Recorded
12/5/2010
Symphony in c-minor (#8) - Bruckner - Staatskapelle Dresden/Eugen Jochum
Lives on what it seems about to do, long deferred. I often get strong whiffs of late Schubert piano sonatas while listening to Bruckner. In addition to that, something about the way entrances appear out of nowhere was giving me a shiver of Varese, an image of dire spiritual necessity. Seeking, then re-seeking. Expanding, then re-expanding. Dreaming, then re-dreaming. In-radiating, then re-in-radiating. Blazing, then re-blazing. Opening an inner space of infinite depth.
Three-Page Sonata - Ives - Clive Lythgoe
12/6/2010
Streichsextette in F-Dur, op. 118 - Reger - Die Kammermusiker Zurich
Contrapuntal expressionism. The way out is long from here and night deepens. No sweetness without poignance.
Three Orchestral Preludes from "Palestrina" - Pfitzner - Berliner Philharmoniker/Ferdinand Leitner
Concerning: a desire to let the world have its evil if only we can remain unsullied.
Concerning: worldly business and domestic business
Concerning: responsibility and conculpitude
Lovin' Sam from Alabam - Mamie Smith
12/7/2010
Symphony #1, op. 35 - Alexander Krein - London PO/Martyn Brabbins
Voluptuary.
Sweet Sweet Woman - Douglas Finnell and his Royal Stompers
String Quartet No. 1, op. 7 - Hans Erich Apostel - LaSalle Q
A frantic plea - shriller - desparater
A Good Man is Hard to Find (excerpt) - Miff Mole
Don't Blame Me - Billy Eckstein Orchestra/Sarah Vaughn
Most of the jazz & blues stuff that gets thrown into the listening comes from the collections That Devilin' Tune, and Really The Blues put together by Allen Lowe. I can not give Mr. Lowe a big enough shoutout for these. Bravo!
Quintet for Clarinet, Two Violas, and Two Cellos - Diamond - Chamber Music Northwest
It isn't that Diamond is deaf to the high histrionics of Apostel & Co. or even trying to pretend they didn't happen, but that he is attempting to comfort us in the face of it. The music runs a risk of flippancy for all its musical sophistication, a notion that, in spite of what has just occurred, we can can continue as we were.
Sunflower Sutra - Allen Ginsberg
Mr. Ginsberg begs to differ.
12/8/2010
Mr. Blue - The Fleetwoods
Diamond Head - The Ventures
Radio Spot for Hawaii Five-O Album - The Ventures
An afternoon of local bands on the make.
12/10/2010
The Who by Numbers - The Who
Default move: Go to power. This quickly runs into diminishing returns. It is always a pleasure to listen to Keith & John do their thing, but the general bad-feeling of the album gets tiresome.
Live
12/6/2010
Gradus #184 - Neal Meyer
12/10/2010
Crosstalk (website)
Jesse Canterbury, clarinet & bass clarinet; Brian Cobb, bass; Paul Kikuchi, drums; Tiffany Lin, piano
at the Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
#3 - Jesse Canterbury
Arrangement of "Cage" - Charles Ives
Improvisations
Steady - Brian Cobb
I lost track of what the pieces were, and also of who did the arrangement of the Charles Ives song Cage (??), though Jesse gave credit from the stage.
One aspect of jazz that can distinguish it as a mode of musical discourse is the play between images of tight and loose. A typical expression of 'tight' comes during the high-bebop, wickedly syncopated, unison performance of the head, that of 'loose' during the more strictly improvisatory solo bits. The joy of it is in how this works out in the wild of the event, the loose invading the tight and the tight the loose. Crosstalk is a newly formed group with strong players still learning to deal with each other in this configuration. Personally I love listening to learning happen and I was having a great time. I look forward to hearing this group as their tight gets tighter and their loose gets looser.
Being a pianist myself, in ensembles like this I tend to root for the keyboard player. I was sitting where I felt I had the best chance of hearing what Tiffany was doing, but even at that she may have been working at an acoustic disadvantage. Much of what distinguishes the piano sound from the timbrally similar clarinet & upright bass (slightly amplified) is the quality of its attack. The Kimball at the Chapel has a lovely, subtle, rich attack, but it is asking too much of it, without help, to compete with a drum-kit's huge dynamic. When Paul was playing with brushes (low incidence of attacks) the balance was just about perfect. I'm not sure there's a good solution to this. Amplification of the piano may be the best. What gets lost in the process may not have been audible live anyhow. None of this should be a problem on well-engineered recordings.
That aside, I really loved what this crew was doing and enjoyed myself immensely. Thank you!
