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

Live

 

May 2, 2014

Seattle Composers Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Bill Smith, Keith Eisenbrey, John Teske, Tom Baker

 

First of all: Thank you Tom Baker for all the hard work you have done to keep this amazing project going for the last 15 years. Not only has it given me and countless others repeated opportunities to share what we have been working on with the best ears in the city, but it has been an invaluable hob-nobbery for composers and performers alike. Every time around I marvel at just how many musical planets there are to have come from. It has been a grand ride and I am honored and blest to have been a part of it.

 

And to John Teske: I am ecstatic you have accepted the curatorial position. I think you're perfect for the job. It is a beautiful thing that Tom has done here, and I look forward to many more years of fascinating evenings under your guidance.

 

Bill Smith - Assisi - Bill Smith, Brian Cobb, Jesse Canterbury

 

I'm not sure I got the name of the piece right, but it had something to do with Assisi, so I'll go with that. A loving modern re-hearkening to the jazz & pop sounds of the late 40's and early 50's: Stan Kenton, Peggy Lee, Glen Miller, all tinged with incipient bebop. It wasn't that music dressed up, but rather a translation of those sounds into a taut and robust harmonic idiom, retaining every inch of its without which it don't mean a thing swing.

 

Keith Eisenbrey - Selections from Études d'exécution imminent

 

My notes: 150 years ago Franz Liszt composed a cycle of piano etudes that demanded of the pianist a transcendent technique. For Liszt this was a powerful and incendiary aesthetic stance. But there is a complement to transcendence that I thought might be worth pursuing. And so, as a corrective to the Études d'exécution transcendante, I have been working on a cycle of Études d'exécution imminent. I have 8 so far completed to the point of minor adjustments. Tonight I will perform #s 1, 2, and 8.

 

John Teske - Topographies - Any Ensemble

 

The title, by report, is descriptive of the composer's intent in the creation and design of the scores. I understand then that the scores are like maps of a physical space to be explored, and that the performance is a journey we take through that physical space. But, perhaps driven by the suggestion of the title, and further allowed by the textural complexity of the sounds created, the received image is not foremost a sequence of events, but something more like a map itself - the whole landscape at once, sequenced from above by our hovering, flitting attention.

 

Tom Baker - Sagamihara - Tom Baker, Corrie Befort (film)

 

I saw an earlier version of this film a year ago. It consists of a series of image groups: groundskeepers raking a dirt plane, people lofting a monumental kite, drummers with masks, a young woman lying uneasily in a meadow, people working in rice paddies. The sound component is a separate image on the same plane as the visual, not an accompaniment or comment. Or it is the young woman, or it is the meadow, or it is the kite or the sky. 

 

Recorded

 

April 27, 2014

Symphony in C K111b(96) - Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Jaap Schroder, Christopher Hogwood

 

This music is very proud of its own artifice. It can't help but lift its lid now and then to show us how it works.

 

Sonata in G Op. 49 #2 - Beethoven - Wilhelm Kempff

 

This music is trying ever so hard to sit still in polite company.

 

Symphony in C minor D417 - Schubert - Vienna Philharmonic, Karl Munchinger

 

It climbs flights of stairs. It always has a goal in mind, and that goal is the ever so lovingly, ever so nostalgically, deferred cadence. Once there we embark again so that we can look back while sailing on to look back further on.

 

Symphony in B-flat (String Symphony #5) - Mendelssohn - English Bach Festival Orchestra, William Boughton

Concerto in E minor - Paganini - London Philharmonic Orchestra, Charles Dutoit, Salvatore Accardo

Waltz in E-flat Op. 18 - Chopin - Peter Katin

 

A magic theater :: delight fancy free

 

Scherzo - Schumann - Peter Fankl

 

Fierce, with gritted teeth.

 

Die Loreley - Liszt - Thomas Quasthoff, Justus Zeyen

 

An opera in a song.

