From Stuart Dempster to Dave's Basement 1981-1982

your blogger with employment worthy haircut ca. 1981

During my last quarter at the UW I was a member of the University of Washington Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble, led that quarter by Seattle's legendary musical provacateur Stuart Dempster. I had been improvising on my own for years by then as part of my piano studies and later on of my compositional process, so I was comfortable with the concept, but this was my first experience doing so in a group setting. The focus was, crucially, on listening to each other, and less crucially for my later practice, listening for the endings of things so as to make satisfying pieces of music.

This was also my first opportunity to work together with Neal Meyer, who was also a member. We met in a large rehearsal space in the upper somewheres of Meany Hall and took advantage of the various percussion instruments and pianos in residence there. At the end of the year we played several such pieces as part of Neal's piano recital: Manhasset, Music With or Without 12 Chairs, Undifferentiated Functions, and Ein Hundenleben. After the term was over a group of us put together a free-range show at The Seattle Concert Theater, a former church building in the Denny Regrade, long since demolished. Several of us played solos, including my Seventeen Prepuntal Contraludes, and members of the Improv Ensemble did a couple of improvisations: Son of Manhasset and Well I Just Might Do That, in the latter of which Neal blew shaving cream into my ear through a PVC didgeridoo. Thanks. 

Aaron Keyt with others in Dave's Basement 1981

A few remnants of this crew, Dave Jones, Neal, Aaron Keyt, and me, would meet over the next months at various locations around town, centered on the basement of the house where Dave was living a few miles North of campus and not far from where I now live, to improvise together, often beginning with a warm-up activity courtesy of Pauline Oliveros' Teach Yourself To Fly. It was during this time that we became less fastidious about finding endings for things, though we still revolved loosely around the idea of making pieces. Most of the sounds from those days, though recorded at the time, have vanished, but what is left, notably our 3 Act opera Eliza, peripherating upon Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slapstick, is convincing evidence that the greater culture won't miss any of it much at all. 

your blogger displaying his unmistakable fashion sense

It was during this time that Aaron, Neal, and I began in earnest what has become now a lifetime of lobbing ideas back and forth, becoming as close to a band of brothers as can be got - including, eventually, in a literal sense, when, in 1986 I married Neal's kid sister Karen, who, as chance would have it, had been there at Neal's recital and thus in the same room I was in for the first time. Her first glimpse of me was of a long-haired dude coming out of the piano closet at Brechemin with a gavel in his hand. Meet weird. We were not introduced.

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Playing with Others (part 2) 1977 - 1981

 Choral Set (1981)

Your blogger in 1981, drinking ire

At the University I was occasionally pulled into other ensembles. I sang in a chamber chorus for a graduate student's choral music recital (fun!), pounded piano for a singer who was learning a fellow composition student's single-character opera (The Tell Tale Heart), and played piano in various UW Contemporary Group concerts. I tried unsuccessfully to learn Bizet's two-piano "Jeux d'enfant" with Christopher Mehrens for a class with Neal O'Doan, and finally signed up for the University Singers, as an easy ensemble credit. This led to my career on the opera stage, as illustrious as it was lengthy. The University was staging Dvořák's "Rusalka" and I was tagged for the chorus. I fit the bill perfectly: sack of meat, sang tenor (more or less). I was then bumped up to the "next level" chorus, where I remember singing in the first-tenor section in performances of Berlioz's "Requiem", Haydn's "Lord Nelson Mass", Beethoven's underrated "Mass in C Major", Walton's "Belshazzar's Feast" and Orff's "Carmina Burana". I even tried my hand at writing music for choir and organ. "Choral Set" (1981) consists of an Introit, an Anthem, a Prayer Response and an Extroit, none of them successful.

Aaron Keyt in the early 80s

I would also, when asked, play fellow students' piano compositions. We may have already become acquainted and started hanging out together by then, but it is in this context, in 1980, that I first worked with Aaron Keyt, who had started in the program a few years after me. I played his composition "Seven Piece Match Set" for the weekly seminar and for the Young Composers' Concert that November. We have been collaborating steadily ever since. Much more later.

Neal Meyer, with hair grown back

In my last quarter, Spring of 1981, I took part in the UW Contemporary Group Improvisation Ensemble under the guidance of Stuart Dempster. I was excited to join this group after hearing them perform the Spring before and realizing, much to my surprise, that I could follow what they were doing. It wasn't that hard. I could do that! It was in this group that I first worked with Neal Meyer (now Neal Kosály-Meyer). Of course I had seen him around the music building - he was hard to miss, a bearded young man with a shaved head (not a common look back then) lugging a synthesizer around in a big blue case. I would have been dumbfounded had you told me that in a few years I would marry his sister. Again, much more later.