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Playlist
Recorded
11/28/2010
String Quartet (midi version) - Boretz
Blood and Fire Hallelujah (first tests) - Eisenbrey
Coincidentally, this first concept test run comes up on the listening list within a few weeks of my performance of the finished work at the Chapel. The original idea for the piece was to record a track of solo piano playing slow big chords that would gradually increase in speed and intensity to a head-banging end. In performance I would try to do essentially the same thing, but squeezing the live chords between the canned ones. I was going for an overtly theatrical image, with an undercurrent of Petroushka. To that end I recorded several takes of the canned bit last January, playing the old Kingsbury upright grand out in the studio. This is not a bad sounding recording, but I ended up being disappointed both with the effect I was getting and with my playing. Before ever getting around to trying again the concept of the piece had developed considerably.
S. Eric Scribner found some interesting things to say about the live performance of the finished work on his blog. Some of his comments surprised me considerably, but thinking it over I can certainly understand what he was reacting to. It proves once again that the most we can hope to do as creative people is stimulate the imaginations of our collaborators. We are powerless to control the image itself. If we wish we can control the facts, the texts, of what we make, but the images awakened by those facts and texts, in the wild, always get the final say. This is, in a nutshell, the dissonance that propels creativity.
11/30/2010
Suite in E-flat (Franzosische) - JS Bach - Blandine Verlet
Trio super Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend, BWV 655 - JS Bach - Michel Chapuis
12/3/2010
Andante in C K315 - Mozart - Marriner/Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Claude Monteux
Symphony in E-flat (Rhenische) - Schumann - Seattle SO/Schwarz
11/28/2010
String Quartet (midi version) - Boretz
Blood and Fire Hallelujah (first tests) - Eisenbrey
Coincidentally, this first concept test run comes up on the listening list within a few weeks of my performance of the finished work at the Chapel. The original idea for the piece was to record a track of solo piano playing slow big chords that would gradually increase in speed and intensity to a head-banging end. In performance I would try to do essentially the same thing, but squeezing the live chords between the canned ones. I was going for an overtly theatrical image, with an undercurrent of Petroushka. To that end I recorded several takes of the canned bit last January, playing the old Kingsbury upright grand out in the studio. This is not a bad sounding recording, but I ended up being disappointed both with the effect I was getting and with my playing. Before ever getting around to trying again the concept of the piece had developed considerably.
S. Eric Scribner found some interesting things to say about the live performance of the finished work on his blog. Some of his comments surprised me considerably, but thinking it over I can certainly understand what he was reacting to. It proves once again that the most we can hope to do as creative people is stimulate the imaginations of our collaborators. We are powerless to control the image itself. If we wish we can control the facts, the texts, of what we make, but the images awakened by those facts and texts, in the wild, always get the final say. This is, in a nutshell, the dissonance that propels creativity.
11/30/2010
Suite in E-flat (Franzosische) - JS Bach - Blandine Verlet
Trio super Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend, BWV 655 - JS Bach - Michel Chapuis
12/3/2010
Andante in C K315 - Mozart - Marriner/Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields/Claude Monteux
Symphony in E-flat (Rhenische) - Schumann - Seattle SO/Schwarz
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Playlist
Recorded
11/20/2010
One Trick Pony - Paul Simon
11/21/2010
One: Onetext - Benjamin Boretz
subject matter: thought, continuity, progress, stillness, microcosmoid growth, number (in the palpable sense), -spectives both pro- and re- :: all prying open an inhabitable space.
11/23/2010
Banned Rehearsal #204 - Banned Rehearsal
Patti's Parlour Pieces - Ken Benshoof - Lisa Bergman
The pleasant-after-dinner-treat-ness of these pieces is a conceit behind which lurks a hyper-sophisticated dialogue of harmony, meter, and melody, and from which emerges a dark poignance, like that of being.
Live
11/20/2010
Pieces from the Stormsound Cycle
Music by S. Eric Scribner, with Beth Fleenor and Bruce Greeley
at the Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Desert Bloom - Scribner
Frogscape - Scribner
Improvisation - Fleenor/Greeley/Scribner
Spherics - Scribner
An enjoyable performance with some excellent musicians. Strikingly, the acoustically produced sounds here emerge from the electronically produced as though born of them. The common metaphor is turned on its head.
11/20/2010
One Trick Pony - Paul Simon
11/21/2010
One: Onetext - Benjamin Boretz
subject matter: thought, continuity, progress, stillness, microcosmoid growth, number (in the palpable sense), -spectives both pro- and re- :: all prying open an inhabitable space.