 

April 29, 2014

La Damnation de Faust (parts 1 and 2) - Berlioz - Orchestra & Chorus of Rome Opera, Georges Pretre, Nicolia Gedda, Marilyn Horne, Roger Soyer, Dimiter Petkov

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

April 27, 2014

Coronet 140427 and 140427A - Keith Eisenbrey

Zither 140427 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

April 28, 2014

Gradus 243 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

An expanse. At the bounds we set markers. We launch missives over the edge. We stand firm. We turn our backs. We shout to the sky. We breathe light.

 

We feed energy into a system to keep it lit.

 

May 1, 2014

Your Mother Should Know - Karen Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

A practice session for their upcoming album.

 

Upcoming

June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Playlist

Upcoming This Week

Friday, May 2, 2014, 8pm

Seattle Composers Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

I will be performing selections from my work in progress Études d'exécution imminente.

Live

April 25, 2014

Love Songs & other Fairy Tales

The Turtling Dithers (Maurice Colasurdo, Gordon Frazier, Jay Hamilton)

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

Part of what Jay gets so right so often is to eschew any aspect of professionalism that serves alienation. It is abundantly clear that we and they are in the same room together, and that the singing and the playing and the listening are all equally essential activities for the music to be at all. A remarkably healing evening.

Recorded

April 21, 2014

Sunset Medley - Gus Haenschen [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

 

Tapping or drumming? Either way it drives the sound of the piece. If it is tapping it is tapping intended as a drumming, and if a drumming it is intended to sound like tapping.

 

Marche Triomphale - Louis Vierne - David Di Fiore

 

A rather grim triumph. It is uncertain whether we share in it or whether we were triumphed o'er. It could have been in the back of John Williams's mind for the Imperial March.

 

Piano Sonata - Berthold Goldschmidt - Kolja Lessing

 

The neo-classical impulse walks a thin edge around a dire swamp - the already known, the academic, the explainable - and can subside toward a music designed with pre-approved, appreciable features. Tip, here's a theme! Tap, there's a counterpoint! Mind your boots going out.

 

String Quartet - Ruth Crawford Seeger - Composers Quartet

 

But here that neo-classical clarity is in pursuit of a remarkable and utterly original idea about multiplicities of times, and the payoff still astounds 80 years later.

Carbon Glacier - Mt. Rainier National Park - ca. 1973

 

Music for Strings, Percussion and Celeste - Bartok - Chicago Symphony Orchestra - Fritz Reiner

 

Schematic, but in a topsy-turvy world.

 

April 22, 2014

Stardust - Dave Appollone [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

 

The ghost of Paganini.

 

Prayer of St. Gregory - Alan Hovhaness - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz, Charles Butler

I'm In The Mood - John Lee Hooker [from The Legendary Modern Recordings 1948 - 1954]

New England Triptych - William Schuman - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

Runaround Sue - Dion [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Knock on Wood - Eddie Floyd [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Unintended Piano Music - Cornelius Cardew - John Tilbury

 

A single low tone is approached again and again by short groups of notes arranged in a non-linear, unpredictable sequence. It should be a stable anchor, but instead the twisted chorale that emerges in the upper register is unmoored.

 

Willis Wall - Mt. Rainier National Park - August 1976

7 Harmonies from "Apartment House 1776" - John Cage - Stefan Hussong

Songs from Walt Whitman - Malcolm Peyton - Bethany Beardsley, Malcolm Peyton, Linda Quan

Animal Boy - Ramones

 

A part of the Ramones wanted to be a girl group, and another part wanted to subsist on middle-school humor. One part allows growth, the other doesn't.

 

April 23, 2014

Toast/Spit - Infamous Menagerie

 

Absolute eloquence in a can. Wow.

 

music/consciousness/gender - Benjamin Boretz

 

The video component consists of photographs of individual human faces flashing for a second or less, interspersed with long periods of blackness. When I started watching and listening I left the door cracked open, allowing a bit of light into the room. At some point the door was closed so that by the end of the piece each flashing face blinded me anew. We are what we have to work with.

 

April 25, 2014

Love Song - Stan Brakhage

 

11 minutes of a-prurient sensuality rendering everything else you have ever seen colorless and plodding.

