The PBE is pleased to announce that we have been invited to play at the 2008 REDCAT Spring Studio
We will be premiering Requiem for a High Crime Enclave (selections); a deconstruction of Purcell's Funeral Music for Queen Mary (1694) based on excerpts from the from the LA Times Homicide Report which documents every murder that takes place in Los Angeles County using blog posts, comments, and Google Maps.
Here is a link to the trailer for the piece.
Saturday May 17th and Sunday May 18th, 8:30pm Roy and Edna Disney/Calarts Theater (REDCAT) $15 general admission 631 W 2nd St Los Angeles, CA 90012
oc register review, september 26 2007
Category: Music
Wednesday, September 26, 2007 Paul Bailey Ensemble at home in Fullerton The composer's self-named alternative classical group plays an entertaining program of minimalist works at Meng Concert Hall. By TIMOTHY MANGAN The Orange County Register
On the FAQ page of the Paul Bailey Ensemble's Web site (paulbaileyensemble.org) the group is dubbed an "alternative-classical garage band." One wonders what that is until one hears it and wonders no longer. It's a good description. This is a flexibly sized chamber ensemble, locally based, made up of friends and colleagues who have mostly studied at Cal State Fullerton. Tuesday night's incarnation of the group, when it performed at Meng Concert Hall on campus, included an electric guitar, electric bass, keyboards, clarinet and trombone (the last played by the composer himself, Paul Bailey). It makes a funky, gritty sound, but it also capable of a warm euphony.
I would say that Bailey's music is minimalist, with the proviso that the composer himself, like so many minimalists, doesn't like that label. His favorite composers, though, include the minimalists Michael Nyman, Glass, Reich and Riley, as well as Satie, Monteverdi, Bach and Palestrina. His own music combines a minimalist's interest in repetition, motion and simple harmony with Baroque bass lines. In fact, the passacaglia, a set of variations on a repeated melodic bass line, popular with Baroque composers, is Bailey's preferred métier.
This style was perhaps most explicit in the opening number, "Cheap Admiration," written in 2005 and based on a work by the 17th century composer Johann Pezel. A fuzz guitar got a little rhythmic riff going, a Baroque progression with a syncopated groove, and the other instruments joined in, layering and interweaving lines, spinning, turning and floating.
Bailey's music doesn't put on airs. It's easy to listen to and to understand the first time. The composer seems to take joy in the simple motion of music, in plain harmonies and melodic scraps as ordinary as do re mi. The fascination comes from hearing it all spin around and work itself out, like a load of mixed laundry in a dryer, or flames in a fireplace.
His music does express something, though. His "Fearless Leader" had a Glassian hypnotic melancholy, a growing in tension, then release. "Eye for Optical Theory," based on a Nyman theme, scampered along quickly and jazzily and was decorated with soulful trombone scoops.
"Life's Too Short," the second of an eventual trilogy, added three vocalists, who talked and keened a dryly witty, existential text, made more so by both its matter-of-fact repetition, lyrical limning and uneven meter. The trilogy's finale will be "Life's Too Long."
The New York-based trio Real Quiet (cello, piano, percussion) were guests on the program and joined the PBE for Bailey's "Principal of Sufficient Irritation," a piece that features a short ostinato riff tossed all around like a hot potato. The work morphs and builds (at one point finding itself in a quasi Bo Diddley groove) and is one of the composer's most ambitious and engrossing.
On its own Real Quiet added three pieces, by Annie Gosfield, Phil Kline and Marc Mellits. Somehow, I found these pieces, accomplished and polished though they were, less satisfying, perhaps because they took themselves so seriously. Gosfield's "Wild Pitch" encompassed aggressive allegros, lonely dreams and quarter-tone decoration. Kline's "The Last Buffalo," a three-movement homage to Hunter Thompson, juxtaposed long-arched cello solos with a motoric central movement in a heavy tread. The three of the four movements performed of Mellits' "Tight Sweater" seemed mere etudes in hopping and grinding minimalism.
But then came the grand finale, Frederic Rzewski's 1969 "Les Moutons de Panurge," which requires a touch of explanation. Both ensembles joined in for this ebullient gambit, written for "any number of musicians." "Panurge" consists of a single melodic line of 65 notes which the players are instructed to perform in additive fashion, first 1, then 1-2, then 1-2-3, and so on until the end. They begin together but invariably get off, the composer instructing, "if you get lost, stay lost." Also, the tempo continuously accelerates. The result is a kind of mad "Row, row, row your boat," of canons gone wild and off track, of "Bolero" on steroids.
It's not mayhem, though, the instructions providing for the relentless rewinding of the melody with a single note added to it each time; the listener is in a space where the music dances around him like so many bouncing atoms. To my knowledge, there's not another piece quite like "Panurge" and these musicians had rollicking good fun with it. So did we.
here is a video from our last show at csuf performing with real quiet (andrew russo, david cossin, and felix fan). you can also download new songs on our profile from our gig at lacc
how-wonderful-is-brian-ferneyhough?
Current mood: chipper
Category: Music
so this is the post where i'm supposed to give you some special reason to come to the show in a week. just got back from a really great rehearsal and i could give you a lot of reasons, so here is my best hollywood 'pitch' of why you might want to leave your house and drive to csuf for a concert on tuesday september 25th.
why else is this concert worth attending? first off we are sharing the concert with the new kids on the block of new music (NKOTBNM) the nyc based chamber group has is making there first los angeles appearance and you should come. their new album tight sweater (featuring the music of marc mellits) is frakkin' great. besides mellits they are playing music of phil kline, and annie gosfield.
as for the pbe. i'm kinda surprised that we are even playing this show. last may it looked like carl, ryan and bruce would all be leaving the pbe after graduation. thankfully bruce decided to stay for the time being and our original bass player matt menaged moved back into town this summer. this lineup is a powerhouse and has gelled quite nicely. i'd say its pbe 3.o.
so what about the show. or as they used to say "show me the beef". our goals are very consistent and simple. we want to entertain you, we want to make you think and we want to have a great time performing music that we wouldn't get to play anywhere else. entertainment wise, its the strongest set we have yet played. as a show its got something for everybody; garage band jam's, covers, vocal fun and some improvisation. go ahead see for yourself...
fearless leader- this tune has had more versions than a cat has lives. it started very unsuccessfully as an ambitious modular experiment that failed miserably in a live reviewed performance at whittier college (thanks again to the oc register's tim mangan for a really polite review of that debacle). over time it became more of an orchestration study. its not a perfect piece, but at the time i think i was creatively blocked and i looked at finishing it as a challenge to overcome. i keep asking the group if they want to take it out of the set, but they seem to like it more than me.
eye for optical theory this probably has to be one of my favorite michael nyman tunes. i have never been able to find a score of it, so one summer i decided to write it down. its based on a repeated ground bass (kind of like fearless leader) and about halfway through i realized his "trick" is that he only was using combination of about 8-9 repeated melodies. my version plays on this and i just started with my sheet of melodies and hooked them together like lego's to make my own version. in last nights rehearsal i added a call and response introduction where our keyboard player eric plays one of the antecedent licks and we play its consequent answer. we play this game until he wants to start the piece and then plays the first line in octaves to let us know to go on. its fun way to bring a little life to one of our fluffier pieces. i also strongly feel that a night of any one composers music can be pretty exhausting. a little nyman along the way sets up the rest of the show really well.
life's too short this is the showpiece of the night. its one of the few compositions that i have written that came out effortlessly fully composed and orchestrated. in our first rehearsal we played it head to toe without stopping once. its a pretty damn good piece and i'm still couldn't tell you how i wrote it. what is it about? self actualization through nihilism, nietzsche meet tony robbins. its in english. you will be able to understand the text. its over the top. its funny. its in your face.
