Playlist

Live

November 10, 2013
Octava Chamber Orchestra, Johan Louwersheimer, cond.
Maple Park Church, Lynnwood

Divertissement for Double Woodwind Quintet Op. 36 - J.E.A. Bernard - (Dan Schmidt, cond.)

Domestic activity contained within the possibility of its own unhinging - like a picnic.

Prelude to an Afternoon of a Faun - Debussy

There is nothing impressionist about it. Corporeal, warm with pulse, glowing with stench.

Concerto for Clarinet and Strings - Gavin Borchert - Sean Osborn, clarinet

Gavin Borchert

As music it begins, or always begins :: from music it veers, or always veers :: subsiding slowly into autonomous alt-conscious selves :: selves of each other's self each autonomously alt-veering :: beginning again to veer again so as to glimpse again, over the shoulder.

Selections from the Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 - J.S. Bach

The clunky mal-shaped peasant core inextricably embraced within the ornate regularizing societal gloss.

Recorded

November 10, 2013
Christmas Carol Service (1969) - Bellevue First United Methodist Church combined choirs, Betty Eisenbrey, cond.

A tape recently copied from my mom's collection. She directed the choral activities at BFUMC for most of my childhood. This is one of the earliest recordings I have in which I play a part (a 10 year-old in one of the children's choirs). It ends with an arrangement for combined choirs of the over-wrought quasi-hymn O Holy Night. Ben Boretz often asks us to recall those moments in our musical lives that sent us, willy-nilly, into music as a calling, those moments to which nothing outside of music can compare. Being a part of this performance was unquestionably such a moment for me. I suppose I was naïve for having my buttons pushed by this, but hey, I was only 10.  And to be honest it still gives me a thrill - always a sucker for a great entrance.

Piano Music - Aaron Keyt

Improvising on solo piano, an essay on phrase length/shape/balance/note-count. The effect is part Satie, part Broadway, part antique dance. Pitch is so not the point.

November 12, 2013
Assembly Rechoired 48 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy - December 2005

Getting somewhere, but not by our own effort - more as though being ballooned.

Snohomish Concert (Steve's Mix) - S. Eric Scribner

In October of 2010 Steve Scribner produced this concert at a little theater in Snohomish. The event itself was pretty informal, with lots of banter between the audience and performers. The music was a hodge-podge of compositions (by Scribner, Neal Meyer, Wayne Lovecraft, and me) and various collaborative improvisations, making a low-key evening out of some pretty far-out music (far-out per se and far-out from its accustomed locale). But what Steve did, through judicious cuts and inspired overdubbing, is utterly transforming. All the low-key has been expunged, and all the sprawl has been made thrumming taut. What was informal and chatty has become sharply focused, a model of formal balance and precise contrast.

Sonata in B-flat K. 281 - Mozart - Mitsuko Uchida

Now we know what was inside that opening trill.

Little Liza - Men's Quartet from Bellevue First United Methodist Church (?), ca. 1965 (?)

Always a bit off-kilter

As I child I knew this song (mistakenly) as "Little Eyes". It was one of my favorites when I was 6 or so, and I had no idea my mom still had a tape.

November 14, 2013
Banned Sectional 12 KEE NWM - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer - September 1985

In the left channel is an attempt (surprisingly successful) to duplicate the right channel (recorded earlier that day) without being able to hear it. Some sudden songs, including I Want a Girl From Venice California, (twice of course, once on the right and once on the left) - and the audio guest list from our first concert (the previous January) - including cameo appearances by Neal's family of origin and the Chez Sleaze Reserve Section.

Banned Rehearsal 693 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Meyer - December 2005

Xylophone provides context while we attempt to squeeze radio noise out of a balloon. One of the major arguments of which Banned Rehearsal consists is that between "making a tape" and "recording an improvisation". In practice this often comes down to how cognizant we are of the microphone in our midst, or of the other mechanical aspects of recording sound, or of the mere fact that a sound we make now will be a recorded trace later (See BS 12 KEE NWM, above). Here we come down decidedly on the side of "recording an improvisation", working out a soundscape communally until each constituent is precise and distinct.