 

Nine Strange Attractors - David Dunn

Duetude - Carlton Gamer - Paul Nagem, Sergei Vassiliev

Languisce al fin - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

Konzert in F BWV 1047 - J.S. Bach - Fesitval Strings Lucerne - Rudolf Baumgartner

Sonata in E Wq. 48 - C.P.E. Bach - Bob van Asperen

Quartet in E flat Op. 1 #'0' Hob. II:6 - Haydn - Tatrai Quartet

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

April 21, 2014

Transverse Flute 140421 - Keith Eisenbrey

Banned Rehearsal 857 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal  Kosály-Meyer

 

April 22, 2014

Sonata - Aaron Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey

Greek Nickel #2 - J. K. Randall - Keith Eisenbrey

Attitude - Doug Palmer - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Trying to get a recording of the pieces I played at my recital with more of the notes right. I think they still need some work.

 

Finnegans Wake - Chapter One - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer

 

Neal has been memorizing Finnegans Wake again. His plan is to get through the whole thing over the next 17 years. My hope, in the coming years, is to document his recital in both sound and video. First chapter in the can.

 

Upcoming

 

June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Playlist

Upcoming This Week

 

Seattle Composers Salon

Saturday, March 7, 2014 at 8pm

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

Featured composers:

Clement Reid

Coreena

Aaron Keyt

Jay Hamilton

 

I will be performing Aaron Keyt's Sonata (2012) for solo piano - a Haydn sonata skewed inside out, rejiggered upside down, and refracted on an oblique plane.

 

Recorded

 

February 23, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 57 (Telepath 5 Mix) - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Karen Meyer, Neal Meyer - December 1985

 

The Telepath projects have, if you'll pardon the pun, mixed results. In this instance, the variety of recording procedures among the input tapes turns the output into an interesting dialogue about transparence and opacity, their strongly segmented structures of protracted static episodes combine to tell a tale in postures of room size, and the joint effect of three noisy heaters provides a solid standing ground. One of the winners.

 

Extracts 12 - Keith Eisenbrey - December 2010

 

The last iteration in my study of Scriabin's Prelude op. 74 #4. For details concerning this project see last week's post.

 

Banned Rehearsal 60 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer - December 1985

 

Vocalization, guitar thwangk and tongue drum. Little room is left, the sounds each fill their space, butt up against each other. Mass ukulele. Some songs: Sunday in the Metropolis espresso shops are closed / need a new pair of shoes but the shoe stores are all closed / head is splitting Sunday in the Metropolis / fogged in airplane goes round and round can't get to the ground / airplane food don't taste good :: If I started singing about a lizard on a tree / would you pull that robe away / would you set me free? :: Ain' No Easy Woman.

 

Figure Study 6 - Keith Eisenbrey - December 2010

 

A solo piano improvisation. The occasional close temporal proximity of incidents doesn't change the overall extreme slowness of the pace. The point here is to hold steady, like a mountain.

 

Banned Rehearsal 61 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Karen Meyer, Neal Meyer - December 1985

 

Starts quietly with wind instruments and other sustainers. So thin it is hard to believe there are five people in the room. For 40 minutes this is not about its tapeness, it is simply a recording of an improvisation session. The point of the session was us, not the result. The moment the microphone is addressed the spell is broken.



 

End and Begin

Maple Leaf, Seattle - February 2014

 

At this point a word of explanation will be useful for my readers, who may have noticed a preponderance of music from 1985 and 2010 in recent postings. Since my early twenties I have kept a database of the recorded music in my collection. It started on notecards, moved to a program written by my brother Paul, then for many years in Paradox, and finally now in Access. As the size of the collection increased I developed a method of choosing the next selection for listening. This essentially involves moving progressively and repeatedly through time, in an increment of 50 years. In other words, I would listen to something from 1750, then from 1800, then from 1850, etc., repeat until that cycle was exhausted, then step up to 1751, 1801, 1851, and so on. At the beginning of 2009, I decided to switch to an increment of 5 years, and since that time I have been listening to that segment of my collection stemming from years ending in "0" or "5". Banned Rehearsal was especially prolific in 1985, and there were also, apparently, a great many selections in 2010, so as I got to the end of the list these years remained. Now it is time to move on to years ending in "1" and "6". At this time there are nearly two thousand selections in that group, so I'll be at it for a while. There is some wonderful music out there. Enjoy!

