Live
November 11, 2017
Amy Denio
Truth is Up for Grabs
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle
Pre: Neal tells us that 2/3 of Neal's & Anna's wedding brass ensemble is participating. Packed! All the chairs are brought out. Big enough to be a murmuring, luscious in this space.
The governing vibe is of a pit orchestra, rather than an art orchestra. That is, there is no concerted attempt on the part of the performers to transcend themselves and become else than a group of musicians playing this music.
Full tilt expression, nothing held back, nor humor nor sorrow nor low nor high nor ought nor else.
How they end (the songs): not quite abrupt(ly).
Recorded
November 11, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 620 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [October 2001]
Snare drum springs soften the sax. I revisit an old thought. Weighty massive thoughts dimple the ground. Tattered banners bothered in a chilly wind. Dampers off the strings prolong sax bleats room eloquence. Frivolity kept away. Every thought is a palpable mass.
O Mary Don't You Weep - Bruce Springsteen [from
The Seeger Sessions]
As (though) recorded live in a big living room.
Banned Rehearsal 787 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2011]
bits of sound barnacle the border
hints of vastness in the near distance
held back
drums guitar and bass a rock band
in the same sense we were ever a jazz band
"banned rehearsal" pronounced "scribble scribble"
eloquence feeds back has been trying to escape into glory
irreproducible results Neal sings!
It Was a Monday Evening
narrative church rhythm thank you very much
done found some groove we never found before and never will again
pure
Bulleya - Amit Mishra, Shipa Rao [from
Bollygood Volume 2]
Values production value. What is this without its bells and whistles? Full throttle is the base line setting.
November 12, 2017
 |
| Your blogger, ca 2001 |
Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La - William Byrd - Elizabeth Farr
Recorded so that, or is it always that, harpsichord sound is more specifically localized than piano. It is lighter, pointier. Immense intellectual heft, lightly borne, tales within tales within could finish and be done several times but then continue on, again, into ravishing beauty.
Die Kunst der Fuge, Contrapunctus XVIII - J. S. Bach - Lionel Rogg
To be inside this fuguescape fuguemare fugeuedral aware of the granular harmony of the spirit.
2nd fugue like a chapel echoes the cathedral and looook! we can open up this wall and create a third midsize space - and finally 3rd fugue here's the choir with our Orgelmeister Kappelmeister - an architectural tour, all the sites singing. Surely if this had gone on JSB had a grander weirder place for it to get to than any such place as it had already been.
 |
| Karen and me, 1986 |
November 13, 2017
Lazy Drag - Thomas Morris [from Alan Lowe's
That Devilin' Tune]
Light touch on the beat at the start, allowing them to fatten it up or thin it out as needed. Patterns of same.
Columbia's Waters - Woody Guthrie [from
Columbia River Collection]
Conceit: this song is a job application in which many of WG's stock phrases are trotted out again. A window into a process of making.
For Minors Only - Chet Baker, Art Pepper [from
Playboys]
Clearly, this track is a product, an object, quintessentially commercial.
Far and Wide - Brahms - Lake Washington Singers, Betty Eisenbrey, Joanne Deacon [from
A Musical Souvenir: The Lake Washington Singers Spring Concert (April 11, 1961)]
Some fine piano playing there, Joanne!
Hymnen - Stockhausen
 |
| Karen and Isaac, 1996 |
What is a theme within such a thicket?! A prop, a focus, a thread to follow, a placeholder: NOT THE SHOW.
I think to myself "this is the Stockhausen that got on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's." Extreme Ivesian quote festival. (I started composing about 10 years after this was made, and it only took me about 4 years to find it, for it to find me.) I spent a lot of time with it back in the day.
Sounds we follow as they variously incarnate and morph toward other veering incarnations.
Electronic music was what it is now, a bunch of folks playing with new toys. What sounds can we get on this? What are
its sounds?
Its voice? As it concerns radio: radio waves, invisible light, dark light, another dark, another sleep, another night, another wake. Front loaded: an active eventful texture, signals in transit, the harrowing descent, breathing human sleeping.
". . . nur eine Erinnerung": What does that actually do as an excuse for the
böses Blut es gibt?
Some events are discrete moments, note-like - hard edged short events. Others are episodes of flange and sweep - long events. Flange-y buzz-hum-y waves rhythmed syllabically. We hear the timbre shift as a quasi-vowel shift. Thuds of war episode in third region where whistlers imitate the whole of what they are of in mimicry, in mimicry as a kind of abstraction. A full range of immediacy(ies) articulating murk.
November 14, 2017
Trust Me - Janis Joplin [from Pearl]
The plea goes on and on circling inside around the instrumentals, pleading never ending changes.
