Playlist

Preface

"Some are explaining that each one is doing the thing each one is doing because they are needing to

be doing that thing, because they are needing to be wanting to be doing that thing, because doing that thing is a thing that is feeding them, because doing that thing is a thing that they are needing to be doing so that they can be ones doing something that they are ones needing to be wanting to be doing, because doing that thing is a thing that is something any one will be doing who is one needing to be one doing some things that this one is needing to be doing, because doing that thing is a thing in some way satisfying that one as being the one being that one." Gertrude Stein - The Making of Americans

Texts

Live

November 3, 2017
Seattle Composers' Salon
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Calvin Senter - Colloquies: Moon, Rain, Sun, Wind - for solo guitar

gently persists in not resolving easy

long long thoughts (yep, Longfellow)

solid quiet presence

admirable patience

Mark Wilson - Kyrie eleison from "God Helmet" - for guitar, soprano, and flute

What glorious close heterophony between soprano and flute! It fairly made the melodic elements leap and kiss above our heads.

Clement Reid - Realizations for Horn and Piano

A richly produced illustrated narrative, of the sort whose pages linger in memory.

Nicole Truesdell - Ghost Story - for piano four hands

How does one signal story telling, musically? Or, how does music signal that it is telling story? This then that sequencing to be sure, but with four hands to play with Nicole also gets plenty of this and also that in play, lapping o'er.

Recorded

October 29, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 431 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 1996]

one channel aimed in of doors

one channel aimed out of doors

middle passage

industrious at noise making

wrecked and wicked piano sound

in late night dreamy bill evans mode

duet cornet

conjoined banjo

roar from we know not where

subordinate clauses

Banned Rehearsal 619 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2001]

homing in on room for quiet in the large
for explicit thoughts in transparent company
what can be done if considerations of performance just don't come up
such considerations not eschewed
more as if never known
music innocent of outside apprehension as such
rattling in so many ways
so many ways of rattling

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 30, 2017
Gradus 324 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

not wandering | not circulating | not but contracting | into falling | into inward collapsing

□▄□

suspended spool | waking extend | thought into forward | space alert spreading | out exhibiting delve | back into

Playlist

Live

October 21, 2017

Finnegans Wake Chapter 2 - James Joyce - Neal Kosály-Meyer, with Karen Eisenbrey, percussion, and Jim Knodle, lights
Gallery 1412, Seattle

When the lights are out inside where we are, the lights from back stage leak through the cracks in the wall into the darkness where we are.

Recorded

October 22, 2017
A Galliardes Gygge - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr [from My Ladye Nevells Booke]

Concerned with distinctions: common and elite. How close to the surface the common is, how sophisticated is the ornament. All dressed up for court.

Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XVII, Rectus and Inversus - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

Bach designs his material so that it does what he wants it to do. The Inversus almost pulls off the Satie trick of having no difference from the Rectus that makes any difference, it is clearly the same piece in every particular that matters. Heaven and earth, up and down, near to each other past touching.

The King of the Zulus - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

Solo impersonations, complete with shticks-aplenty. It can so easily be heard as exactly a blackface act, and they know it, but it is their shoe in the door.

Talking Columbia - Woody Guthrie [from Columbia River Collection]

Musical journalism, he even tries to stay on topic, but he has a knack for wandering off before you realize where he has led you.

Elegy in Memory of Serge Koussevitsky - Howard Hanson - Seattle Symphony, Gerard Schwarz

Fugal, but rolling in heaves and billows, smoothly in billows and heaves. No non sequiturs here. Edges are beveled soft as a lakeside morning. Hints of Wagner and Ravel, Tunes murmur among the voices, veering toward Hollywood grandiosity.

O Sons and Daughters - Williams - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey [from Spring Concert 1961]

Ripped from an LP, from back in the day when you could press just a few for memory's sake.

Good Thing (Remix) - Paul Revere and the Raiders [from The Legend of Paul Revere]

On the fine line between sincere and creepy, in the end it's so blatantly pornographic I am amazed it was allowed on the radio.

Mercedes Benz - Janis Joplin [from Pearl]

Her entire body goes into the foundation of her sound. A cackle to start. She near-rhymes 'poor', 'tired', and 'Lord'.