November 15, 2013
Reflektionen mit Christine Schornsheim und Clemens Goldberg

My German is only good enough to gather the topic of conversation (the various keyboards used in Ms Schornsheim's omnibus recording of Haydn keyboard works), and the patina of articulate consideration, but not the gist of it.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 11, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 847 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt

November 12, 2013
Silvertone 131112 - Keith Eisenbrey

An experiment - overdubbing a Silvertone hollow-body directly through a Fostex MR8.

November 14, 2013
Mitchell 131114 - Keith Eisenbrey

Last weekend an acoustic guitar walked itself over to my house. I think it has a bad pickup, so my attempt to record directly to the MR8 resulted in some heavily distorted noises that I rather liked. The link will take you to one of three quick riffs I made with them.

Sonata in C (Partita) Hob.XVI:1 - Haydn - Keith Eisenbrey

I still have some work to do.

Playlist

Live

November 2, 2013
La fille du regiment - Donizetti
Seattle Opera
McCaw Hall, Seattle

i.e. Gang of Four I Love a Man in Uniform

Recorded

November 5, 2013
Sonata in C, K. 279 - Mozart - Mitsuko Uchida

The Lisztian virtuosic image is of a performer so completely in command of technique as to transcend the possibilities of production. The Mozartean equivalent is a virtuosity of imagination, quick and precise as swallows in chase.

Banned Sectional 11 KEE NWM - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer - September 1985

When I returned to the Seattle area from Barrytown in 1984 I didn't want to lose contact with all my east coast friends, so I decided to write at least one letter every day. If someone wrote back they were moved to the top of the list. When Neal's sister Karen was up from Tacoma visiting early in September of 1985 she noticed I was writing a letter. I told her that if she gave me her address she would get on the list. And so I wrote her a letter, while simultaneously reading what I was writing out loud, unperturbed by Neal's magnificently perturberant puttering. A few years later I published this first letter to my future wife - a riff on the time of writing, the time of reading, the time of recording, the time of playback, and the interlocking scopes of time-contingent truth statements - in News of Music, as Keith's First Epistle to the Tacoman. It starts "This is not a test."

November 7, 2013
The Abyss - Keith Eisenbrey
Here and There - Wayne Lovegrove - Wayne Lovegrove, Steve Scribner
Sonata in F, K. 280 - Mozart - Mitsuko Uchida

In Session at the Tintinabulary

November 4, 2013
Gradus 236 - Neal Meyer

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

October 24, 2013
Much Ado About Nothing - Seattle Shakespeare Company
Center Theatre at Seattle Center

Not just a fine production, but also some excellently integrated music. Credit to the composer Michael Brockman for a pitch-perfect 1953 Vegas pastiche, and to actor Justin Huertas's serial channeling of Frank and Dean. Hey Nonny Nonny!

October 26, 2013
Anything Goes - Cole Porter - Roundabout Theatre Company
The 5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle

A running gag has the woostersome Brit Lord Evelyn Oakleigh collecting American expressions in a book and consistently failing, in practice, either to get them straight or to apply them appropriately. This becomes an especially pointed barb because Cole Porter plays so adeptly at both the linguistic slang - twisting, punning, over-reaching for rhymes with joyous abandon - and at what might be a form of musical slang - a bubbly smooch of vaudeville, swing, latin, and more, integrated into a single unmistakable voice. Sorry, ALW, you haven't got a chance. Lord Evelyn opts for the genuine article.

Recorded

October 20, 2013
Sitting By My Window - The Five Tinos - [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]

Doo Wop hooks into all the good feelings generated when people sing together. The fun they're having is more than half the pleasure of listening.

Abendslied - Aaron Keyt

spiraling down slow

to land at bottom

unjarring as possible

peering up

or out

The Abyss (draft) - Keith Eisenbrey (November 25, 2005)
Preconcert Spherics - S. Eric Scribner

The chatter preceding a concert in Snohomish in October of 2010, beneath which a subtle rumbly specter churns.

Lonely Weekends - Charlie Rich - [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]

The backup singers are tricked out with massive reverb.

Dan Sedia, ca. 1984

Response - Dan Sedia et al - (September 1985)

I had completely forgotten, but it seems I had a part in this "pass along a tape" project. Dan recorded a solo guitar improvisation. This was followed by a piano solo by a collaborator whose name got lost somewhere, and then I added a short session on bug-guitar and ocarina. I must have then sent the original back to Dan.