Still Crazy After All These Years - Paul Simon [from
The Essential Paul Simon]
In a warm keyboard bath. Is it just me or did I really catch a partial quote of
Bridge Over Troubled Water in the strings?
We're Desperate - X [from
Wild Gift]
Structural density of the guitar/bass complex: leave space in the verse for the words, leave none in the chorus.
Banned Rehearsal 67 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 1986]
In the little Greenwood half house, sneezing, heater, hooting: slide show? Conversational, sort of, in that we are doing activities and also being with each other as just folks a little bit. Bumping around is up front, music as such, in deep background. Woozy but not unpleasantly so. Making spaghetti, it sticks good. Slow swing dinner in B-flat minor. This is our trademark DING! from a junkshop in Kingston NY. The tape machine has an eraserhead button (still does, long unpushed). "I hope that was intentional or not." My dad shows up, must have been something to do with my passport. Karen may have moved up to live with Neal & Anna while interviewing. Tri-doxology, para-para-doxology (hindsight) a hindsight. It is very nice it just slips underneath the skin. Berry-ness is discussed. Wild sound on acoustic guitar.
Polly- Nirvana [from NevermindWordblurbs in exact syllabic count fitted into soundblurb segments with pitch trajectories, a partial song. (Schumann's inescapable ghost.)
Banned Rehearsal 432 - Isaac E, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [August 1986]
 |
| Paradise |
We try to get something to work. Got those wah-wah tech blues. Aaron's synth, I believe, we struggle with the extent of our tech-savvy: this has an "in" that fits the guitar patch cord, therefore if we plug in the guitar to it we will automatically get magnificence. At the time it seemed, oddly, that nothing was happening, that the guitar strumming had no effect on what was coming out of the synth. The jury is still out on it, but the sounds of us struggling with it are fabulous. "It is my firm belief that with five more synthesizers we could achieve total silence." And yet, between the synth, the Mighty Wurzlitzer, and our direct to cassette mastering, I wonder if any prog rock band has ever sounded as good? the Tintinabulary at its finest. We don't do nicety.
Banned Rehearsal 621 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [November 2001]
Nothing to hear but you. You make the sound. In our digitally produced era there is more air between the sounds, which allows more expanse of surface with which to mess, more coast to invade. Plunks and hums tiny sounds of extreme interhearing. Down to pianississimo violin tremolo and small frame drum, ocarina moving between their soundboxes' resonances, articulating a shiver whistling in the dark.
November 17, 2017
Banned Rehearsal 698 -Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2006]
Testing the waters. It generally doesn't take much to get it going, inert as it is, (though it be), just takes the right gentle push prolonged just so long. After several false-like leads: snare drum, flute and buzz, but that also falters . . or wait, now it's moving. Reasons to hang in there. Seeping into other sounds groundwater invisible under cover of underground it sneaks past the carousel skimming the feedback fence, flirting with skimming it under cover of skimming past it we flirt under darkness with the broad light of it, of past days.
Goodbye Amsterdam - Rachel Harrington [from
Celilo Falls]
Relations among people occur in landscapes. How much we leave - its expanse of sorrow - when we leave each other. Gentle stutters in the guitar figures.
Banned Rehearsal 906 -Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Kosály-Meyer [March 2016]
Neal learns himself speaking. Tiny construction workers hammering miniature hammerings. Wallace watches o'er, duets across the continent with cowbell. Lightweight sphere rolls the texture of the drumskinhead amplified by circular tension applied. Copperpipe in syntheticfoam insulationtube squeak like balloons.
In Session at the Tintinabulary
November 12, 2017
Rain Traffic Crabby Crows - Keith Eisenbrey
Our best guess is that the crows were complaining about the rain.
November 14, 2017
Kitchen - Keith Eisenbrey
For the record: I didn't break anything.
November 15, 2017
Second Thoughts - Keith Eisenbrey
I finished composing the first eight
Études d'exécution imminent in May of 2014. In terms of the original chart this was the half-way point, but I needed a break to re-think myself, to consider where the composition of these had gotten me, so I took a self-imposed sabbatical from composition - indifferently observed: news of the death of J. K. Randall brought forth a response in the form of
J, (September 2014), I was asked to contribute to Ben Boretz's Festschrift (
Another, December 2014) and I arranged a traditional hymn tune for Karen to sing just after Christmas (
Hail the Blest Morn) - altogether a fairly productive sabbatical. In the spring of 2015 I started working on these disassembled piece parts, which together constitute the 9th Etude, finishing in August, 16 months later. That was a long time for just a few notes, but I flatter myself they are densely packed. Arranged as in this (not quite perfect) performance, one after the other, the piece parts play out the re-writing of memory as it is remembered and its eventual, inevitable, loss.
