Playlist

Recorded

 

January 19, 2014

 

Keyboard Sonata in C-sharp minor Hob.XVI:36 - Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

 

As though cut into pieces and jumbled back together. Blown away by the tricky metrical scansion in the 3rd movement, we are knocked off our balance and led to the edge, where we remain.

 

Banned Rehearsal 56 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Karen Meyer, Neal Meyer - November 1985

In my Greenwood cottage, 1985

 

On occasion one of our less formally improvised sessions manages to succeed in some pretty amazing ways. The instant example is occupied mostly with a slide show and its attendant conversation. At that level it manages to be among our least smart-ass talky-tapes, and as a consequence is quite a fine snapshot of who we were and what we were like back in the day. On a family-business note this is particularly fun because it was made just a month or so before Karen and I made clear to each other our mutual smittenhood, and you can certainly sense more than a little flirtation in the air. But as Neal begins to layer in several other sessions, including the internally infamous Banned Rehearsal 12 and the less infamous Banned Rehearsal 44, with its own slide show and commentary, it becomes a wonderful study in the dynamics of recorded presence. In the end the dinosaurs swallow us all.

 

January 20, 2014

Foliage (live recording of playback) - Aaron Keyt

 

This electronic work opened our concert at the Chapel in November of 2010. The sound of it, as recorded in the space, is a pointedly immediate image of the tiny, the delicate, the close-focused, measured in millimeters from our ear. A tam-tam-y interlude at a great distance, across a chasm, marks out an extraordinarily specific stance of relative points in space. It is as though, with ear alone, we directly perceive the vector between them: concrete, immutable, impossibly precise.

 

Keyboard Sonata in D Major Hob.XVI:37 - Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

Eethoven - Tom Jajdu, Andrew Milburn, J. K. Randall - (from InterPlay)

 

big circles

muttered musical analysis clipped space radio chatter

freefloating atmosphog

back earthly metamorphosed

discourse :: continuity

moving alongness

stuckness

sight-seeing examples pasted SPLAT!

 

"you can't put those next to a fughetta with an H in it!" (JKR)

 

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

January 19, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 851 - Jenny Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

 

Upcoming

 

March 7, 2014 - 8 PM

Seattle Composers Salon

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

I will be performing Aaron Keyt's Sonata (2012) for solo piano.

 

April 12, 2014 - 8 PM

Herocat



A Cat's Life Returns Again - a recital by Keith Eisenbrey, piano, with special guest Olivia Sterne, narrator

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Attitude - Doug Palmer

Greek Nickel 2 - J. K Randall

Sonata (2012) - Aaron Keyt

A Cat's Life, a little opera for solo piano (1990) - Keith Eisenbrey

 

 

 

 

 

June 27, 2014 - 8 PM

Banned Rehearsal Celebrates 30 Years of Noise

Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

 

 

 

Playlist

Recorded

 

January 11, 2014

The Promise - Bruce Springsteen

 

Santa Barbara, CA - January 2014

I was out of town on business most of the week, so I didn't get much listening in, and this long album of also-rans doesn't provide much to work with. For the most part the arrangements fall back on Bruce's perfunctory trademark sound - every thinning of texture is a setup for the next goose of energy. The songs that stood out for me were the one's in which he stepped out of his usual mold: the surfer-rock Candy's Boy, the Elvis-impersonator version of Fire, and Ain't Good Enough For You.

You're welcome.

Playlist

Recorded

January 4, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 55 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Meyer - November 1985

 

tuning or just plucking - talking - moving microphones

heater expanding sliding down onto a Steady Rhythmic Texture

(problematic because SRT is hard to stop - SRT precludes a choice)

lo and behold the whole becomes more invested the moment SRT does finally stop

but Wild Thing (Neal) intrudes again - De Imitatione Troggi

once that is over the sound in progress re-emerges

then Anna gives Wild Thing a come-hither slant - probably the best performance of them all, if that is what we wanted

at the end we construct a din, whew!

 

Cape Alava trail, Olympic National Park, Washington

January 5, 2014

Gradus 183 - Neal Meyer - November 2010

 

Gradus concerns itself, through the entire expanse of its conceptual scope, with a dialogue about identities. At it's root end, the tokens of identity are individual key strokes, conversing in series and in conjunction. Each sequent decision builds, over time, a field of variations, and, over bigger time, larger-scale fields of variations of fields of variations. But all is seen from the inside, the shape of its experience forming itself like the trace line of single starling in flock.

 

Sonata in D K.284 - Mozart - Mitsuko Uchida

January 7, 2014

KEE JR 851114 - Keith Eisenbrey, John Rahn - November 1985

 

I remembered making this tape at John's house but I had forgotten, or didn't realize then, how fabulous it is. Admirably minimal and transparent, with a lovely soft hum that morphs as we move about - a commentary on the shape of the space. It is really two separate sessions, the first and longest with small instruments (monochord? ocarina?), and the second on bassoon (John) and cello or bass (me). If my memory serves me correctly it is also the first time I heard a CD. I believe the music was by Janacek.