Silly Love Songs - Wings [a Rescued Record]

The happy version of the opening from Pink Floyd's Money.

a cheery world cartoon
body smoothed out of voice entire
by intent and engineering

classy songwriting though


Hamburger Lady - Throbbing Gristle [from The Best of Throbbing Gristle]

A dial twiddling virtuouso
undulating a bit like ol' heaves and billows himself.
See above.

October 24, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 66 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 1986]

We may have started to see Banned Rehearsal 100 in the lights by then.

a furnace hum some
tappings around and some
tapings around ocarina
jingly scrapes

we drag the room and pick up noises as we go

The Boospook Pumpkin

oc or other flute
again cassettes were our effect set
stacked literally and loopilly

dragging the past off the seafloor
sounds of its mechanisms
spring doors clopping shut

the immediate is a surface upon which the past is etched
cut phonographically
we are the vinyl

paperformants (neal's)
as long as it takes
an ur gent mess age from the odd IO re cord industry
recollection
Neal names our first brace of kittens

Anarchy
Amnehitabel

after a political announcement
we stop out to birds
and wind roar train
for the west leaves
in 20 minutes better hurry

glorious!

Song Three - Infamous Menagerie

Gets that world weary sneery ugly that PIL aimed at but missed.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 20, 2017
Construction - Karen Eisenbrey

While at work, Karen recorded several minutes of hammering from across the street.

October 23, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 945 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt

Only 55 to go before number 1000. We'll probably get there before 2020 if we keep going.

October 27, 2017
The Boospook Story - Karen Eisenbrey

Shortly after we were married (31 years ago this month) Karen made a piece of brilliance, a picture book titled "The Boospook Story". She reads it here,  with preambleous conversation among Isaac, Karen, and Keith Eisenbrey.

The Boospook Stump

Playlist

Recorded

October 17, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 618 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Isabel K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [September 2001]

Another go at my 2001 piece Work Architecture Unity And The, with a pre or proto verbal lecture, a

language fountain in the months immediately prior to lexical formation, with illustrations. As the composer of the score I can't not hear this as a performance of the piece, but I do love how gently it fades from being that into not being that at all.

Pianofortesynth - Brad Anderson [from Dark Energy]

double double toil and trouble
cauldron signal
bubble and sizzle

Gradus 188 - Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 2011]

Number, count, three is big
but four notes five or six
come up (depending on how you parse)
how many ways there are to count (let me . . .
) to group ratio and number

Neal

but no rational durational rhythm
that is out the window a distraction
eleven there

proximity in time in adjacency in dynamic et al

order assertions
here, this note
ratios of approximate quantities

Chull - Kapoor & Sons [from Bollygood Volume 1]

patterns of fabrics, like a really great scarf

October 19, 2017

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 16, 2017
Gradus 323 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Theoretically, if not practically, it is possible to play each of all the combinations of keys on the keyboard. The quantity is finite, if hyper-dauntingly large. What can't be done is to play any one note in all possible ways. This is what allows Gradus to be an experiment in building an idea of composition, as a practice, from near scratch.

Playlist

Recorded

October 8, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 617 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Isabel K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [September 2001]

toy boats bobbing in the bay

steady state

low organ throb
indicator measures and creates hidden pulse

(great spring sound!)
intersocial anacrusis

agogic peoples
rhythm is a social event

what shifts in the ear when pitches change
the soil the wind the orbit

bell and drum ritual
lightly touched

October 9, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 697 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 2006]

several species of guitar
bucket brigade messages
a triangular circle

or tuning to each other in a fluid sense
lovely how it refrains from shredding
even when louder

protracted

(long long protracted)

end
fade

wanders into the casing

October 12, 2017
The Chronicles of Dirty Dick Part 1 - Antique Scream [from The Chronicles of Dirty Dick]

Pink Floyd fade
up to wide
vibrato capable vocal
seriously uptight brings
the forces together
doesn't
let go
but slowly piece
by piece relax
to allow full
weight to be
thrown around stops
to start again
Preening Bad Boy.

We Are Climbing Jacob's Ladder (Autoheterophony) - Keith Eisenbrey
Like a chorus o' angles! (Karen's comment).

The Barelye Breake - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr

Finely tuned adjustments over the phrase, section, and movement breaks. Far more category shifts than simple butt joints would intimate. Early sense of variations, or changes: the theme is not a structure but a thread within possibilities.

