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| your blogger and family visit Bickleton, WA |
During the latter half of the decade of chaos I spent a lot of time working on
a cantata -
The Abyss (1998) (since withdrawn) - for small SATB chorus,
with an orchestra of five wind players and string quartet. It is based on
several stanzas from Byron's
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Being flush
with how well my first mod-17 piece -
Psalm 130 (1994) - had come
together I wanted to make something ambitious to see if it would work on a
large scale. The resulting piece has some significant performance challenges,
chief among them being ridiculously aspirational ranges for the singers. That
aside I was struggling with what it meant for a music to actually be "in"
mod-17, and not just some funky bespoke diatonicism. Although many parts may
be quite effective from an expressionist standpoint, the whole is hopelessly
wooly. But no work is wasted and I did accustom myself to thinking outside the
mod-12 box. I also re-used some of the melodic ideas in other smaller pieces
such as
Two Pomes Play (1997) for clarinet and bassoon.
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| Neal and Karen in Bickleton, WA |
In 1995 I arranged one of my
fourpartsongs of 1992 -
O Love, How Cheering is Thy Ray!- for solo voice and piano so that
Karen could sing it for a church service. And for a while after that I was
composing a song for that purpose every year or so, among which was
Glory to God (1998), a setting of the first few stanzas of Charles
Wesley's hymn, later stanzas of which appeared as the first hymn in the
Methodist Hymnals of the last century as
Oh For a Thousand Tongues To Sing.
Karen and I remained quite busy with our church choir through these years. We
rehearsed in the choir's church-basement room, but would often work our way
upstairs to the sanctuary to practice with the organ. Our organist, the
fabulous David Di Fiore, usually got to the loft before the choir got
themselves together, and would often accompany our straggling procession to
the chancel with rousing quasi-calliope music. This amused me enormously so I wrote a piece for him, based on the hymn tune "Foundation" (popularly known
as Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing) that, at one point goes into full
calliope mode. I named it after one of my favorite lines in the hymn -
"Here I raise mine Ebenezer" - and being the clever lad I was I
folded in an adaption of the hymn tune "Ebenezer" as a counterpoint. David
played it magnificently and I treasure the recording I have of his
performance.
In 1995 I gave another recital - Local Flavor - at our church. The program
was:
Six Piano Pieces - Aaron Keyt
Short Forms - Ken Benshoof
Fifth Sonata
- Lockrem Johnson
Oracle from Dark Wood - Neal Kosály-Meyer (with
Neal joining me in a speaking role)
Sonata in 2 Movements - Keith
Eisenbrey
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| your blogger with kids having a picnic |
In August of 1996 we welcomed a second baby into the family, wisely deciding
to stop right there. Besides our rapidly shrinking house, Karen made it quite
clear that she now considered child birth to be a younger person's sport, and
that she was done. In 1998 we travelled once again to Yellowstone, destroying
the radiator in our car (a used Volvo with a turning radius to die for I had
purchased from a co-worker). We met Karen's folks there, staying at a cabin at
Canyon. Karen's sister, her husband David and their two kids also made it
there, but Neal's little family were stymied by breakdowns and only got as far
as Coeur D'Alene.
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| your blogger in mid chaos |
And Banned Rehearsal just kept right on making tapes. some highlights were two
live performances - two 1996 sets at The Speakeasy Internet Café in the
Belltown neighborhood of Seattle (a few months before a fire closed it down)
and back at Brechemin Auditorium at the UW School of Music in 1997 for Banned
Rehearsal 440. Shortly after that I bought a DAT recording device and we have
been recording ourselves digitally ever since. We also put out our one and
only CD -
Teach Yourself to Drive (1998). It was a milestone for us,
but definitely added some stress to the system on top of the general struggles
of life with small children.
Banned Playout (1995):
Numbered: (380-409): 26:27:52
Peripherals: 15
Sessions: 07:31:01
Total 1995: 33:58:53
Banned Playout (1996):
Numbered: (410-439): 27:15:52
Sectionals: 1
Session: 00:46:05
Peripherals: 8 Sessions: 03:55:53
Total
1996: 31:57:50
Banned Playout (1997):
Numbered: (440-477): 34:49:45
Peripherals: 1
Session 00:25:58
Total 1997: 35:15:43
Banned Playout (1998):
Numbered: (478-517): 29:14:24
Sectionals: 1
Session: 00:28:01
Peripherals: 4 Sessions 02:06:54
Total
1998: 31:49:19
Grand Total: 613:58:22
Scores:
Two Pomes Play
O Love, How Cheering is Thy Ray!
Glory to God
"Here I raise mine Ebenezer"
Recordings:
O Love, How Cheering is Thy Ray!
"Here I raise mine
Ebenezer" (performed on piano)