 

Agogic - Andrew N. D'Angelo, Cuong Vu, Luke Bergman, Evan Woodle

 

A crack team.

Mission: to instantiate through independent cooperation complex environments in which individuality can emerge, but never as the whole of the whole.

Some notes as it went along:

1. bass drum heavy parallel play short hockety interlocks

2. quick hyper

3. slow reverbery

4. crack team, see above

5. lyric (drumming mirrors amplifies comments textures

6. starts like R&R but trips, trips, trippingly - like an extended Buster Keaton riff

7. receding back into the past

 

Keyboard Sonata in C Hob.XVI:35 - Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

 

figurations distracted to find themselves of a sudden wearing new clothes.

 

January 8, 2014

Banned Sectional 18 KEE NWM - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer - November 1985

 

Starts with some texts: If I Am A Fishy Thinker (with commentary), then some freeform, and then we rehearse Neal's Three Songs, finishing up with yet another Wild Thing.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary

 

January 6, 2014

Banned Rehearsal 850 - Jenny Chung, Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer

 

We welcome a new face.

Playlist

Recorded

December 29, 2013
Banned Rehearsal 54 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Meyer - November 1985



Naches River, Washington - October 2013

Any sound is allowed. We choose sounds not usually associated with musical expression: conversation, body movement. Since these sounds are so strongly associated, both socially and biologically, with our quotidian living, it requires a significant mental stretch to hear them as anything but what they usually are. On the recording I hear a conversation, hear the sound of bodies moving, and their specificities as conversation and motion bring to mind, unbidden, an image of the speakers and an image of their bodies in a remembered space. In order to hear those recorded sounds as musical sounds, or as sounds-as-sounds, they must be shorn of these specificities and new specificities must be abstracted from what remains, or the old specificities must be actively and creatively transformed, literally beyond recognition. Until the ligature is crossed the quotidian deafens us.

Snohomish Piece 3 Remix - Keith Eisenbrey, S. Eric Scribner

Visual perception, for me, whether direct, remembered, or imagined, obscures the musical. One of the strengths of recorded sound, as a medium, is its abstraction from the visual, however variously overpowering might be the mechanism of its own production. Nothing is, after all, purely abstract. Ritualized performance practice can offer a similar function. It has this worth precisely due to its familiarity. We've seen it before. We can ignore it now. And so it disappears. One only hopes the residue is music.

Sonata in G K.283 - Mozart - Alicia de Larrocha

Tempo and tone production are geared to a large space. Does this piece really live here?

January 1, 2014
Banned Sectional 17 KEENWM - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer - November 1985

"To whatever extent the concept of a cutting edge is still relevant, it must be reserved for truly experimental ideas: those that run the risk of failure." - David Dunn: New Music America 1985, (News of Music, March 1986).



Naches River, Washington - October 2013

Once again I attempt to read and find no voice with which to read. Inflection doesn't help. Makes it worse, actually. Sinks the words deeper into their wordiness. The bare speaking voice is bland and thin. It is only in those moments when what Neal is doing to the reverberant and mechanically regurgitated sound space teases out unique inflections of my syllabic rhythm - against the walls or slamwhap up against its own past - that anything like a gratifying sound emerges. But for those few moments all else is forgotten. Failure in and of itself is no guarantee, but without its imminent threat there are no possibilities other than the prosaic.

January 2, 2013
Snohomish Piece 4 Remix - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer, S. Eric Scribner
Sonata in G K.283 - Mozart - Mitsuko Uchida

With Mozart one could almost believe there is a precedent underlying harmonic text to it all, that both elegant Ursatz and multi-layered, densely cross-referenced prolongation sprang at once, fully formed and perfect, to his imagination. But it is more difficult to believe that he would have cared. The stronger image is of lyric flux from moment to moment: all parts balance, all parts are shapely, their balance as shapely as their shape is balanced. Part answers to part and segment to segment. The goal is to delight, not to arrive.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

Naches River, Washington - October 2013

December 30, 2013
Gradus 239 - Neal Meyer

Is 2, in sequence, the same manner of 2 as is 2 together? Is the difference of the different manner of 2 they could be the same manner of difference as the different manners of 2 persisting among sequences of 2 within groups of 3 or 4 or more and sequences of 2 alone? Is 2 2 ever? Or is 2 2 only accidentally, ephemerally?

Playlist

Recorded

December 23, 2013
Banned Section 16 KEE NWM - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer - October 1985

Once again, Wild Thing appears just about the time we give up on our collective imagination, sealing the fate of the session.

December 26, 2013
You Can See The Bottom - Triptet

It was the hat that did it.

Karen and I won this CD (and many more!) for best costume at the release party at Egans.

(phases into and from):

 

1 landing arrival stops

2 uh oh nervous helicopters - hide!

