Playlist

Live

Siri and Steve

January 10, 2015
Siri and Steve
Egan's Ballard Jam House, Seattle

A year ago in September we caught this classy act at a little winery in Langley and it was with great delight that we find them now a bit closer to home. Siri is a cousin of mine, sharing a set of great-grandparents on the McAbee side. They play a selection of '60s hits - Paul Simon and The Beatles are prominent - as well as some original songs. The volume level is grown-up low, the vocals are supple, un-pushed, and well balanced. They blend easily with the intricate instrumental arrangements - cello and guitar both playing off and deftly imitating each other. A wealth of sound in 10 strings and a bow.

Recorded

January 11, 2015
Symphony #5 - Paul Creston - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz

This is safer as a symphony than as a dinner party. They're everywhere! Nervous jitters, sliding off the table from nowhere, repeatedly. Taking runs at what starts as somewhere, were it not for it going on to where its going on is the subject. Long wandering lines of thought turning vaguely pressure cookery. Gonna blow!

Klavierstück IX - Stockhausen - Aloys Kontarsky

Still points that don't bring stillness, but index our velocity as we whip by multiply angled attack decay envelopes. Planes intersect - subtemporally grounded.

Symphony #6 - Roger Sessions - American Composers Orchestra, Dennis Russell Davies

For listening up close. Every size of joint and color precisely measured to fit and tell. Strenuously carrying the Vienna torch.

January 13, 2015
String Quartet #3 - Elliott Carter - Pacifica Quartet

poked with a thousand needles

conversing on the side

swaddled with many wrappers

a thousand sleepers tippytoe

on Mt. Pilchuck, Spring 1977
(I still have the hat, not the shirt)

January 15, 2015
Magic Man - Heart

It was probably at about this time that I first saw a synthesizer in person. I was in a high-school music class (rumor was that the Wilsons had gone to Sammamish also) and a recent alum who was studying at Bellevue Community College brought one over for show and tell. I don't remember much what I thought of it then, but the sound of the synth on this track can't be far off from what I heard. Unfortunately the "gee whiz kids listen to our new synth" spotlight doesn't fit very smoothly into the mix, marring an otherwise terrific sound. Such were the times.

Let The Power Fall - Robert Fripp

With a limited but luscious vocabulary of (guitar?) sounds Fripp renders digital delays archaic 10 years before they were invented. Its activity is to find the music inherent in an apparatus where the apparatus is defined to include as an essential part the personality of the operator. Like Cage and his notations.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 11, 2015
Crestline 150111
Crestline 150111 folded
Crestline 150111 folded rubbed - Keith Eisenbrey

Improvising on tenor banjo (four strings, tuned like a viola, C, G, D, A). I am quite pleased with my electronically 'rubbed' version, so I thought I'd share that one on my Soundcloud site.

January 12, 2015
Gradus 257 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

I want that first chord! Neal plays two 20-minute rungs each session, each rung a different combination of notes. He is at a point in the project where nearly every A-natural and E-natural are in play - a plateau of riches where internal distinctions subsume global progression. Temporally local subsets within each rung that are distinguished by number of tokens come across as being different not in size but in focus - narrow or deep.

Playlist

Live

September 14, 2013
Siri Bardarson & Steve Trembley
Ott & Murphy's Cabaret Stage, Langley

By way of full disclosure, Siri is a cousin of mine. We share great-grandparents on our respective mother's sides. Karen and I were on Whidbey to visit my folks and took the opportunity to catch Siri and Steve's act at a cozy winery in Langley.

Technically I suppose they are a cover band that throws some original material in occasionally. But they are up to more than simply playing familiar songs, from The 59th Street Bridge Song to Summertime and back again by way of Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles, and more than simply performing them quite ably (though they certainly do). Using the familiar as a springboard they are working out the sound of an oddly nice instrumental duo: amplified cello and electric guitar - four low strings tuned in fifths, and six treble strings tuned (mostly) in fourths. The mix of open sonorities was quite fine, their colors allowing ample aural space for rhythms to slip across the horizontal, delightfully askew but always clear. Their balance was impeccable, and what lovely guitars Steve has!

Recorded

September 18, 2013
This Bus Won't Stop For Me - Aaron Keyt
Clara With the Feet of Snow - Aaron Keyt

Using whatever happened to be on the radio or TV as an accompaniment, Aaron knocks two sudden songs out of the park. This Bus Won't Stop For Me gets picked up in later sessions by Neal, who gives it a more aggressive feel than Aaron's original insinuance, which gains a particular discord with the British laugh-track comedy in the background. Clara With the Feet of Snow is simply lovely, and probably impossible to duplicate. The backing was some late-night smooth jazz station. That sax player never had it so good.

Road - Keith Eisenbrey

This was the last of my solo sudden songs. I was exploring the possibilities of clear metrical feel within an expansively flexible beat. It features what is probably the most psychedelic of my lyrics.

Banned Rehearsal 50 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Meyer, August 1985

I don't remember exactly how we were arranging the electronics, but we had turned the next room into some sort of reverb chamber. It hovers just underneath feedback most of the time.

September 19, 2013
A Cat's Life (recording of April 16, 2013) - Keith Eisenbrey

I finished this 'little opera for solo piano' in 1990, thinking that surely some better pianist than I would see how much fun it is and go out to make it and them famous. It's been 23 years and no takers so far. The score is available on my website here. It's worth a look just for Karen's illuminations. I've always felt it is just a bit over my pianistic abilities, but learning it and re-learning it has pushed me to get better. This is the edited version of a long recording session made during my vacation last April.

I was interested in the mechanics of how music can be made to tell a particular story, but I could not imagine enduring the hassle of realizing a full operatic production with stage and singers. My solution was to include within a solo score all the trappings of Wagnerian narrative, and make the story explicit by means of a narrator - somewhat like Peter and the Wolf, or Oedipus Rex. It has been performed in that version twice, and now that I have learned it again I hope to find a suitable narrator and do it again very soon.

In Session at the Tintinabulary
September 16, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 844 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Meyer

September 17, 2013
Scrap Film 1 - Keith Eisenbrey

September 18, 2013
Scrap Film 2 - Keith Eisenbrey

Two Audiofilms made for use at Steve Scribner's upcoming concert.