 

February 26, 2014

Missa pro defunctis a 5 - Palestrina - Chanticleer, Joseph Jennings

 

Within a circumscribed world, placement and attitude gain subtle precision. Spinning out, starting over, starting spinning, over, out.

 

"T'amo, mia vita!" - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

 

Liquid time, wrapping around to look back.

 

Konzert in B, BWV 1051 - J.S. Bach - Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan

 

Repeated beginnings echo and fall away, ever-flowing weaves articulated only ever-so-gently by cadence.

 

Februray 27, 2014

Sonata in C, Wq. 48 #5 - C.P.E. Bach - Bob Von Asperen

 

As though multiple bits of several sonatas provide platforms for sudden articulations - always about the new place it is going to or is suddenly being or is poised from which to leap.

 

Variations canoniques sur le chant de Noel: Vom Himmel hoch, da komm' ich her, BWV 769 - J.S. Bach - Michel Chapuis

 

Each polyphonically active state is complete and worked out, each voice spinning cooperatively - how they fit more than how they go along. No loose ends here.

 

Quartet in G, Op. 1 #4 Hob. III:4 - Haydn - Tatrai Quartet

 

In C.P.E. Bach the role played by invertible counterpoint as a driver of formal trajectory is still huge. In that he was his father's son. Here that role has been effaced by the play of musical phrases with their metrical balance and intricate tonal relations. A new regime.

 

Symphony in D, K. 32 - Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music, Christopher Hogwood

 

An insinuating charm within the splash and fuss.

 

Sonata in G, Op. 49 #2 - Beethoven - Emil Gilels

 

Intensely understated, making exactly no more of it than it itself is.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

February 23, 2014

Takemine 140223 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

Improvisation on solo acoustic guitar.

 

Sylvania 140223 - Keith Eisenbrey

 

I finger drummed on a spent incandescent bulb. Lux defunctis.

 

Upcoming

 

April 12, 2014 - 8 PM 

A Cat's Life Returns Again - a recital by Keith Eisenbrey, piano, with special guest Olivia Sterne, narrator

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Attitude - Doug Palmer

Greek Nickel 2 - J. K. Randall

Sonata (2012) - Aaron Keyt

A Cat's Life, a little opera for solo piano (1990) - Keith Eisenbrey

 

June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

Playlist

Recorded

 

January 19, 2014

 

Keyboard Sonata in C-sharp minor Hob.XVI:36 - Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

 

As though cut into pieces and jumbled back together. Blown away by the tricky metrical scansion in the 3rd movement, we are knocked off our balance and led to the edge, where we remain.

 

Banned Rehearsal 56 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Karen Meyer, Neal Meyer - November 1985

In my Greenwood cottage, 1985

 

On occasion one of our less formally improvised sessions manages to succeed in some pretty amazing ways. The instant example is occupied mostly with a slide show and its attendant conversation. At that level it manages to be among our least smart-ass talky-tapes, and as a consequence is quite a fine snapshot of who we were and what we were like back in the day. On a family-business note this is particularly fun because it was made just a month or so before Karen and I made clear to each other our mutual smittenhood, and you can certainly sense more than a little flirtation in the air. But as Neal begins to layer in several other sessions, including the internally infamous Banned Rehearsal 12 and the less infamous Banned Rehearsal 44, with its own slide show and commentary, it becomes a wonderful study in the dynamics of recorded presence. In the end the dinosaurs swallow us all.