3 on that other planet (the plumbing leaks)

4 straight up no apology

5 keening homophony slower than

6 tune in alien airwaves - jazznoir slinky number ends in back alley knife to throat

7 thrashjazz striving to be becoming conscious of self

8 weeks later same session self fully formed looking back

Sonata in E-flat K.282 - Mozart - Mitsuko Uchida

Such sensitive touch! Now I want to try playing this on my clavichord.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 23, 2013
Mitchell 1312230
Keith Eisenbrey

While Karen and Neal were rehearsing YMSK I tried out the freshly batteried pickup of the guitar that walked over the other day, in four track glory. This may be my best route to learning to play the thing.

Playlist

Live

December 14, 2013
Gradus: for Fux, Tesla and Milo the Wrestler
Neal Kosaly-Meyer
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle

Imagine your quest is to learn our solar system and everything in it one particle at a time. The number of particles, or in this case of combinations of the 88 keys of the piano, is the quantity expressed in base 2 by a sequence of 88 ones. A very large quantity indeed. It is so large, in fact, that this piece, this quest, in its entirety, can't be heard. It is, as an entirety, or even as a significant enough portion to grasp as a portion, completely and essentially inaudible - as absolute a silence as can be imagined.

 

Recorded

 

December 17, 2013

Banned Rehearsal 53 - Keith Eisenbrey, Anna K, Neal Meyer - October 1985

 

We start with some rhythm modules that ease into sudden songs: Under the Stars, and Can't Play th'Trumpet. But by the end, between Neal's blown-out speaker (dubbed 'the speaker of the house') and craziness with the microphones, the session sounds like the machinery of civilization recording itself being chewed to pieces by a planet sized troll.

 

Banned Rehearsal 781 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer - October 2010

 

25 years later, subtle shifts of flora map a forest floor.

 

December 19, 2013

Keyboard Sonata (Divertimento) in D Hob.XVI:4 - Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

 

I was put in mind of J.K. Randall's bias against "Perfunctory Propulsion". These phrases don't interleave in graceful subversion of meter (like Bach), or balance in delightful conversation (like Mozart). They whip like pennants in a stiff breeze. Until suddenly they don't and they are fountains frozen solid. Until suddenly they are filigree or crickets or calculus.

 

Children's Choir Christmas Pageant - Bellevue First United Methodist Church 1965

 

I was six, so I must have been in one of these choirs.

 

In Session at the Tintinabulary November 25, 2013

Banned Rehearsal 849 - Karen Eisenbrey, Keith Eisenbrey, Steve Kennedy, Aaron Keyt, Neal Meyer



Playlist

Live


Triptet unplugged

December 12, 2013
Triptet
Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, Seattle








sequence theater

simultaneity complexes

of textures with or without

vector sequences

of note-isms or textures

of simultaneities or quasi-simultaneities

offset not simultaneous quite

but not because not vertically aligned

or not because not possibly

vertically aligned

but arising

with in

or with from

distinctions

of persons

 

encrusted

colonized

imagined inaudible

layers beneath

remove process

remove power

beneath that

what

Recorded

December 8, 2013
Banned Sectional 15 KEE NWM - Keith Eisenbrey, Neal Meyer, October 1985

Workhorse

This tape ended up being a distillation and summary of several strategies that had been worked out in previous sessions. We started with sudden songs, notably Neal's first cover of Aaron Keyt's This Bus Won't Stop For Me, immediately preceded by the instructions "Enthusiasm, idealism, and a forthright approach". After we did that for a while we found ourselves in channel separation mode, Neal in the left speaker making tiny sounds and me in the right speaker with a guiro. Moving then to spoken word play (" . . .  think  slowly  stop  between  each   word  . . . "), high birdlike feedback intrudes, at first masquerading as whistling then boldly chirping. We take a high banking trajectory into a crazy, off place. Neal ends in self-referential mode, softly repeating "this is what I call a quiet tape" over and over to the cut. It certainly has some lame moments, but is mostly quite listenable.

December 10, 2013
Snohomish Piece 2 Remix - Keith Eisenbrey, S. Eric Scribner, Neal Meyer

In the battle for cognitive awareness, order trumps chaos. We latch on with biological fierceness to what we can make sense of, leaving the rest to be understood in terms of that what that we can make sense of. Or: why steady beats are so poisonous to free improvisation,

Keyboard Sonata (Partita) in C Hob. XVI:3 - Haydn - Christine Schornsheim

Performed on what I believe is a small harpsichord: not one of those orchestral multi-manual behemoths, but a private, residential sized instrument.

The Messiah (Christmas Portion) - Handel - Bellevue First United Methodist Church Chancel Choir, Betty Eisenbrey, conducting (1965)

For many, it just isn't Christmas without The Messiah. O what a difference italics make! The theological thrust of the work is focused on Christ the King, as one would expect when royal hierarchies were the only show in town. At our historical remove this comes across as far more flattering to kings than illuminative of Christ.

In Session at the Tintinabulary

December 9, 2013
Your Mother Should Know
Demo for an upcoming album project.