The Abyss (draft) - Keith Eisenbrey (November 27, 2005)

I was working hard on getting the transition from the first to the second movement just right. This one was just about there.

Snohomish Piece 2 - Keith Eisenbrey, S. Eric Scribner, Neal Meyer

October 22, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 52 - (September 1985, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Meyer)

Heavy downstrum, then we pluck at each other. Culture Shock in America. Species of steady beats going each their own awry. Taped interloputions distract. Speck of voice. If not disciplined amplification becomes competitive.

October 23, 2013
Gradus 88 - Neal Meyer - (November 2005)

Homely - in the next room of the imaged sound tea is made. The kettle whistle, the clunk of cap on stove top, the disboarding of cups, the hissing pours.

Oceanic Music - S. Eric Scribner

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 21, 2013
Gradus 235 - Neal Meyer

illumination

reflection

creation

revelation

of a composing ear

 

illumination of reflection

creation of revelation

reflection of creation

revelation of illumination

 

in particular their particulars

the silence is Sabbath

Playlist

Recorded

October 17, 2013
Nostalgia: Memories Happy and Sad - Gregg Smith Singers - [from The Great Sentimental Age]
Red Hot - Bill "The Kid" Emerson  - [from Sun Records Definitive Hits]
Spring Concert April 30, 1965 - Lake Washington Singers; Betty Eisenbrey, cond.; JoAnne Deacon, acc.

October 18, 2013
Nighttime Howl - Aaron Keyt - (September 1985)

woody-tough fibrous stem

formants spun to overtones

wound to rope

 

noir piano

nasal flange vocal

Stimmung with clodded roots

 

pushing back

The Abyss (draft) - Keith Eisenbrey

Ashby and Shattuck / Mother (the ex) - The Street Eaters

When Karen and I were at the Skylark Café last week I bought a couple of seven-inch vinyl records. This was one. Though loud, it does not come across as un-friendly. I wonder if the loud, as such, operates more like an entry ticket than like an essential aesthetic part. No decibels, no admission.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 17, 2013
Your Mother Should Know

I recorded their rehearsal as they ran through the new set, and then demos of two new songs. Feeling quite hopeful that the new equipment will allow successful all-at-once recording.

Playlist

Live

October 5, 2013
Macefield Music Festival

Macefield hold-out house

Seattle, Washington

Sage - at Conor Byrne

Redolent of Pink Floyd (early).

Kara Hesse - at Conor Byrne

Soul straight up Boulder proud.

Young Fresh Fellows - at The Tractor

One Tad Down and topsy turvy, or The Three Fellows Three, tres bien ensemble.

Princess - at The Tractor

Not the sort of preaching I cotton to much.

The Learning Team - at Conor Byrne

Old school by the new school.

Lures - at Conor Byrne

Kid's got some nice ping in the lower pipes.

Courtney Marie Andrews - at Conor Byrne

Can sophistication simply served survive the venue?

October 11, 2013
Dead Bars, Bigfoot Wallace and his Wicked Sons, Charms
Skylark Cafe, Seattle, Washington

For our anniversary we hied ourselves down to this little café in the Delridge Hole of highway and pillars and river and bridges, and all these lovely young folks were hanging out collecting themselves at the bar just casual and chilling but you could tell there was a building of readiness for something and after a few hours of this building of readiness for something a bunch of them would wander onstage and be a band for a bit to release the readiness and then they'd stop and after another bit of readiness building another bunch of guys would up to the stage and be another band for a crackle and we were digging it. Thanks guys for the great party!

DB - We heard them a while back when they were little more than a lark and a pickup band, full of high energy and sloppy good feeling. They've been practicing. Ladies and gentlemen, the spirit of the Shirelles is in the building. BWahWS - eminently danceable blues hardened grunge abraded song-smithing. C - must admit I'm beginning to catch their drift. Psychedelic wash to scrub the cobwebs.

The guy who ran the sound board is top notch. Perfectly balanced both bands to the room and parts to parts to the whole. Credit that guy with a major assist.