Die Kunst der Fuge Contrapunctus XVI Inversus  - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

The fugue is an analytical tool for composers, it is used to pry tunes apart. Surgeon: "Stretto! Inversion! Diminution! Sponge! Suction!"

Sweet Little Papa - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

lipwork ornamentation
big music shaped by minute attitudes of the mouth

On The Sunny Side - Don Albert [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Don Albert

Lovely glow in his voice as it tails off at phrase ends. Pretty mean trumpet player too.

New Found Land - Woody Guthrie [from The Columbia River Collection]

Living in the light of the morning. One of his better poems.

Don't Be Cruel - Elvis Presley [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

A ploy or a plea?
from a genre of personal fictions.

The 95th Psalm - Powell Weaver - The Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from Lake Washington Singers, April 11, 1961]

This features my mom's long-time accompanist and friend, Joanne Deacon, and a fine solo by soprano Kathleen Richards.

Good Lovin' - The Little Rascals [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

A rhythmic schema
arising from a lively bed
begets variations

Love Ain't For Keeping - The Who [from Who's Next]

This is quite a fine little song, whose impact is diminished by the commercial necessity of bloating it out to stadium size.

Louie Louie - The Stooges [from Metallic 'KO]

Garbage rock in the sense that it doesn't take much technique to make it happen (compare with the fancy guitar playing of the Ventures, for instance). Nearly indestructible, Iggy makes a go at it.

Intermezzi, op. 117 #1 and #2 - Brahms - Neal Kosály-Meyer [from Neal's Recital Tape May 1981]

One among many distinguishing characteristics of European repertoire music: a complexity in the

Screaming Trees

way it proceeds through a phrase. Everything can be broken into parts. How do you break yours?

You Tell Me All These Things - Screaming Trees [from Clairvoyance]

No padded seat on this old bike, just tractor metal cold in the morning.

(A connection here: Steve Fisk, who produced this record, is a friend of Neal's (my brother in-law) from his days at Central Washington University, before I knew him. Small world of local music.)

October 13, 2017
Frogs 910415 - Keith Eisenbrey

(and dogs)

one mass of frog sound shifted toward the right
one soloist closer, to the left
dog is in the distance or several dogs or distances

a tape hiss
and occasional traffic
very faint with hint of pitch
emerging from the noise as proto-hum

(I recorded this from an upstairs window at my folks house near Coupeville, WA, the morning of April 15, 1991.)

distant howl
world guiro
waves of phasing rhythms in soft focus

kitchen talk downstairs
action on the edge of the sound
tink of flatware clock chime

morning breaks pulsing bulbous
flange of air prop traffic
phasing with frog croak waves
a quivering air

frogquiversphere

we apes converse in clusters of apeclatter
even from upstairs faint as it is
the room resonance of mom & dad's Coupeville kitchen

one could imagine the frogcroaksound as single oraganism's respiration
or the ripply surface of a pond
a jet's hissy roar goes on a long time
making wavelets in the quiversphere

wind roar
an event in the deep deep bass
(big frog!)

Banned Rehearsal 430 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 1996]

ominous biding banshee

raucus and magnificent wail

dire
D I R E
dire

the longer the held organ tones persist
the more questionable becomes their intonation

squeaky balloon violin stylings
elephant seal bellow soulfulness electric guitar

whatever this is
it is seriously pissed

drops into conversation mood
just cranky
tarzanyell grim march

off again to wander ferocious

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 9, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 944 - Jennifer Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


We were in a bit of noisy mood I think.

October 11, 2017
October 12, 2017
Focus tracks - St. Rage
Distracted Driver tracks - St. Rage - Karen Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer

We did the basics on the 11th, and filled in some extras on the 12th.

Playlist

Live

October 6, 2017
Sean Hamilton
John Teske
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Loci - Sean Hamilton

Manipulation of resources in deliberate sequence (the activity). The angle of head on neck is crucial and exact. "My approach to improvisation is as a unique moment in time." (I think that's what he said and I spent a certain amount of time working my head around what that might be meaning). There was a moment where I imagined the surface of a moment's sound had suddenly been frozen into a prolonged static noise. It could have been any of them, but it was this one.

