161226 - Keith Eisenbrey
When we got to church Christmas morning Karen and I took our choir folders, which we had taken home with us late on Christmas Eve, back to choir room in the basement. In the hall was a coffee maker, and in a kitchen off the hall was another, all by themselves, happily singing carols.

December 26, 2016
Banned Telepath 52 161226 Anchorage
Banned Telepath 52 161226 Seattle
Banned Rehearsal 925 161226 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, and Steve Kennedy, in Seattle; and Aaron Keyt in Anchorage

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

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

Live

Yulianna Avdeeva

December 1, 2015
Yulianna Avdeeva
Meany Hall, Seattle

Nocturne in C-sharp minor, op. posth. - Chopin
Nocturne in E-flat Major, op. 55 #2 - Chopin
Fantasie in F minor, op. 49 - Chopin
Four Mazurkas, op. 17 - Chopin
Polonaise in F-sharp minor, op. 44 - Chopin
Sonata #8 in B-flat Major, op. 84 - Prokofiev

For the most part this was a very easy recital to like. Ms Avdeeva plays warmly, clearly, and with a flexible imagination. She didn't get in the path of the magical way Chopin has of making the performance hall disappear in favor of a created space within the music. The Prokofiev is perhaps a bit long for itself, but I was enjoying the way bits of revery would calve themselves off the main event, splendid discards.

For an encore she played, if I am not mistaken, Chopin's Grande Valse Brillante, op. 18. I may be mistaken because when I got home to check I realized that all the waltzes sound familiar, and I couldn't distinguish between what was familiar because I had just heard it and what was familiar simply because it was familiar. At any rate, she played this far too fast.

Recorded

November 29, 2015
String Quartet in E minor, op. 59 #2 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

The increments of sequence tested, pulled up against, brought up short again and again, tolerances stressed.

Ballade in A-flat Major, op. 47 - Chopin - Vladimir Ashkenazy
Symphony in C Major, op. 61 - Schumann - Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, John Eliot Gardiner

Something grand approaches, or we approach amid grandeur, in the exuberant throws of a surgent culture.

November 30, 2015
Sonata in A Major, op. 100 - Brahms - Isaac Stern, Alexander Zakin

The blues artist Jarod Yerkes, in performance as SmokeStack and the Foothill Fury, would, at seemingly random moments, explode midsong into finger flying guitar riffs, explaining these, plausibly, as "guitar Tourrettes". There is something similar going on here, the lyrical passages taken over suddenly by shameless contrapuntal workings out. It is as though, in singing, he suddenly became interested in and completely distracted by some technical detail in the figuration, losing track of the phrase he was presumably articulating.

Rusalka (selections) - Dvořák - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra - Václav Neumann

Not me

When I was an undergrad at the UW way back in the way back I got roped into the opera chorus for a production of Rusalka. I believe that my abilities as a sack of meat of the tenor persuasion were alone responsible for this, my operatic debut and finale.

Nobody - Bert Williams - [from Alan Lowe's Really the Blues]

December 3, 2015
Symphony in F-sharp minor (#10) - Mahler/Cooke - Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy

I have three recordings of this piece, and you can read my earlier postings here and here. This time around I was thinking about a side effect of massing instruments of a type into a single section, first and second violins, or choral sections, for example. The sound is glorious but the performers vanish as individuals. Is it worth the trade-off?

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 28, 2015
Banned Telepath 41 Somerville - 151128 - Aaron Keyt
Banned Rehearsal 899 151123-8 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt
Aaron sent his bit from Somerville, and so we assemble the last Banned Rehearsal in the 800s. Due to Neal's rehearsal schedule for Finnegans Wake we plan to reconvene on the 14th for Banned Rehearsal 900. Wow.

November 29, 2015
Trio 151129 - Keith Eisenbrey
Improvising three tracks: angklung, toy reed organ, and nylon string guitar.

Playlist

Recorded

May 24, 2015

Symphony in D Major (#2) - Jean Sibelius - BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Jerzy Maksymiuk

The problematic process of developing a synoptic stance. How to be on all sides of the mountain at once. Sinew and bone. Gaping holes. Synthesis by assertion.