11/23/2010
Banned Rehearsal #204 - Banned Rehearsal
Patti's Parlour Pieces - Ken Benshoof - Lisa Bergman
The pleasant-after-dinner-treat-ness of these pieces is a conceit behind which lurks a hyper-sophisticated dialogue of harmony, meter, and melody, and from which emerges a dark poignance, like that of being.
Live
11/20/2010
Pieces from the Stormsound Cycle
Music by S. Eric Scribner, with Beth Fleenor and Bruce Greeley
at the Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Desert Bloom - Scribner
Frogscape - Scribner
Improvisation - Fleenor/Greeley/Scribner
Spherics - Scribner
An enjoyable performance with some excellent musicians. Strikingly, the acoustically produced sounds here emerge from the electronically produced as though born of them. The common metaphor is turned on its head.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Playlist
Recorded
11/14/2010
Quatre etudes de rythme - Messiaen - Martin Zehn
Developing a principled vocabulary. Strict, severe, earnest.
Sun's Golden Hits - Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Carl Mann, Charlie Rich, Bill Justis
String quartet in c op. 110 - Shostakovich - Fitzwilliam SQ
We meet as survivors on this stricken plain.
We dance the tunes we are given.
We rage and weep into voided space.
We circle back.
Life Christmas Treasury (ca. 1965)
11/16/2010
Mantra II - Stockhausen - Aloys Kontarsky/Alfons Kontarsky
Stockhausen's Mantra I and Mantra II don't gel for me. The sound world created by the pitch/rhythm structure overpowers the sound world created by the modulations. The addition of new instruments seems like a failed attempt to launch the pig. It could just be that I am hearing it on a poorly transferred tape of a noisy phonograph. Even so, these strike me as not-so-interestingly wrecked piano duos. I end up wishing I could just hear the piano parts straight.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam - Hovhaness - Seattle SO/Schwartz/Michael York
Surface without features - background without purpose - following the dictates of an impenetrably personal mythos - empty. I really do keep trying with Hovhaness, but so far I just don't get it.
Live
11/18/2010
Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, and Neal Meyer at the Chapel Performance Space - Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Three Bagatelles - Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey, piano
Foliage - Keyt
Blood and Fire Hallelujah - Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey, piano
Gradus: for Fux, Tesla, and Milo the Wrestler - Meyer - Neal Meyer piano
First of all I want to extend some big "Thank yous":
to Neal for arranging this concert,
to Steve Peters and the Wayward Music Festival for allowing the use of the space and instrument,
to Cristina Valdes for having the piano tuned,
and to Moe Provenchal and her assistant Amy for the sound design and recording.
Aaron's intricately delicate Bagatelles are a pleasure to perform. Though they are not difficult in the Lisztian manner they present a challenge not unlike constructing a house of cards in a tight space. Any stray movements and the whole thing could fall apart. I loved the tin-foil sound world of Foliage, though since I had just performed, and was just about to perform, I was unfortunately distracted and don't have a good sense of what the piece does.
This performance version of Blood and Fire Hallelujah consisted of my 31' mix played over speakers while I improvised on the piano. The underlying theatrical conceit was "piano concerto". Since I was engaged onstage I don't yet have a clear idea of how it went or came across or even really what it is, so I'll just throw some facts in. The mix on the CD was constructed from recordings of percussion instruments and my multi-tracked performance of William Cowper's hymn Western Melody. I sang the arrangement found in a 1953 shape note hymnal "The Old School Hymnal No. 9". The title comes from a Salvation Army book-plate found in a 19th Century family diary.
My thoughts during this hour-long performance of 3 rungs from Gradus centered on the theatrical aspect. From the back of the hall the lines and knobbiness of Neal's face, reminiscent of drawings by Goya, backed by black curtains, set off by his dark clothing, fairly glowed in the stage light, as though transported. I especially loved one long moment several minutes in duration in which Neal remained perfectly still, his arm suspended above the keyboard at just the apex, neither just having been released from the keyboard, nor about to sink back in.
11/14/2010
Quatre etudes de rythme - Messiaen - Martin Zehn
Developing a principled vocabulary. Strict, severe, earnest.
Sun's Golden Hits - Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Carl Mann, Charlie Rich, Bill Justis
String quartet in c op. 110 - Shostakovich - Fitzwilliam SQ
We meet as survivors on this stricken plain.
We dance the tunes we are given.
We rage and weep into voided space.
We circle back.
