Playlist

Live

January 12, 2016

Garrick Ohlsson

President's Piano Series - Meany Hall, University of Washington, Seattle

Sonata in A-flat Major, Op. 110 - Beethoven

Mussorgsky

Scherzo in E Major, Op. 54 - Chopin

Etudes in E minor and F-sharp minor, Op. 25 #5 and #6 - Chopin

Nocturne in C minor, Op. 48 #1 - Chopin

Ballade in g minor, Op. 23 - Chopin

Pictures at an Exhibition - Mussorgsksy

Garrick is one of those wonderful pianists who is comfortable enough as himself that he can focus on playing the piece in front of him, without reminding us from moment to moment who you are listening to. He doesn't sway back and forth nor lift his face flyward nor moan in ecstasy (or something). My big takeaways were the cumulating glow of life at the end of the Beethoven, kindled, it would seem, by clarity alone; the Art Tatum-y hit of the Scherzo; the ever-so-delicate tunes of note-clumps in the E minor etude; and the madly disjointed weirdness of Pictures. I rather enjoy the Ravel orchestration, but it's really as a wickedly difficult piano piece that it comes most alive. I made a stab at playing it in high school, and it was heartening to me that even Garrick Ohlsson doesn't always hit the right notes.

Recorded

January 10, 2016

Ma mere l'oye - Ravel - Orchestre de Paris, Jean Martinon

Finding the culturally exotic in the enhanced remembrance of childhood imagination. The episodic structure - set pieces made of set pieces - focuses attention on the color of the instruments rather than on the structure of the tunes they are playing. No sudden moves, solid forms evaporate, glide away, feather precisely.

Maple Leaf Rag - Joplin - Scott Joplin (on piano roll) [from The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz]

It's unfortunate that the dynamics are so flat. Otherwise, the clarity of his playing makes a pretty good case. A distant cousin of Chopin's mazurkas.

Offrandes - Varèse - Ensemble InterContemporain, Pierre Boulez

I was immediately struck by how similar this is to the Ravel in how it functions. This is Ravel with the sharp edges exposed, the shattered exotic, exposed to violence.

Crucifixion - Arizona Dranes [from Allan Lowe's Really the Blues]

Ragtime blues.

Violin Concerto in D - Stravinsky - Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa, Itzhak Perlman

Like that Buster Keaton shtick where the scenery keeps changing around him just as he nearly deals with the last disaster.

Three Pieces for Orchestra - Kent Kennan - Eastman Rochester Orchestra, Howard Hanson

Studio trailers for symphonies. Coming Soon to a Theater Near You!

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 11, 2016

Banned Rehearsal 902 160111 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

January 8, 2016
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Ivan Arteaga

Ivan Arteaga

Reed voice human voice inside each outside each voice being outside through each voice being inside enclosure through each voice being outside voice's disclosure - holding outside, birthing inside.

Patrick O'Keefe - Three Bagatelles

The first one was done before I got a bead on it, but the second was really pretty. I liked the way the harmonies of the third jostled each other, shoulder contra shoulder, not unfriendly.

Amy Denio

Best title of the night, possibly of the year: Recipe for Disaster. I am still and always in awe at how effortlessly Amy seems to generate good feelings in everything she does. How can one not smile? She has an easy comfort with what I can only call "song-ness", music consists of a bed of rhythm and a play of tune. The joy is in the details.

Keith Eisenbrey (with Banned Rehearsal)  - Tambourine Quintet (or Banned Rehearsal 901 160108) - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

I was quite gratified both by how easily my colleagues got into it, and by the response. This (and the whole evening) is an example why I love the Seattle music scene.

Recorded

Alfred Cortot

January 3, 2016
Ballade in A-flat Major, op. 47 - Chopin - Alfred Cortot

The first eight bars comprise four gestures, each in a distinct register. It also divides neatly in two, each half a question and answer, the latter like an echo of the first. Then four bars, two big, two little. Echo's echo. Got that straight? Good thing, because the ground begins to shift something ferocious.

Symphony in D minor, op. 120 (#4) - Schumann - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

Schwarz hears this differently than I do, his reading is leisurely, dreamy, and a bit heavy, with a tendency to broaden and luxuriate in a warm glow, rather than to quicken, ignite. This works pretty well for the opening, circling in the dark to an inner light, but never really gets its get-up-and-go up and gone.

Sonata in F Major op. 99 - Brahms - Gregor Piatigorsky, Artur Rubinstein

I love those low cello double stops toward the end of the first movement, an anchor in the bottom of the sea pulled by an unseen ship high above.

January 5, 2016
My Little Zulu Babe - Williams and Walker [from Allen Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Fascinating, but uncomfortable to listen to in almost every way imaginable.

The Invisible City of Kitezh (Suite) - Rimsky-Korsakov - Philharmonia Hungarica, Richard Kapp

A sound track drifting free of its film.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

January 4, 2016
Gradus 281 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Three simultaneities open, equivocally similar, identically uncertain. Coherence is a process of connecting presence to memory. When we hit bottom the summit re-emerges.

Playlist

Recorded

December 27, 2015
Banned Rehearsal 414 [February 1996, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer]

These clothes do not fit. Something is about to itch. Cabin fever. Stubborn drums. Finally boils over. Returns to the sullen wall.

Lauda Anima (midi version) - Keith Eisenbrey


When I finish a piece I usually like it pretty well, but I am always pleased when they get better upon re-listening. The sense I have is that this piece builds itself a delicately balanced ladder, one stick at a time, slowly and precariously ascending into darkness. It manages to live pretty comfortably in midi, but I will always regret that there is no recording of Marcus Oldham's superb performance of it at St. Marks a decade or so ago.

Outrageous - Paul Simon [from The Essential Paul Simon]

Paul gets down to the funk.

December 28, 2015
Qixingshan - Benjamin Boretz - Momenta Quartet [on Open Space 32]

Uncanny intervals, inexorable stillness, ape rage exhausting itself on an empty landscape.

O voi, troppo felici - Gesualdo - Consort of Musicke, Anthony Rooley

I kept getting the sense that all these chromatic shifts would suddenly come into focus and be completely regular, if only one could find exactly the right point from which to hear it.

Konzert in F Major BWV 1047 - J.S. Bach - Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Herbert von Karajan

Such a small ensemble to make so many disparate sounds. It is as though there are more groupings than are mathematically possible. The secret is that he treats each register of each instrument as a new instrument, so that any two have among them a wealth of possibilities to work with. Thankfully, Herbert doesn't over-inflate his ensemble much for this one, so it comes across more like chamber than orchestra music, which is all to the good.

Petites Pieces "La Capricieuse" Wq. 117 #33 - C.P.E. Bach - Miklos Spanyi

Breaking the stranglehold of baroque practice in the name of private amusement.

December 29, 2015
Quartet in D Major Op. 17 #6 - Haydn - Tatrai Quartet
Concerto in C minor K. 491 - Mozart - English Baroque Soloists, John Eliot Gardiner, Malcolm Bilson

Baroque combinations interrupted by articulating cadences. The soloist's opening salvo drives a wedge into a crack in the rhythm.

December 30, 2015
String Quartet in F major, Op. 59 #1 - Beethoven - Amadeus Quartet

The politics here are of intimates, not nations - familial social.

Playlist

Recorded

December 22,2015

arch boy band

Love At First Sight - XTC [from Fossil Fuel: The XTC Singles Collection]

It is made of, apparently, briskly alternating rhythmic-harmonic states; larger groupings articulated by stepwise ascents; and some gentle hipwise accents that play off that. Love that low "Luuuhhve . . . " in chest voice.

True Blue - Madonna [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

Her voice track is calibrated just far enough down in the mix to sound vulnerable, the sexual persona situated just so, unthreatening, fixed forever in place with all the power of the music-industrial complex. She is what the business wants her to be: a target of social projections.

Seattle treasure Amy Denio

Psycho Marlboro - Amy Denio [from Tutto Bene]

Less a fully worked out song than a fully worked out sound: lusciously junky percussion and rhythm harmonica (?) glued together with a breathy flute. Really nice.


In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 21, 2015
Gradus 280 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

December 13, 2015
Finnegans Wake Part I, Chapter 2 - James Joyce

the table is set for Finnegans Wake

Neal Kosály-Meyer, with Jake Thompson

Karen and I played a small part at the end of this production, aiming spotlights at Neal as he circumnavigated the space while performing The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly, shadowed by Jake Thompson playing bodhrán. The staging was less elaborate than last year's Chapter 1, but it really doesn't need much. He performed the greater part of it off to the side, allowing his amplified voice to occupy the dark stage alone.

Recorded

December 15, 2015
Quartet for Winds - Arthur Berger - Boehm Quintet

Subject matter: How harmonies arise from melody's twinings, and how they persist within their further twinings.

Concerto for Oboe - Richard Strauss - English Chamber Orchestra, Daniel Barenboim, Neil Black

Pleasing to the very end.

Sonatine - Karlheinz Stockhausen - Saschko Gawriloff, Aloys Kontarsky

A clever, attractive little piece from early in Stockhausen's oeuvre, with hints of Monk among his own clearly emerging voice. It is a short stylistic step from here to the music box pieces.

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra - Roger Sessions - Westchester Philharmonic, Paul Lustig Dunkel, Robert Taub

The murky motor rhythm strenuously fails to hold things together, threads slip out on their own cognizance - things to do, places to unravel.

December 17, 2015
Elis - Heinz Holliger - Klára Körmendi

Strong keyboard gestures predominate. In the middle, suddenly, emerges what is about the most effective use of non-standard (inside the piano) techniques I can easily bring to mind, subtly integrated with some exquisite pedal work.

Greg Short (1938-1999)

Twenty Four Tonal Preludes: 1 - 4 - Greg Short - Keith Eisenbrey

This was from my recital, Preludes in Seattle, of June 10, 2006, at University Temple United Methodist Church. I first encountered Greg Short in about 1970, when I performed two of his teaching pieces, Knuckle Rag and Little Rose, at a concert sponsored by one of the local music teachers' associations. His preludes are thorny pianistic puzzles in the Lisztian stamp. For a pianist of my modest technique the experience of performing them can be terrifying, but listening back after nearly a decade I find the pieces themselves to be quite attractive. I just wish some better pianist than I would pick these up and work on them. Though difficult, the piano writing is deeply intelligent, always effective, and well worth the trouble. Cristina? Tiffany? Julie? Adrienne? Anybody?

You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks - Funkadelic [collected from Dave Marsh's Heart of Rock & Soul]

The backing chorus arrangement features impressively reckless Bach-like stretto, ultra-quick, and is that ring modulation I hear on some of those bass tones? Gobs of great.

The Montreux/Berlin Concerts (cuts 1 and 2) - Anthony Braxton

A little jazz number of Brucknerian proportions.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 14, 2015
Banned Telepath 42 Seattle 151214
Banned Telepath 42 Somerville 151214
Banned Rehearsal 900 151214 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer (in Seattle); Aaron Keyt (in Somerville)

Wow. 900. Wow.
It took us 31 and 1/2 years, averaging 28 1/2 numbered sessions per year. My how the time has flown.

Playlist

Recorded

December 8, 2015

Marion Harris with Banjo Uke

Paradise Blues - Marion Harris [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Give me some of that [fill in the blank] music: a trope of reflexive self-advertising by which popular music never ceases to tell us how much we should love it, from Alexander's Ragtime Band to Roll Over Beethoven. Apparently we are all and have always been just completely OK with commercials for a product embedded in the product.

Men - Carl Ruggles - Buffalo Philharmonic, Michael Tilson Thomas

Solid, tense, immovable. Not turned to stone, but jammed tight in the pile-up of its own mirrorings. Brief as Webern but battled, recklessly muscular.

I Want My Life To Testify - Hendersonville Double Quartet [from Alan Lowe's Really the Blues]

The microphone placement leads to an odd balance, with the baritone part way up front and everything else variously behind. One imagines a live performance would sound completely different, but here it becomes a very strange piece of music indeed. The piano, when it breaks in, does so in a completely different tempo than the singers.

December 10, 2015
Hungarian Sketches - Béla Bartók - Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner

Bartók's piano style is overtly orchestral, and so one could regard these literal orchestrations as lessons in how to play the piano pieces: play this tune as though it were an oboe, play the accompaniment like soft strings - keep the voices clear!

David Diamond

First Orchestral Suite from the Ballet TOM - David Diamond - Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Gerard Schwarz

At the end of the first long phrase a chime rings out alone in glorious chimey dissonance, uncompromised, physical, present. From that point on the music prolongs the sensibility of that dissonance, carefully weaving its chromatic counterpoint. This focus drops in a few places for some 'happy southerner' hokum, which I suppose might be read in a similar way to some of Shostakovitch's contemporaneous satirical romps. I'm not sure I buy that here, but am willing to pass over it anyway for the long moments of really stunning stuff.



In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 6, 2015

Trio 151206A
Trio 151206B
Trio 151206C
Trio 151206D
Trio 151206E
Trio 151206F
Sextet 151206 - Keith Eisenbrey
At first I thought I might just make two trios, but I decided I could fold all six instruments on top of each other successively, then combine the whole thing into a Sextet. The instrumental tracks are: viola (A, E, F), selection from the big red bag of fun (A, B, F), toy steel drum (A, B, C), amplified acoustic steel string guitar (B, C, D), frame drum (C, D, E), and alto horn (D, E, F). The selection from the big red bag of fun was a plastic mayonnaise jar, a tin can into which the jar just fit, and a wine cork. The alto horn came to us, as most instruments do, circuitously, purchased at a thrift store by my late Uncle Jim Meyer and given to us (he had one already). On the case is stamped "U.G.S.D." - for Union Gap School District.

Playlist

Live

Yulianna Avdeeva

December 1, 2015
Yulianna Avdeeva
Meany Hall, Seattle

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

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

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

Recorded

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not me

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

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

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

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

In Session at the Tintinabulary

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

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