La Patti Negra - Orquestra Typicas - [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

One suspects more slippery rhythm back there than remains on the artifact.

Bambino - Grupo Bahianainho - [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

To be heard on foot, moving.

May 26, 2015
A fából faragott királyfi - Béla Bartók - London Symphony Orchestra, Antal Dorati

A caldron of bubbling forces transformed into a cartoon. What would be comic turns grotesque. The dire extreme has blotted out all else. Cruelty is the spectacle. The happily ever after seems ready to start the whole thing over a few octaves higher. I used to like this piece a lot. now I'm not so sure it's healthy.

Concerto in C Major (#3) - Serge Prokofiev - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Dickran Atomian

Innocuous in the sense of being stylistically sophisticated riffs that never stray past unquestioned assumptions about how music goes. From the linear we ne'er veer. The best parts are when it gets busy fussing with its own innards, going nowhere, twiddling its thumbs, crossing its legs, waiting for us to applaud.

All I Want Is That Pure Religion- Blind Lemon Jefferson - [from Goodbye, Babylon]

One-to-one music, rather than one-to-many. The size of a private meeting rather than of a public gathering.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

May 25, 2015
Duet 150525 - Keith Eisenbrey

Back to my duet project for awhile. This session is hollow-body electric guitar and drumset. I was having fun with lots of microphones, 6 tracks per part.

Banned Rehearsal 886 150525 - Jenny Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


Aaron and Jenny have returned for the Summer from far-off climes.

Playlist

Live

April 23, 2015
Nick Norton, John Teske, Nat Evans
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

New Forest - Nat Evans

We arrived about 20 minutes in, so the first experience was simply that of entering a room from which a particular color of quietness emanated. Upon this fabric was set, at long intervals, a couple of older jazz recordings. There was enough space between these that they didn't become the main focus, but operated as markers, cairns, a known place for our own calibration.

Does it help, or is it essential, to know certain facts about a music in order to perceive it most clearly? I had known a little going in: that it involved field recordings made on Nat's recent trek on the Pacific Coast Trail. In the notes it is disclosed that these particular recordings are from forest areas that had been clearcut in the '40s or '50s, and that the recordings are 78s inherited from Nat's grandfather, who studied forestry at about that time. This is all interesting from a journalistic perspective, but I remain skeptical that the knowledge of it improves the aesthetic experience.

For my part, the hardcore interaction between the presence of the forest sound as it fell into distance and the etched surface of the surfacing past of the 78s sound was the big hit. The rest is just part of what it took Nat to get there, it isn't the there. It is important to Nat's relation to his work, but not necessarily to ours.

Texture Sketch I - Nick Norton
Allison Fann, viola; Ivan Arteaga, alto saxophone; Nick Norton, guitar; Neil Welch, tenor saxophone; Peter Tracy, cello; John Teske, double bass

A skein that tightens as it rises.

All The Wrong Notes - Nick Norton
Cristina Valdes, piano

Two-fisted piano writing written, apparently, in order for there to be another piece of two-fisted piano music. Cristina was fabulous as always, but this one failed to convince.

topographies - John Teske
same personnel as in Texture Sketch I

I have been a map nut from a tender age, so this piece plugs into several of my nerd-nodes. In the observation of landforms we can surmise numerous processes and forces and materials at work. Maps are abstracts of the results, representations of several dimensions of data on a surface. Those abstractions are used as a stimulus to other forces, processes and personalities (with all their inscrutable complexities) in order to produce a sound which is itself an abstraction of all the underlying data and which, as it presents itself in time, comes across as nothing so much as landforms made audible.

It was a pleasure to hear these again.

Recorded

April 18, 2015
Symphony #3 op. 27 "Sinfonia Espansiva" - Carl Nielsen - Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Yuri Ahronovitch

This is big drama music that doesn't behave like a stage drama. It is more high steel than Macbeth. Its parts don't fit together with specious inevitability, but are set against each other and folded into each other curatorially. Each episode is enlivened inside itself rather than tensing us into looking where we are going. No matter where one listens in this music it is as though there were a ripple in the glass. Nothing can be heard straight.

Karol Szymanowski

Violin Concerto #1 - Karol Szymanowski - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Jan Krenz, Shizuka Ishikawa

As though Wagner's forest bird had wandered into the first scene of Pelleas and never recovered.