Life Christmas Treasury (ca. 1965)
11/16/2010
Mantra II - Stockhausen - Aloys Kontarsky/Alfons Kontarsky
Stockhausen's Mantra I and Mantra II don't gel for me. The sound world created by the pitch/rhythm structure overpowers the sound world created by the modulations. The addition of new instruments seems like a failed attempt to launch the pig. It could just be that I am hearing it on a poorly transferred tape of a noisy phonograph. Even so, these strike me as not-so-interestingly wrecked piano duos. I end up wishing I could just hear the piano parts straight.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam - Hovhaness - Seattle SO/Schwartz/Michael York
Surface without features - background without purpose - following the dictates of an impenetrably personal mythos - empty. I really do keep trying with Hovhaness, but so far I just don't get it.
Live
11/18/2010
Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, and Neal Meyer at the Chapel Performance Space - Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Three Bagatelles - Keyt - Keith Eisenbrey, piano
Foliage - Keyt
Blood and Fire Hallelujah - Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey, piano
Gradus: for Fux, Tesla, and Milo the Wrestler - Meyer - Neal Meyer piano
First of all I want to extend some big "Thank yous":
to Neal for arranging this concert,
to Steve Peters and the Wayward Music Festival for allowing the use of the space and instrument,
to Cristina Valdes for having the piano tuned,
and to Moe Provenchal and her assistant Amy for the sound design and recording.
Aaron's intricately delicate Bagatelles are a pleasure to perform. Though they are not difficult in the Lisztian manner they present a challenge not unlike constructing a house of cards in a tight space. Any stray movements and the whole thing could fall apart. I loved the tin-foil sound world of Foliage, though since I had just performed, and was just about to perform, I was unfortunately distracted and don't have a good sense of what the piece does.
This performance version of Blood and Fire Hallelujah consisted of my 31' mix played over speakers while I improvised on the piano. The underlying theatrical conceit was "piano concerto". Since I was engaged onstage I don't yet have a clear idea of how it went or came across or even really what it is, so I'll just throw some facts in. The mix on the CD was constructed from recordings of percussion instruments and my multi-tracked performance of William Cowper's hymn Western Melody. I sang the arrangement found in a 1953 shape note hymnal "The Old School Hymnal No. 9". The title comes from a Salvation Army book-plate found in a 19th Century family diary.
My thoughts during this hour-long performance of 3 rungs from Gradus centered on the theatrical aspect. From the back of the hall the lines and knobbiness of Neal's face, reminiscent of drawings by Goya, backed by black curtains, set off by his dark clothing, fairly glowed in the stage light, as though transported. I especially loved one long moment several minutes in duration in which Neal remained perfectly still, his arm suspended above the keyboard at just the apex, neither just having been released from the keyboard, nor about to sink back in.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Playlist
Recorded
11/6/2010
Symphony in e - Mahler - Concertgebouworchester, Amsterdam/Haitink
Large swaths of peace. Macabre dry clack of wood bone. A valiant attempt at salvation through counterpoint.
11/8/2010
Seven Sketches - Bartok - June de Toth
Symphony en mi bemoll majeur op.82 - Sibelius - Grand Orchestra Symphonique Radio Television USSR/Rojdestvenski
I found myself thinking about Webern while listening to this. Webern is about its intervals, an extraordinarily conceptual sense of what musical material can be. I wonder if it is any different here?
Wang Wang Blues- Paul Whiteman
Sweet Georgia Brown - The Tennessee Happy Boys
Skyland Rag - The Rector Trio
Psalm XIII - Zemlinksy - Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Chailly
Major and Minor Stomp - Jimmy Dorsey
Air Mail Special - Billy Eckstein Orchestra
Brutally fast.
11/6/2010
Symphony in e - Mahler - Concertgebouworchester, Amsterdam/Haitink
Large swaths of peace. Macabre dry clack of wood bone. A valiant attempt at salvation through counterpoint.
11/8/2010
Seven Sketches - Bartok - June de Toth
Symphony en mi bemoll majeur op.82 - Sibelius - Grand Orchestra Symphonique Radio Television USSR/Rojdestvenski
I found myself thinking about Webern while listening to this. Webern is about its intervals, an extraordinarily conceptual sense of what musical material can be. I wonder if it is any different here?
Wang Wang Blues- Paul Whiteman
Sweet Georgia Brown - The Tennessee Happy Boys
Skyland Rag - The Rector Trio
Psalm XIII - Zemlinksy - Radio-Symphonie-Orchester Berlin/Chailly
Major and Minor Stomp - Jimmy Dorsey
Air Mail Special - Billy Eckstein Orchestra
Brutally fast.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Concert - November 18, 2010 - 8 pm
Chapel Performance Space - Good Shepherd Center - 4649 Sunnyside Avenue North, Seattle, WA
Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, and Neal Meyer have been conversing, collaborating and engaging in creative discussion for nearly three decades. This program represents the current state of the discussion through four new compositions.