 

January 20, 2014

Foliage (live recording of playback) - Aaron Keyt

 

This electronic work opened our concert at the Chapel in November of 2010. The sound of it, as recorded in the space, is a pointedly immediate image of the tiny, the delicate, the close-focused, measured in millimeters from our ear. A tam-tam-y interlude at a great distance, across a chasm, marks out an extraordinarily specific stance of relative points in space. It is as though, with ear alone, we directly perceive the vector between them: concrete, immutable, impossibly precise.

 

Keyboard Sonata in D Major Hob.XVI:37 - Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

Eethoven - Tom Jajdu, Andrew Milburn, J. K. Randall - (from InterPlay)

 

big circles

muttered musical analysis clipped space radio chatter

freefloating atmosphog

back earthly metamorphosed

discourse :: continuity

moving alongness

stuckness

sight-seeing examples pasted SPLAT!

 

"you can't put those next to a fughetta with an H in it!" (JKR)

 

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

January 19, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 851 - Jenny Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

 

Upcoming

 

March 7, 2014 - 8 PM

Seattle Composers Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

I will be performing Aaron Keyt's Sonata (2012) for solo piano.

 

April 12, 2014 - 8 PM

Herocat



A Cat's Life Returns Again - a recital by Keith Eisenbrey, piano, with special guest Olivia Sterne, narrator

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Attitude - Doug Palmer

Greek Nickel 2 - J. K Randall

Sonata (2012) - Aaron Keyt

A Cat's Life, a little opera for solo piano (1990) - Keith Eisenbrey

 

 

 

 

 

June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

 

 

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

Live

September 5, 2013
Seattle Composers Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle


Swale - Bickleton, Washington, 1986

Two Pieces for Guitar Orchestra - Mark Wilson

There is an affinity of effect between these intricate multi-stringed chamber compositions and the polyphonic vocal music from the centuries after Machaut, evident both in the play of color among (here) the varied strings and (there) the varied voices, and in the active movement of voices along a horizontal plane in space.

Giver - Peter Freeman

It is wonderful to hear such an ambitious and carefully heard work from such a young composer. It might be a bit too long, or it might simply need some more craftily applied pedal here and there to finesse the colors, but these are quibbles. I look forward to hearing more!

Song - Cole Bratcher

There is mortal danger in the siren's song. It is not just in myth - it also presents a compositional problem: once in it is heroically difficult to transgress. Just ask Tannhauser.

Solo Clarinet - Angelique Poteat

Another solid, challenging piece. Seattle is a veritable hotbed for creative clarinetists, and the Chapel loves that sound. I don't have much to say other than that I was digging it all the way. More!

Introduction to Nature (of) Sound - S. Eric Scribner

Good. Bad. Nature good. Machines bad. Nature sounds good. Machine sounds bad. Recording and playing back nature sounds on machines ? Turning nature sound into machine's sound ? Engaging with nature changes nature - good or bad ? Neither ? or both ? because inescapable ? A music of quietly seething disquiet.

Recorded

September 2, 2013
Bann 2 - Aaron Keyt, August 1985

circling closely in

near choate meta-axis

timing the same stone

Livin - Keith Eisenbrey, August 1985



Fence Post - Bickleton, Washington, 1986

September 3, 2013
Banned Telepath 4 I-5 - Neal Meyer, August 1985

Vibration roar Neal mouths low flange

 

recording on cruddy equipment on quality media the media holds the complex crudeness pristinely

 

the car's inhabitant's voice bumps back and fro in the mix

 

bobbing in vaguely agitated underpier backwater

 

Entering Pierce County Be A Good Citizen

 

City of Tacoma Traffic Information Radio WNAN 648

 

Entering Tacoma

September 4, 2013
Banned Telepath 4 Bickleton - Anna K, August 1985

This may be the first appearance of Karen's drums on a BR tape. Anna, in seclusion, converses with the future.

In Session at the Tintinabulary
September 2, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 843 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer

Probably our last porch session of the summer. Also, our first to be recorded on new equipment - a Zoom R24. Over the years we have recorded on a Sanyo cassette tape (still works), a Sony Professional Walkman (now bricked), a Sony DAT (still works), a Fostex MR8 (still works), and occasionally directly to laptop (still works). Microphones used have been: two Sony dynamic (still work), two Realistik PZM (we may still have one working), occasionally a small Sony stereo condenser (lost one channel), and most recently an Audio Technica stereo condenser.