April 20, 2015
Symphony in B-flat (#2) - Albert Roussel - Orchestre National de France, Charles Dutoit

Begins by repeatedly breaking from darkness into darkness. It eventually bursts into energy, though it never escapes the morass.

Tapiola - Jean Sibelius - Boston Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis

Threadbare, stained, faded. Worn utterly away in many places, in others preserved in sudden flashes from another realm. This fairy tale is less Disney, more Grimm.

Concerto in B-flat (#4) op. 53 - Serge Prokofiev - Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, Antoni Wit, Kun Woo Paik

Punched, squeezed, and shoved into place. Build them, put them on a shelf. There they stay.

April 21, 2014
Symphony #4 -  Dmitri Shostakovich - Moscow Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, Kiril Kondrashin

An immense quantity of individual rooms, voices speaking in layers of imperiled code. Not heartfelt because it can't be. Intricately speaking to its own inability to speak.

William Bergsma

April 22, 2014
Gold and The Señor Commandante Ballet Suite - William Bergsma - Eastman-Rochester Symphony Orchestra, Howard Hanson

One regret I have looking back on my years at the UW was that I never took any classes from William Bergsma. Here it is demonstrated that he composed the Jaws not safe in the water right now theme several decades before it wasn't safe in the water anymore. The wickedly fabulous Eastman-Rochester crew sound great here, engineered so that the dynamic contrasts take your breath away.

Symphony #2 - Roger Sessions - New York Philharmonic, Dimitri Mitropoulos

Muscular, taut, frenetic - all apropos of 1946.

String Quartet #1 - Elliott Carter - Julliard String Quartet

Pushing the extremes of voice/instrument integrity and contrapuntal independence, with a gut punch intensity.

Blueberry Hill - Fats Domino [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock and Soul]

Smooth and solid. Nothing stands out until the last drum bang.

Klavierstuck 10 - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Aloys Kontarsky

A discourse on our sense of quantity. Some aspects are clearly numerable. Others are clearly not.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

April 19, 2015
Duet 150419 - Keith Eisenbrey

I was on vacation this week so I was very busy. This first duet features my mom's nylon string guitar (Franciscan) and the contents of the big red bag of fun.

April 20, 2015
Gradus 264 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

If the piano keyboard represents a binary numbering system (played = 1, not played = 0), then each combination can be represented by a quantity. We could do math!

April 21, 2015
Duet 150421 - Keith Eisenbrey

This day's duet was with upright grand piano (1908 Kingsbury) in need of tuning, and snare drum (Gretsch).

April 22, 2015
Duet 150422 - Keith Eisenbrey

Viola and pendant pot lids.

April 23, 2015
Duet 150423 - Keith Eisenbrey

Acoustic guitar with pickup (Mitchell) through a Sunn amp, paired with a locally made wood-body drum (Sawatch).

Études d'exécution imminent - Keith Eisenbrey

This was my last composition before I went on a self-imposed sabbatical last Spring. I am fascinated with music that lives at the edge of its own beingness - pieces that are only just barely pieces, or perhaps aren't quite. I've been working them up for presentation next August, and took the opportunity afforded by my vacation to record them.

April 24, 2015
Duet 150424 - Keith Eisenbrey

Solid body electric guitar (Peavey) on long-term loan from my brother Paul, and bodhrán. I learned (while making sure I spelled that correctly) that the little wooden beater is called a 'tipper'. I turned the amp up pretty loud.

Playlist

Live

March 6, 2015
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Jeremiah Lawson

Jeremiah presented two sets, in C Major and C minor, of his 24 Preludes and Fugues for solo classical guitar, finding a personal place among several venerable instrumental traditions at once. In response to a question he stated that working the counterpoint out on paper as though it were for voices and then transcribing it for guitar worked well because the restrictions of vocal writing were more strict than for guitar. Fancy that!

Ann Cummings

In Three of a Kind for string bass, piano, and banjo, Ann and her collaborators Jesse Stout and Ethan Subotta aspire to reinvent gamelanic polyrhythms from the ground up. The spectacular result here sounded like a giant autoharp. What fun!

Clement Reid

Each of us has their particular life within the music we know, our peculiar histories within the music that fascinates us. A large part of the value, for me, of the Salon is its function as a sharing of those histories and those lives. For me as a habitual composer of solo piano music, Clement's music underscores just how varied those histories can be. Dreams and Improvisations are composed of six (if I heard correctly) pieces fully of splashy inside-the-piano sounds and un-fussy tunes. I've said this before, but his approach reminds me of Greg Short in its easy acceptance of all manner of crazy within a familiar setting. Its strength is not in its newness, but in its imaginative amiability.

Nadya Kandrevis and Jeremy Shaskus

Part One - Creation for cello, piano, and soprano saxophone. What is clear is that something of vital importance is being worked out. The arena in which the work occurs is as personal and private as it gets, that is to say, it is of the greatest possible vastness. Some comments were made about the relative temporal segregation of the instruments. To my ear (as it was to others I think) this feature was its power. If I have a comment I would suggest drilling this segregation even further, down into the individual parts. The less like regular music this was the more I was digging it.

Recorded

February 28, 2015
Concerto in C (#3) - Prokofiev - Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, Andrei Chistyakov, Evgenyi Kissin

A music of two lives or spiritual locations - one workaday, busy, vigorous: a public face; the other dreamy, sentimental, languid: a private face.

Concerto #1  - Bartok - London Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis, Stephen Bishop

Tight canons to startle and scare. The patterns increment stepwise to plateaus. In terms of treating many of the instruments as percussion it follows the example of Stravinsky, but in a more linear concert piece trajectory - the new ensconced in the comfortably established. It gets pretty interesting when it reduces itself to little more than a field of colored impulses.

Arthur Grumiaux

Violin Concerto in D - Stravinsky - Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Ernest Bour, Arthur Grumiaux

A still picture, framed, An evoked place rather than a story to tell. Energized stasis by means of constant misdirection.

March 3, 2015
Quartet #4 - Schoenberg - LaSalle Quartet

From under a crab's carapace a tiny window looks out upon a dingy yard. What is possible is only so for a moment, at each moment it is more of a struggle.

A Pixie From Dixie - Fletcher Henderson

Sounds are arranged in pairs (brass / reeds :: piano/guitar / string bass) with a Haydnesque sophistication. We can dance because our place here is clear, socially unambiguous. Subversive role reversals occur within careful bounds.

Quartet #3 - Shostakovich - Fitzwilliam Quartet

a comic song (don't look

behind you)

chunk chunk chunk chunk chunk chunk

see

I'm being good 

looked didn't you

lament is perilous

(if it can be imputed to the soul it can be pathologized)

back to comic song

good boy

unwilling to ever

ever ever

leave

In Session at the Tintinabulary

March 1, 2015

like the one on the left -
but I think I paid more for it

Silvertone 150301
Silvertone 150301 folded
Silvertone 150301 folded rubbed - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on my first electric guitar, a hollow body with three pickups. Pretty sweet.

March 2, 2015
Banned Rehearsal 880 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Kosály-Meyer

No accompaniment from the snowy east this time.

Playlist

Recorded

December 28, 2014

Camille Saint-Saëns

Piano Concerto in F (#5) - Camille Saint-Saëns - Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Dutoit, Pascal Roge

Proceeding in fours and fours unpretentiously, unprofound, in delight, foursquare rationality leading us methodically to an exquisitely decorated depravity, upon which the curtain falls. Whip it up!

Symphony in G (#4) - Gustav Mahler - Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, George Szell, Judith Raskin

shake the fairy-tale snowglobe

light shifts, spills, runneth over

sinister engines pull back

allow the room's shape 

to emerge, then again 

shake the fairy-tale snowglobe

December 29, 2014
Chamber Symphony #1 - Arnold Schönberg - CBC Symphony Orchestra, Robert Craft

fastforward frenetic, a hint stands for a statement, a phrase stands for a paragraph.

Max Reger

Quartet in F-sharp minor- Max Reger - Reger Quartet

Compared to the Schönberg this is a bit less like being trapped in a contrapuntal sardine can, but only a bit. The key it's in is only a pretense: the actual tonality is a function of the set of keys alluded to in immediacy. Linearity twisted, nearly tangled.