Blood and Fire Hallelujah by Keith Eisenbrey is a large-scale concerto for piano and canned sound. The canned portion is the latest entry in Keith's Music as Film project, and is constructed as a collage of sequences of thousands of sound-frames of various durations. The piano solo will be improvised.
Foliage by Aaron Keyt was composed in 2009 as a recorded piece for simple electronics (e.g. feedback loops of piezo disks), small percussion, and assorted other sounds.
Keyt's Bagatelles were composed in 1999 for solo piano. This will be their first performance.
Gradus: for Fux, Tesla and Milo the Wrestler is Neal Meyer's work-in-progress for solo piano. Since January 2002, Neal has been devoting extended sessions of improvised exploration to each single tone and each possible combination of tones on the piano. The November 18 performance will explore three different combinations of the pitch class A, in a performance lasting about an hour.
Sliding admission: $5 to $15
Foliage by Aaron Keyt was composed in 2009 as a recorded piece for simple electronics (e.g. feedback loops of piezo disks), small percussion, and assorted other sounds.
Keyt's Bagatelles were composed in 1999 for solo piano. This will be their first performance.
Gradus: for Fux, Tesla and Milo the Wrestler is Neal Meyer's work-in-progress for solo piano. Since January 2002, Neal has been devoting extended sessions of improvised exploration to each single tone and each possible combination of tones on the piano. The November 18 performance will explore three different combinations of the pitch class A, in a performance lasting about an hour.
Sliding admission: $5 to $15
Playlist
Recorded
10/30/2010
Assembly Rechoired #52 - Assembly Rechoired
11/2/2010
Suite in E (Franzosische) BWV 817 - JS Bach - Blandine Verlet
Trio super "Allein Gott in der Hoh' sie Ehr" BWV 664 - JS Bach - Michel Chapuis
Symphony in D "La finta giariniera" K207a[K121] - Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music/Jaap Schroder
Waltz in e (1830) - Chopin - Peter Katin
Zigeunerleben op. 29 #3 - Schumann - Gachinger Kantorei/Helmut Rilling
Symphony in E-flat op. 97 "Rhenische" - Schumann - Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique/John Eliot Gardiner
This kicks some rowdy.
Reverie - Debussy/Smith - Philadelphia Orchestra/Eugene Ormandy
Live
10/30/2010
Triptet www.triptet.com at Egan's Ballard Jam House
After a lovely dinner at the Bastille, Karen and I, dressed to kill, made our way to Egan's Ballard Jam House for Triptet's CD release party. The music they shared had a propensity to pare itself down to the barest hint of a shadow of the merest trace of a continuity. Lovely, intimate, and completely engaging, it was absolutely perfect for the venue. We were fortunate enough to win the Halloween costume prize - a big stack of 17 CDs (my number!). Here we are in full regalia:
11/1/2010
Gradus 183 - Neal Meyer
Neal came over and played a three-rung set of Gradus, in anticipation of our concert on the 18th.
10/30/2010
Assembly Rechoired #52 - Assembly Rechoired
11/2/2010
Suite in E (Franzosische) BWV 817 - JS Bach - Blandine Verlet
Trio super "Allein Gott in der Hoh' sie Ehr" BWV 664 - JS Bach - Michel Chapuis
Symphony in D "La finta giariniera" K207a[K121] - Mozart - Academy of Ancient Music/Jaap Schroder
Waltz in e (1830) - Chopin - Peter Katin
Zigeunerleben op. 29 #3 - Schumann - Gachinger Kantorei/Helmut Rilling
Symphony in E-flat op. 97 "Rhenische" - Schumann - Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique/John Eliot Gardiner
This kicks some rowdy.
Reverie - Debussy/Smith - Philadelphia Orchestra/Eugene Ormandy
Live
10/30/2010
Triptet www.triptet.com at Egan's Ballard Jam House
After a lovely dinner at the Bastille, Karen and I, dressed to kill, made our way to Egan's Ballard Jam House for Triptet's CD release party. The music they shared had a propensity to pare itself down to the barest hint of a shadow of the merest trace of a continuity. Lovely, intimate, and completely engaging, it was absolutely perfect for the venue. We were fortunate enough to win the Halloween costume prize - a big stack of 17 CDs (my number!). Here we are in full regalia:
11/1/2010
Gradus 183 - Neal Meyer
Neal came over and played a three-rung set of Gradus, in anticipation of our concert on the 18th.
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