Playlist

Tonight!

Saturday, July 6, 2013 - 9 PM
Peterman, Your Mother Should Know, Pouch, Old Man Williamson
Victory Lounge, 433 Eastlake Avenue East, Seattle

Live

July 5, 2013
Seattle Composers Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Two Piano Pieces - Carson Farley
Four Piano Pieces and Two Montana Songs - Kam Morrill
Songs Your Mother Should Know - Neal Meyer

I pulled host duty at this bi-month's salon, so I'm sure I was somewhat distracted. Nobody can replace Tom Baker. I was however both surprised and pleased (but mostly pleased) by the large turnout, and by the lively discussion that followed each performance. Carson explored a unification of musical parameters in a personal, transparent, intriguingly flat-footed, non-Stockhausenish way. Kam brought four delightful piano pieces written for a puppet show that never materialized, and two ambitious songs for bass and piano whose poems concern the interaction of man and animal - moose and magpie, respectively. Neal's musical comedy pastiche songs are familiar to me, as his chanteuse is none other than my lovely spouse Karen, who was fab. For what it's worth, here is my theory of musical comedy: the more the songs are ascendant, the better; the more the book is ascendant, the worse. Best possible solution: all songs, no book.

Recorded

July 2, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 41 - (July 1985, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer)

On the 4th of July weekend of 1984 the three then extant members of the band - Aaron, Neal, and me - utterly failed to make a tape that came to be known as Banned Rehearsal 5. The tape was in the recorder, and the plan was to walk out into the ebb tide mudflats at the end of Holmes Harbor on Whidbey Island, to record our squeechy squoochy footsteps, the lapping waves, the wind, and the birds. Unfortunately, either the batteries were dead or they fell out at the outset, so there was no trace on magnetic tape of what we all remember as the spectacular one that got away.

So the next year the band was once again assembled at my folks' cabin near Freeland, and we carefully checked our equipment before setting out down the road and into the mud. Listening to the result at this distance of time, I am reminded that those mudflats constitute a primal personal landscape, an extreme-scape, for me, and so the varying reactions of my fellows, from simple child-glee to erotic ecstasy arrived at by way of ecstatic anxiety, are fitting.

The compressed omnipresent rumble of wind in the microphones is like the sound of boulders in a swift river, complicating water.



Banned Mixer 7

July 4, 2013
Banned Mixer 6

Detail phantasms by, not yet sunk into the tarry mass that waits. Not a wall of sound, but rather a thicket, emerging from ground into which we succumb.






Banned Mixer 7

Accumulate

Amalgamate

Concatenate

In Session at the Tintinabulary

July 1, 2013
Gradus 229 - Neal Meyer



Neal plays the first E-natural

Another milestone, or the other side of the same milestone as last session. Having finished all the combinations of the A-naturals, Neal plays the first E-natural. The moment was captured visually as well as in sound-file format. Since he has been treating each 40 minute recording session as two 20 minute rungs, the second half was a perhaps even more momentous occasion: the first Gradus in which two pitch-classes appear.

Playlist

Live

February 24, 2013
The Music of Emily Doolittle
Poncho Theater, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle

Sorex - Cristina Valdés and Oksana Ezhokina, piano
Music for Magpies - Paul Taub, flute
falling still - Brent Hages, Oboe; Mikhail Shmidt, Violin; Mara Gearman, Viola; David Sabee, Cello
Social sounds from whales at night - Catherine Lee, Oboe d'amore
Why the parrot repeats human words - Maria Mannisto, Narrator; Laura DeLuca, Clarinet; Mara Gearman, Viola; Matthew Kocmieroski, Percussion
Four Pieces About Water - Paul Taub, Flute; Laura DeLuca, Clarinet; Seth Krimsky, Bassoon; Mark Robbins, Horn; Sara Mayo, Trombone; Oksana Ezhokina, Piano; Mikhail Shmidt, Violin; Rajan Krishnaswami, Cello; Joe Kaufman, Bass; Julia Tai, Conductor
All Spring - Maria Mannisto, Soprano; Paul Taub, Flute; Laura DeLuca, Clarinet; Matthew Kocmieroski, Percussion; Mikhail Shmidt, Violin; Joe Kaufman, Bass; Julia Tai, Conductor
A Short, Slow Life - Maria Mannisto, Soprano; Paul Taub, Flute; Winnie Lai, Oboe; Laura DeLuca, Clarinet; Seth Krimsky, Bassoon; Mark Robbins, Horn; Matthew Kocmieroski, Percussion; Mikhail Shmidt, Violin; Natasha Bazhanov, Violin; Rachel Swerdlow, Viola; David Sabee, Cello; Julia Tai, Conductor

This concert was a joy from beginning to end, with far too many wonders to mention. But somewhere between the timbral circles Paul Taub was drawing within single repeated pitches in Music for Magpies, and the play among the contours of the tunes Catherine Lee was spinning against the spacial vectors of electronic sound in Social sounds from whales at night, brought to mind the giddy mass flocking of birds and fish as they wheel in near unanimity, an image that worked quite well as a key to negotiating the delicate, carefully calibrated rhetorical flow of these musics.

February 26, 2013
The 21st-Century Piano with Cristina Valdés, piano
Meany Theater, University of Washington, Seattle

Transfigured Etudes - Huck Hodge
La Mandragore - Tristan Murail
Tombeau de Messiaen for piano and CD - Jonathan Harvey
The Mechanics of Escapement for toy piano and clock chimes - Nathan Davis
A Little Music for two pianos - Richard Karpen - Richard Karpen, piano

As a note for my benefit, and not as a complaint: a case could be made that each of these pieces, even the toy piano piece, concerns itself less with the piano as such than with varieties of latter-day Lisztian virtuoso pianism, and with what can be extracted from that prodigious energy. It is interesting that more than a century after the passing of the Abbé, it seems to be difficult to approach the keyboard without a nod in his direction. Cristina, of course, just eats this stuff up. My local music bias was pleased that the concert began and ended with the music by local luminaries, and that they held their own quite easily. I was also pleased that within three days time I heard Cristina begin a concert playing piano 4-hands, and end another with a piano duo. Who arranged that?

A huge hand to both Emily and Cristina for the immense amount of work it took to so ably produce these spectacular and thought provoking events.

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

Attitude - Doug Palmer - Keith Eisenbrey
Escape Sequence - Matthew Briggs
1 and 3 from Possible Aphorisms - Tom Baker
music from the film 'Love In The Year 2000' - Marcus Oldham

Four takes on the idea of accompaniment, taken in reverse: music and film as mutual accompaniments to each other; likewise with music and dance; percussion providing a wire-frame for a piano trio; and the incorporation of two parts into one.

Recorded

February 24, 2013
Summertime - Billy Stewart [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]
Banned Sectional 6 KEENWM - (May 1985, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer)

The aural record of my reverie on Sibelius #1, Kajanus, hi-fi, compact disks (new at the time), and phonographs, the greater part of which ended up published in News of Music. What I don't remember is whether I was writing this text as I was speaking it, or more likely was simply reading it.

February 25, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 34 - (May 1985, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer)

Not surprising that someone cued up Sibelius #1, but I was intent upon airing deeper anxieties as an experiment in text-generation (accompanied by detractors and an enabler). One of many tapes in which things were tried but in which results were thin.

February 28, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 592 - (December 2000, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Isabel Kosály-Meyer, Neal Meyer)

The tamtam roil arises from the impression that whichever way the pitch committee is headed the populace is going the opposite, which sense lingers even past where the tamtam has ceased to sound, and even past where uppitchness and downpitchness have wandered into other qualia sets.