Vector Scores - John Teske - Luke Fitzpatrick, violin; William Hayes, guitar; Evan Smith, saxophone; Neil Welch, saxophone; Maria Scherer Wilson, violoncello

prelude
glob
dirge,,march
topographies, book ii
trashfire
short segment of long span (ad:sr)
tree

pulsing as breathing in sleep

animate glow within embers

vignettes of topographies

small framed windows looking out to vast 

landscapes

seascapes

worldscapes

move on to the trashfire

growlbigbeasts and shriekbeasts

the congress these sounds make is not proper

nor publically appropriate

but personal, adult, intimate

talk amongst themselves predicated on

their individual identities as such

not in any characteristics that could be measured

by language or money or war

the categories have been blown

up and emptied

Recorded

October 1, 2017
The Galliarde for the Victorie - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr

Leaning forward in its chair, excited to show the next irreppresible delight.

Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XVI Rectus / Inversus - J. S. Bach - Zoltan Kocsis

Yet another evidence of Bach's long fascination with inversion - turning tunes, counterpoints, entire musical fabrics headside footwards, fact and image.

Lonesome Blues - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

It is only a fistful of practices (riffs, guides, frames) but it is enough to tell near any tale.

Triflin' Gal - Jimmy Revard [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Surely this went on and on, or would have, had it not been necessary to fit it on a record.

Roll On Columbia - Woody Guthrie [from The Columbia River Collection]

Sickening how anymore the verses celebrating Indian killing are elided, repressed, denied, forgotten. It's so easy just to leave them out.


Sweet Lorraine - Frank Sinatra, The Metronome All Stars [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

He descends down his tessitura with style, stopping at each station, making eye contact, again and again.

Stardust - Ben Webster [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

The heart of the rhythm depends utterly on being able to hear his breaths. Good lesson for singing.

Divertimento - Benjamin Boretz

The midi realization forwards the plainness of the material, flat footed, uninflected neo-classical tune bits. The rhythmic gambits seem pasted on, clumsy images of unexpected or exciting texture tokens. It isn't until well into it that we discover that each just so wrongly bent move, each he can't really have meant that adjustment of the tilt, has left us hanging well out over thin air, wingless, far into the unknown, paddleless.

Vere Languores - Tomás Luis de Victoria - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey [from Lake Washington Singers April 11, 1961]

From my mom's tape. I remember as a small child (I was two, then, but many times, also, afterward) being sent to bed while some of the singers listened to the concert tapes in the living room. The laughter and talk of women, and voices and singing and recorded sound.

Gimme Some Lovin' - The Spencer Davis Group [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Were the drums recorded in a stairwell, the rest in a gym? Crazy.

Me and Bobby McGee - Janis Joplin [from Pearl]

Road song, names and places, evoking Guthrie, Ginsberg, Whitman. A song the story of which is the singing of songs.
And so it goes.

October 3, 2017
Iggy Talks - The Stooges [from Metallic 'KO]

And what after all did they pay for, the chance to throw eggs?

Thela Hun Ginjeet - King Crimson [from Discipline]

The drums surround the scraps of overheard disjointed story. A dangerous place, to the narrator, but the group that  jumped and intimidated were quite clearly acting out of fear as well.

Bottles - Aaron Keyt

Glass panpipe pipery shivery breath inflected pitch. I am blowing bottles in a room. hootch hoot bottle pond pondering empty bottles. Lucieric exploration of a space made both by the room and the recording equipment, heavy on the latter, and less fussy about ideal presentation. Not fussy at all, in fact.

Sittin' On A Pitchfork - Young Fresh Fellows [from Electric Bird Digest]

Beerband mock-ironic feelgood anthem. It may be where I am but I wouldn't have it any other way.

October 5, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 429 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [July 1996]
Karen suggests, upon being informed that she wasn't credited in this one, that this may have been the privately legendary session on a beastly hot day (she being great with child at the time so choosing not to enter the oven) after which I flopped myself down into the plastic wading pool. AHH!

Forward and transparent, that is to say, loud but clear, each sound seems placed into the mix with considered intent. The violated boundary between loudspeakered and unloudspeakered. ((Time's distance allows the opportunity of hearing without self-consciousness. At the time of making one is so focused on one's own part that the whole of the sound is obscured.)) That must be Aaron's synth back there in ear-purge mode. Long loud acoustic notes shift the filling of space by the electric standing sounds. Cassette tape was our effects pedal.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

October 2, 2017
Gradus 322 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Specifyable intent activity, morphing, alters the parameters. Starting over without rounding off. Simply stop. Pause. Start over. Doesn't clear the palate, it positions memory as perspective. Not a music for ribbons and bows.

Playlist

Live

September 23, 2017

Sahba Sizdahkhani

Ivan Arteaga
Sahba Sizdahkhani
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Strings and Pulleys - Ivan Arteaga with Allison Burke
parsing the holding into vacant space
touch weight sax fuss distance
scooted
decision tongue and seamless finger flutter

A thoughtful and intriguing tweezing out of aspects of playing saxophone in public, it was already well underway when Allison, incapable it seems of walking without aesthetic deliberation, adjusted the furniture on the stage.

Sahba Sizdahkhani
his amp says Oahu on it slant
with an eighth-note flag on the "a"

how is repetition accomplished, exactly?

Luscious layered builds, on 104-string santour and percussion played in sequence but kept alive with long loops.

Recorded

September 24, 2017
The Battell - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr

Figures on tapestry
music portrays other music
how lifelike!

Die Kunst Der Fuge, Contrapunctus XVI (Rectus) - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg

It ties the ear into knots keeping track of it all, but in such a whistle-y carefree way.

Tommy Dorsey

Big Fat Ma and Skinny Pa - Louis Armstrong's Hot Five [from Hot Fives and Sevens]

And it starts with a whistle. Ultra-musicianship being pushed into lightweight shoes. Something has got to give.

After You've Gone - Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, Sy Oliver and The Sentimentalists

The arrangement is as hierarchical as movie credits. Leader, Soloists, Rhythm, Choirs.



Oregon Trail - Woody Guthrie [from The Columbia River Collection]

A list of complaints, Whitmanesque, celebratory. How bad they was doin' was why they came.

September Song - Sarah Vaughan [from Interlude - Early Recordings 1944-1947]

She inhabits ever millimeter of those long notes. At the coda phrases are handed down through the ranks, Byrd-ish.

With A Song - Sonny Rollins [from Alan Lowe's That Devilin' Tune]

Horn playing, here, is an expression of the shaping of the mouth's cavity, where sound is rounded.

Der Song from Witwe Begbicks Trinksalon - Paul Dessau - uncertain about performers due to poor indexing on the CD

Ein Bierhallsingspielslied.

Sing Ye A Joyful Song - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey [from concert of April 11, 1961]

My mom, as a teen

Rescued from my mom's tape.

Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa (Sad Song)- Otis Redding [collected from Dave Marsh's The Heart of Rock & Soul]

Fifth item in a row with "Song" in it, not planned. OR carves his vocal into the mix with a deepgrooved chisel. Barely a narration beyond the song structure itself.

Track 1 - Tillicum Jr. High School Band [from concert of March 3, 1971]

Another rescue from one of my mom's tapes. I believe this is a band arrangement of a von Weber concert piece for solo clarinet, played by my brother Paul, who would have been 14.

Cock In My Pocket - The Stooges [from Metallic 'KO]

Aestheticizing sophomoric crudity.

Track 2 - University of Washington Contemporary Group Improv Ensemble [from Neal's Recital Tape, May 22, 1981]

Otherwise known as Undifferentiated Functions. Neal starts center stage, playing the Bickleton Fight Song. I'm in the closet with another piano. When I eventually make my appearance it may have been the first time Karen ever saw me. We were not introduced at that time.

Pink Cadillac - Bruce Springsteen

A riff on original sin, and how the lengths of lines falling into line roll around to find the rhythm of the hook.

September 26, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 253 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [April 1991]


Our first born, a few week old, makes his taped debut. A distant radio signal finds itself somewhere in the wiring. Frogs and dogs. We pick up an activity and carry it with us to unknown parts, the thread of thought. Wastelands? Burned bare. Dischord wouldn't fit, much like life.

September 28, 2017
Sonic Brilliance 19 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Holden K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Kia M [July 1996]

Jumps into the thick of it. You're supposed to be a dragon. Lizard of Oz. Sounds flow right in, undirected. Why do we have all these buttons? A crowded aviary compressed into the space of sound smaller than the studio. Ringing and rattling.

Assembly Rechoired 46 - John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey [September 2001]

Trumpet, piano, percussion. Buzzy.

Come Out And Play - Dead Vampires [from The Funhouse Comp Thing]

Close packed mass physicality. The subject matter is the mosh pit.