January 1, 2015
Symphony #4 - Charles Ives - New Philharmonia Orchestra, Harold Farberman

a cluttered attic
dustwebs and cobmotes
sacred space creased
syntangled, musty

This music imagines objects and places as anthropocentric repository-presences. They have gathered up their history with us and speak it back to us from within their own shape and condition. The world sings back to us only ourselves, blindingly.

Concerto in C (#3) - Serge Prokofiev - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Dickran Atamian

An old comfort all cleaned up and shiny like new.

Playlist

Upcoming This Very Evening

 

Your Mother Should Know

Canals of Venice

Bucktoad

August 10, 2014, 7pm, at the Skylark. All ages!

 

Recorded

 

August 3, 2014

Asrael - Josef Suk - Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Vaclav Neumann

 

I was thinking about the titles of musical works and the degrees to which, and the ways in which, those titles, and our various understandings of them, color our experience of episodes of musical experience. Specifically I was interested in how a title, if allowed, groups its instant work into a literature of like objects. Symphonies can be compared to each other, as can concerti, string quartets and piano sonatas. The flowering of program music in the 19th Century, among other things, forced a door (or merely removed the illusion of a door) between concert music and allegory, mapping explicit ideas from outside into the pure (or stagnant) realms of music. Titles such as Symphonie Fantastique reveal the dialectic: pure symphony or story told? Is there a program? Why do I need a program if it works as pure music? If it doesn't work as pure music how could it work as program music? Asrael is deeply invested in this dialectic, but the spectacular elements of Berlioz and Liszt have vanished. Death is not played here at the remove of the big screen. The sublime is for keeps.

 

August 5, 2014

The Gong on the Hook and Ladder - Ives - New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein

 

I was going to say "talk about your spectacular elements" but there's something more going on here. Not a picture, but a poem or conceit, concerning or from an imaginary point of view. We are the title object and we have a sound comprised of our receptions, through our life's duration, of the sounds of our surroundings. We are what we have heard.

 

4 Impressions - Griffes - Olivia Stapp, Diane Richardson

 

I wonder if the vernacular ghost of Stephen Foster lurked too closely behind Griffes to allow him anything but this starchy oh so artsy style of song writing.

 

Concerto in C - Prokofiev - Polish Radio National Symphony Orchestra, Antoni Wit, Kun Woo Paik

 

All sorts of things can be strung along a steady riotous pulse.

 

August 6, 2014

Mass - Frank Martin - Robert Shaw Festival Singers, Robert Shaw

 

A completely devastating piece of work. Clarity and inflection are painted here, not words.

 

Liberty Theatre, Toppenish, WA - July 2014

August 7, 2014

Piano Concerto 2 - Bartok - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Claudio Abbado, Maurizio Pollini

 

The concert abstract in your face. This is built of bricks and so it is.

 

Carmina Burana - Carl Orff - London Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, Eduardo Mata, Barbara Hendricks, John Aler, Hakan Hagegard

 

It would be easy to dismiss this work as an overblown Les Noces wannabe, were it not for the fact that it seems to be establishing itself culturally as a kind of sinner's Messiah: On Christmas we sing-along with Handel, but on New Year's Eve it's Orff all the way. A series of short pieces, strongly pulsed, constructed with such narrow pitch material that the particular slant each has on the idea of tempo is the real point, strung together for contrast and sequential impact. One would almost think it's a '70s concept album stripped down to bare punk and re-imagined as though the universe had never heard of rock and roll.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

August 3, 2014

Takemine 140803 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

The blogger on woodchips - Seattle - August 2014

Trying something a little different: playing two sessions following each other immediately and then layering them. End result is three little improvisations. Not sure yet where it might go.

 

August 4, 2014

Gradus 248 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

A Short History of Pitch-Class Colonization in the New World:

 

expand realms

start over

consolidate gains

hegemonize

start over (armored)

threaten

unify

fill

distill

start over

segregate

visitate

investigate

celebrate

occupy

monopolize

regularize

classicalize

explore

reconfigure

dissect

continue

defoliate

isolate

apply policy

republicanize

summarize

slumberize