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

Playlist

Live

September 26, 2013
Broken Bow Ensemble
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Mer - John Teske

Beethoven's Symphony in D minor begins in this place, or near to it, and awakes from within the face of these waters an heroic cosmogony. Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen begins in this place, or near to it, and awakes from within the deeps of these waters a tragic mythogony. Mer abides in this place and recedes, here, from within us, here, revealing an image of our common us, together, here: a hope-glimmering sociogony.

Recorded

September 19, 2013
Group Variations (video) -  Russell Craig Richardson (vid), Benjamin Boretz (aud)  (from Open Space DVD 1)

I waited a week to write about this, and I'm still not sure what to say. Perhaps puzzlement is close to being a correct assessment. I have been familiar with Group Variations for decades, but a firm grasp of it persistently eludes. Richardson's video makes no particular attempt to track or mimic the music a la Fantasia, (thank you), but perhaps rather imagines a visual shifting in one's chair and a cocking of one's ears. We don't see the music, but the listener.

September 24, 2013
The Day I Heard Shelby Sing - Neal Meyer

A song can be just what one would say.

Three Noels - Jean-Francois Dandrieu - Marie-Claire Alain

My teacher Ken Benshoof once suggested that jazz musicians don't habitually play in keys so much as from them. Something like that is going on here, but the operative notion might be described as a nested metrical/phraseological norm, teasingly suggested precisely in order not to quite comfortably settle into.

Suite in G minor - Sylvius Leopold Weiss - Lutz Kirchhof

I kept thinking of how this music would come across played on a keyboard rather than a lute. The primary distinction would be the relative loss of presence of the body of the performer. The modern keyboard, be it harpsichord, fortepiano, or piano, is designed in part to be transparent, to vanish with its operator as an object in the room, so as to allow an unmediated musical experience. In that sense it is designed with a systemic lack of candor. Of course it mostly fails at this, and often it is the dynamic subtleties of failure that provide the human scale with which we can wrestle with the musical experience. But the lute is a much older animal and these intricate contrapuntal musics don't set upon it with quite the same hard-wired ease. Here the performer is an inescapable bodily presence, tooth and claw.

Mass in G Major - Schubert - Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Choruses, Robert Shaw

Transcends by expanding within.

September 25, 2013
Love Songs and Ballads of Stephen Foster - The New York Vocal Arts Ensemble
The Chicken - Rosco Gordon (from Sun Records Definitive Hits)

A salacious come-on so baldly disguised as to be more blatant than if it were straight out.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 22, 2013
Isaiah 60:1-5 - Keith Eisenbrey - Karen Eisenbrey, soprano, Keith Eisenbrey, piano

Enjoy! Link above to my soundcloud site.

September 23, 2013
Fox Spit 2 - Keith Eisenbrey

Neal was busy so I improvised on my brother Paul's handmade guitar.

Upcoming

Friday, October 4, 2013, 8pm
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Avenue North, Seattle
SoundScroll IX Concert - Steven Eric Scribner

Playlist

Live

September 14, 2013
Siri Bardarson & Steve Trembley
Ott & Murphy's Cabaret Stage, Langley

By way of full disclosure, Siri is a cousin of mine. We share great-grandparents on our respective mother's sides. Karen and I were on Whidbey to visit my folks and took the opportunity to catch Siri and Steve's act at a cozy winery in Langley.

Technically I suppose they are a cover band that throws some original material in occasionally. But they are up to more than simply playing familiar songs, from The 59th Street Bridge Song to Summertime and back again by way of Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles, and more than simply performing them quite ably (though they certainly do). Using the familiar as a springboard they are working out the sound of an oddly nice instrumental duo: amplified cello and electric guitar - four low strings tuned in fifths, and six treble strings tuned (mostly) in fourths. The mix of open sonorities was quite fine, their colors allowing ample aural space for rhythms to slip across the horizontal, delightfully askew but always clear. Their balance was impeccable, and what lovely guitars Steve has!

Recorded

September 18, 2013
This Bus Won't Stop For Me - Aaron Keyt
Clara With the Feet of Snow - Aaron Keyt

Using whatever happened to be on the radio or TV as an accompaniment, Aaron knocks two sudden songs out of the park. This Bus Won't Stop For Me gets picked up in later sessions by Neal, who gives it a more aggressive feel than Aaron's original insinuance, which gains a particular discord with the British laugh-track comedy in the background. Clara With the Feet of Snow is simply lovely, and probably impossible to duplicate. The backing was some late-night smooth jazz station. That sax player never had it so good.