in many ways i think its a conceptually a reaction of going to a very well performed master chorale concert in which all the music was by american composers but none of it was in english. everything was well written and orchestrated, but the concept of having your audience sit and listen to some "secret code" was insane. scanning the crowd from the back row of disney hall this performances seemed more dehumanizing as the evening wore on. the audience wanted to like it, and seemed desperate to connect with the music. (it was beautiful) but what kind of conversation goes on for an two hours in a variety of assorted foriegn languages? sitting in the audience felt like a strange ritual listening to an evening of recently composed choral music without theater or narrative.
anytime you add vocalists to anything its like hearding cats. on most nights the energy they add to an instrumental show can be hard to control. when they come on stage its easy for me to forget my job (the cues and conducting) because i really love to hear them sing. over time i realized that once i get them to the middle of most pieces we loosen up and have a lot of fun on the back end.
principle of sufficient irritation (11/25/05) this is probably or favorite piece. its written in a modular style with a variety pre-composed melodic syncopated and ostinato lines. (terry riley's in C is the most famous example). overall its more similar to the improvisational process used in tv shows like curb your enthusiasm or any of christopher guest's wonderful movies. the piece has a very clear beginning middle and end and we all know our responsibilities in each section. for instance i play some melody in the first section, i lead the group into the canon in the middle, and play ostinatos in the third. how and what i'll play i can choose every night. over time there are happy accidents that turn the piece in new directions. each new player that comes in also brings their own personality into the piece. one of the good things about 11/25 is that its got a nice rhythmic/melodic turn when it we start moving from the submediant to the tonic moving from a hard charging 6/8 to 3/4. (and back to the original opening statement) while it serves as a very energetic totem that no matter how the evening is going that once we get rolling towards that 'turn' its a very simple engine that creates quite a lot of energy. some nights we even feel like we can levitate the stage during this section which is the whole reason i got into this racket.
are you sold yet? still skeptical? i know i have been to more bad new music concerts than i count. please don't hold that against me. i hated them also. how about if i sweeten the deal with a guarantee (of course i can't really afford to give you a money back offer... i'm only public employee) if you don't like the show i'll buy you a beer, i just don't want to hear about how wonderful brian ferneyhough is.
i feel so much better since i met dr. pete
Current mood: cheerful
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes
my life coach is starting to make his own videos. i really feel like things are coming together for me. ever since i started reading his blog and attending his online "achievement first!" online chat sessions i feel the power of the sock. don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself.
just finished the first draft of my next big piece life's to short. the libretto started as a big vocal piece but has quickly become a short film. were going to start rehearsals on the music and vocals next saturday night and we will be workshopping the music and some vocals at our nov 12th second sunday performance at mr. t's bowl. if all goes well in dec we should have some film and the first full run would be in jan.
just got out of cat hair ensemble reh at the cat hair clubhouse in alhambra. who would have thought that my cat allergies would come into play? i survived tonights reh, although my cat allergies limit me to about 45 minutes of reh. i'm sitting in with them on sunday, sept 17th at safari sam's.
the live show mp3's are online. this bunch is from mr. t's bowl, 090306. if all goes well we will be hosting 2nd sunday's at mr. t's bowl. the next show would be sunday, oct 8th.
past and future (good times)
Current mood: energetic
Category: Music
thanks again to all who came out to last night. its great to play for such a big and enthusiastic crowd. where else can you see somebody serenade a ikea lamp, alt-classical garage band and band with balloon bass? thanks again to dorian wood and unpopable for their unique and wonderful performances.
because of the success of last nights show, i'm probably going to start hosting an early show on 2nd sundays of each month. we just have a few details to work out, but if all goes well the next night would be october 8th. the goal is to promote other bands like us who don't really fit in on "rock nite". kind of the 'bad news bears' musical cabaret.
we also have a good recording and video of the show. look for parts of it to be posted online over the next week or two.
our next show is sept 14th with ninja academy at midnite. on sept. 17th i'm going to be sitting in with the cat hair ensemble at safari sams. show starts around 7pm. we also are looking playing a few other clubs starting in oct and i'll also be sharing a faculty recital at csuf on march 15th.
amused
cheerful
chipper
anxious
sick
energetic