Flyer by Darick Chamberlin

Upcoming

Tuesday March 5, 2013 8pm
Your Mother Should Know, Red Ribbon, Dead Bars, Canals of Venice
Comet Tavern, Seattle - $6 cover

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.
Meyer: Cage - Solo for Piano

Playlist

Recorded

1/1/2011
Banned Rehearsal #206

1/2/2011
Patti's Parlour Pieces 5-8 - Benshoof - Keith Eisenbrey
Polestar - Francis Houle - Jesse Canterbury and William O. Smith
PCKE 100124 - Pete Comley & Keith Eisenbrey

1/3/2011
Suite in a, BWV 807 - JS Bach - Colin Tilney
Von Gott will Ich nicht lassen, BWV 658 - JS Bach - Michel Chapuis

Bach draws the listener miles deep in a few notes. On any path within the intricate web one cannot step solidly down and be in a place. The ground will shift and fall you will.

Nocturne in D-flat, op. 72 #2 - Chopin - Claudio Arrau

Chopin accomplishes much the same result, but from behind a stagy curtain. His actor emerges suddenly hyper-ornate. Taken aback, the ear reels.

St. Louis Tickle - Pince's Orchestra

1/4/2011
Symphony in D, (#9) - Mahler - Columbia SO/Bruno Walter

Manfred carefully eviscerating himself with his own reflection.

1/5/2011
When You're a Long Way From Home - John Sawyer's Persia Garden Orchestra


Live

1/6/2011
Chamber Cymbeline
Seattle Shakespeare Company - Center House Theater

I want those bells. Wow!


1/7/2011
Seattle Composers Salon
Chapel Performance Space at The Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

5 (of 6) Gemtian Songs - Christian Asplund - John Teske, Jesse Canterbury, Greg Campbell, Tom Baker, Stuart Wheeler

Prelude (title undetermined) - Michael Nicolella

Found Soundscape (excerpt) - Christopher DeLaurenti

Two (of 6) Graphic Scores - John Teske

Encore (title undetermined) - Scott Teske

I'm afraid I wasn't able to hear all of Christian's songs, as the effects of a long and exhausting week caught up with me. I was nodding off from the start of #3 to near the end. I'm sorry, and would like to apologize to the performers. It had nothing to do with them. My spouse informs me that I did not snore, for which I am glad.

Michael's intricate little prelude for classical guitar deserves more than one listen. Amid the pleasing ostinato lull sudden scrabblyquick figures drew sparks. I was like whoa dude, what just happened there? Devious.

There are just too many ways to think about what Christopher was up to in his presentation of an excerpt of an electro-acoustic project involving an historic recording of a well-known string quartet performing a mid-20th-century European avante-garde work of some renown, and so I will only mention the odd sense I had that the performance of it began precisely with his own spoken prelude to it, with his purported explanation of what he had done, and continued as much in the theater between his bemused face tilted in pallid macbookglow and the expansive shared space between him and us, as in the relation between the sounds of the example itself and the astonishingly un-present piece of repertoire music. So much to chew on!

After the break the floor to the right of us was filled with a huge orchestra - 20 players for John's piece, and 19 for Scott's (with a conductor): 2 violins, 2 violas, cello, 4 to 5 string basses (I kid you not!), flute, oboe, bassoon, two clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 trombones (one of which doubled on didgeridoo), and a trumpet. For Scott's piece one of the bass players conducted. We all turned our chairs to face the music.

This was my second time with John's Graphic Scores. In September, in this same space, two smaller ensembles performed the whole cycle. Due to the wide layout and the size of the orchestra the arc from which sound came to us was much wider this time, accentuating the dialogue these scores have with focus and diffusion, collectivity and individuality, coherence and sequentiality. I am pleased that these quick performances are still not pieces in any easy way. They are not demonstrations of solutions but problems for (and of!) sharing.

Scott's composition returned us to more comfortable musical ground, and struck me as being un-finished, which for the composer is a good way for a piece to be. The more work there is to do on a project the more fun there is still to be had. The sound of the band, with all those heavy low strings and brass, was awesome. Go to!