Banned Rehearsal 786 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [February 2011]

Shaker crickets
bell traffic
mist snake glides
occupy kalimba
finding the lower limit of audibility
ritual of not disorder not entropy
the chosen moment unyieldingly placid

Along The Path (Dreams of Emptiness) - Denise Glover [from Pathways]

Tuning in time and timing in pitch
The vocal entrance kills
Every time

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 25, 2017

Banned Rehearsal 943 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer

Playlist

Live

September 22, 2017

Fantastical Sounds: Music from Tond
Steve Scribner, author, composer
Tond Band: Phillip Arnautoff (sampled), Molly Bauckham Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer, Carol Levin, Linda Rio, Steve Scribner, and Waterbound (Mimi and Steve Akerman).
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Fyorian:
Prologue (Folk Dance)
Reading from Book One
Excerpt from the Song of Origins
Kitál (dulcimer) improvisation
Táluwaa (Dance-based classical piece)

Karjannic:
Reading from Book Two
Srakah (classical piece)
Reading from Book Three
Tsajkoo Chaebrwakak (Epic Poem with Music)

Sherványa:
Reading from Book Three
The Sherványa Nocturnal Music

As I understand it, this project arose 40 plus years ago as an invented language, followed by (order matters not) an invented culture, an invented continent (Tond), several other invented languages with invented cultures to match, a tale (in three volumes), and, these being humans, musics, and Steve being Steve, a concert of such.

The musics are constructed, it would seem, from a grab-bag of musicological attributes of the sort one might expect musics to possess, culled from here and there: a bit of Japan, a bit of India, a bit of Steve Reich, etc. - Steve (Scribner) being a consummate taxonomist of musics I can't begin to even hint at the range of bits one might find if one took the time to dig.

To me, the idea of inventing a language seems perverse, and that of composing music from general attributes inward equally if not more so, and I find myself, considering what Steve is proposing to do, wondering how it could possibly work, how it could avoid simply being, well, lame. However, it always does work, and it always astounds me just how blisteringly well it does.

We performed with almost no rehearsal, just a quickened run-through that ended moments before the doors opened. The scores are part instruction, part graphic notation, part (minimal) standard notation, and part quasi-musicological stage setting - incomplete: one is never quite certain that a train wreck isn't inevitable. Essentially it boils down to "Here is what I imagine happening. Make it so." As performers we are not so much given agency as we are forced to grasp it for dear life. It just can't work, and yet it does. Every time. It's kind of exciting.

Looked at another way, he is simply inventing possibilities and collecting collaborators. Does it matter whether that is composition or not? Given the enrapturing results, I guess not.

Whatever's next, I'm probably up for it.

Recorded

September 17, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 616 - Isaac E, John E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt [September 2001]



inchworm turn by inchworm turn
drum led
the action is in the side-confabulations
patchy and disjointed

September 21, 2017
High and Inside - Keith Eisenbrey - Keith Eisenbrey, piano

Recorded live in June of 2006 at University Temple United Methodist Church, it projects the varieties of acoustically charged stance within reverb resonance that originally caught my ear and generated the piece in the first place || that caught my ear while reading through Benjamin Boretz's O, listening to that final (0,1) simultaneity ssshhhimmer || that final (0,1) arrived at via cycle of diminishing intervals climbing into the keytops || starting there and flipping the cycle but continuing the climb, hanging higher into the keytops || from each ssshhhimmer higher gazing back downward  briefly into the brachiate undergirdings [spoiler: undergirdings made of those notes below, which contain within them the individuals of the high dyadic simultaneity as acoustic partials]: an ad-hoc etude.

Shaprece

Love Emergency - Shaprece [from Scatterbrain]

The heady imperative of young lust.









Banned Rehearsal 905 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer


Melody is a structure built in memory, harmony is a structure built from analysis. Music in the wild proliferates dimensions, acting not in but upon our experience of time.

A poly-sentient rattle we pick up now and again and again to shake.
A radio orchestra :: twiddlydials of musical intentions
Shortwave consciousness
Musical thinking as it happens

(as it happens)

Piano plays at either end
Poetry plain as rocks

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 18, 2017

Gradus 321 - Neal Kosály-Meyer

Sounding like a chord
is a choice not often made
a prolongation of arpeggiated arpeggiation
a line protracted into the abyss