Road - Keith Eisenbrey

This was the last of my solo sudden songs. I was exploring the possibilities of clear metrical feel within an expansively flexible beat. It features what is probably the most psychedelic of my lyrics.

Banned Rehearsal 50 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Meyer, August 1985

I don't remember exactly how we were arranging the electronics, but we had turned the next room into some sort of reverb chamber. It hovers just underneath feedback most of the time.

September 19, 2013
A Cat's Life (recording of April 16, 2013) - Keith Eisenbrey

I finished this 'little opera for solo piano' in 1990, thinking that surely some better pianist than I would see how much fun it is and go out to make it and them famous. It's been 23 years and no takers so far. The score is available on my website here. It's worth a look just for Karen's illuminations. I've always felt it is just a bit over my pianistic abilities, but learning it and re-learning it has pushed me to get better. This is the edited version of a long recording session made during my vacation last April.

I was interested in the mechanics of how music can be made to tell a particular story, but I could not imagine enduring the hassle of realizing a full operatic production with stage and singers. My solution was to include within a solo score all the trappings of Wagnerian narrative, and make the story explicit by means of a narrator - somewhat like Peter and the Wolf, or Oedipus Rex. It has been performed in that version twice, and now that I have learned it again I hope to find a suitable narrator and do it again very soon.

In Session at the Tintinabulary
September 16, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 844 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Neal Meyer

September 17, 2013
Scrap Film 1 - Keith Eisenbrey

September 18, 2013
Scrap Film 2 - Keith Eisenbrey

Two Audiofilms made for use at Steve Scribner's upcoming concert.

Playlist

Recorded

Holmes Harbor, Washington 1985

September 8, 2013
Banned Telepath 4 Berkeley - Aaron Keyt, August 1985

 

lullaby lullaby

the ghost's at the window

the wolf's at the door

lullaby lullaby

 

that spook is a US standard

tablespoon teaspoon

half teaspoon

quarter teaspoon

a tour of the living space

 

National Geographic: Magyar Mirth and Melancholy 1938 (scary times)

 

 

 

his calendar: interesting dates on it like . . .

December 22, 1985

dead cockatoos don't wear plaid

 

there's music tonight

in Antarctica

 

KQED

sound the alarm first

ask questions later

Lederkranz cheese recall

it's eleven nineteen and Henry Purcell wrote  . . .

September 10, 2013
Bann 2 - Aaron Keyt, August 1985

While listening to this I had a thought about notation: treble and bass clefs are separated from each other by a single ledger line. hypertreble and hypobass clefs could be done similarly. Hypertreble clef would be separated from treble clef by the ledger line A-natural. The lines would be (bottom to top) C E G B D, or Corner Every Gourmand Before Dawn. Hypobass clef would be separated from bass clef by the ledger line E-natural. The lines would be (bottom to top) B D F A C, or Boys Deliberately Fart After Class.



Nobody

Everybody - Keith Eisenbrey, August 1985

Continuing my solo sudden song project.

Banned Telepath 4 Greenwood - Keith Eisenbrey, August 1985

I was thinking about the nature of sung words, and of what singing does to the sounds of words. The working hypothesis was that to sing a word is to mis-pronounce it and by deliberately making it sound different than typically heard deflect our perception from its language-token existence toward its sound-token existence, allowing us to understand it as both a part of music and an act of language. So I was using my texts from Book of Windows and mispronouncing them toward music.

September 11, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 49 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer, August 1985

The four parts of Banned Telepath 4 mooshed together. I was interested to discover that my own contribution, so clearly focused on song and music in a somewhat ordinary sense, loses many of its salient particularities in conjunction with my collaborator's less clearly musical activities.

September 12, 2013
Med In Ord - J. K. Randall, August 1985 - (from InterPlay)

Discretion as a principle: each sound episode is as in its own room, so that their relatedness to each other is less emphatically sequential, is more cartographic or architectural. We go from sound to sound as though moving from space to space rather than as though moving along a timeline. With the ample space we have between classes, as it were, we could end up anywhere at all, and often do.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

September 8, 9, & 10, 2013
Isaiah 60:1-6 - Karen Eisenbrey, voice; Keith Eisenbrey, composer, piano

Trying out and learning to use the new recording equipment. Results are hopeful but not ready for public yet. It's too bad we didn't record our performance in church Sunday morning, it would be difficult to beat as a performance and the sound of the space is better than the living room is.

September 9, 2013
Gradus 233 - Neal Meyer

The second E-natural. As a single key is repeated the sound rolls in its string resonance, and that roll is attended and molded by our sense of what that roll is shaped like, to the extent that our recovery of the actuality of what it was shaped like lags a bit behind what we hear as we hear it.