Recorded

October 6, 2013
Brothers In Arms - Dire Straits

Antiseptic engineering.

The Woods - Sleater-Kinney

October 8, 2013
Snohomish Piece 1 - Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Scribner
Campaign and Comedy Songs - The Gregg Smith Singers - (from The Great Sentimental Age)
Folsom Prison Blues - Johnny Cash - (from Sun Records Definitive Hits)

bare bones naked dust

Songs Summer '85 (first part) - Keith Eisenbrey

October 10, 2013
Songs Summer '85 (second part) - Keith Eisenbrey

It has been a while since I listened to all these songs as a set. For my own creative life they represent less a new avenue for possible development than a limit of stretch. However, I can also think of them as an attempt to get near an axis, jettisoning such skills as I have, all the trappings and comforts of the acceptable, to find the that about which creative impulse turns.

The Abyss (draft) - Keith Eisenbrey

I spent the latter part of the '90s working on a chamber cantata based on stanzas from Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. The finished product, though interesting (to me) and useful as a thing (for me) to have done, is a lost-cause as to being performable. But I kept thinking about that particular selection of stanzas, and in 2005 I made a completely new computer produced setting. This draft was the first go at the first stanza. Here is the finished piece.

Zigzag - Wayne Lovegrove

Secured shipshape to the lower strings allows foamy sea splash trickery in the yardarms. This was a recording made in Snohomish at a concert produced by Steve Scribner.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 7, 2013
Gradus 234 - Neal Meyer
Just enough tonal abundance for simian leaps, brachial propagation.

Playlist - Third Anniversary of Now Music In New Albion

Live

October 4, 2013
Sound Scroll IX Concert
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Sound Scroll IX - S. Eric Scribner - S. Eric Scribner and Mike Sentkewitz
Six Seattle Pieces - S. Eric Scribner, Keith Eisenbrey, Mike Sentkewitz

Steve's music at its strongest nor makes concession nor gives quarter to the razzle dazzle, however high-toned, of professional showmanship. He develops an idea for a thing to do and he does it to the bitter end. As listener I am on my own, the presentation will not hold my hand and show me the pretty sights. In this regard, Sound Scroll IX, for vast stretches barely even a drifting shred of a sheer tissue of fabric of sound, not just permeable to the environment but hardly even scuffing it, is at the highest tier of heroically difficult music. For it to be, you must listen.

I was honored to be involved in the second part of the concert, which did involve six pieces rather than the four promised on the poster.

Recorded

September 29, 2013
The Who Sings My Generation - The Who

Unhinged poetics of the metrical.

Haiku West - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey conducting

For 15 years or so, from the late '50s to the early '70s, my mother conducted this amateur women's chorus. Lately I acquired the cassette tapes she had made in the 80's of the original reel-to-reel & phonograph recordings. The labeling of selections is often not clear. This short number sounded like a suite of settings. "West" might refer to the composer. Dunno.

October 1, 2013
Space Sounds (edited) - National Geographic Flexi Disc

Among the oddities on this rarity is an essay of scientific glorification that traces the history of life on the planet from bacteria to space exploration in about a minute. It takes your breath away!

Banned Rehearsal 51 - Karen Eisenbrey (then Meyer), Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Meyer, September 1985

Maximum aesthetic disregard. As lame as possible in order to be as out-there as possible. Both too easy and too difficult. In hope of? :: in flailing to find a new thread, a new track to enter the forest at its thickest :: the lame may not be good, but it can serve as a placeholder for doing. Strangely enough, on occasion, this procedure manages to work.

October 3, 2013
Lorenz - David Dunn

Ranges of audio data can be like orders of magnitude. Thing to ThingsGoingOn to SequenceOfThingsGoingOn. A music designed to be, experimentally, about how we make sense of chaos. It freaked out the cat a bit.

Snohomish Piece 3 (my recording) - Keith Eisenbrey, S. Eric Scribner

From Steve's concert in Snohomish in October of 2010.

Listen to The Mockingbird - Alice Hawthorne - The New York Vocal Arts Ensemble
Peepin' Eyes - Charlie Feather -  (from Sun Records Definitive Hits)

In Session at the Tintinabulary September 30, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 845 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer