Upcoming Concerts (Fall 2012) and CALLING ALL AVANT-GARDE PIANISTS!!!

For fans of my music (and fans of Wayne Lovegrove’s music): we’ll be playing in a concert of acoustic and experimental music at Woodland Park Presbyterian Church, on Saturday, October 20th, from 7:00 to 9:00. That’s just a couple of weeks away – rehearsals start tomorrow.

For those who don’t know, Wayne’s guitar music draws its aesthetic sense from “new acoustic” music but doesn’t inherit any of the stereotypical “easy-listening” baggage of that genre. He experiments with alternate tunings, and often plays the “both hands up on the fret board” technique, producing shimmering cascades of notes. It’s usually pretty, but never just that. His influences include Ralph Towner; I hear a little Dominic Frasca in there as well.


As for my compositions, I’ll be playing SoundScrolls V and a long version of “Kijibato – Strange Repeating Bird” – a minimalist piece based on the haunting call of a Japanese bird. I haven’t played the long version in concert since I was in Japan, twenty years ago. Both of these are piano pieces (“SoundScrolls V” uses prerecorded electronics as well); I’ll probably also do a version of “Eco Slab-Gong” for electronics and homemade percussion (obviously the “slab-gong”, and maybe something called “Berkeley bowls” – anyone who’s lived in Berkeley CA will get that joke). Wayne and I will also do some pieces together, including “Oceanic Music” for guitar and crywire, a piano modification of my own invention that plays whale songs.

This should be an interesting and beautiful concert, in a great acoustical space (I’ve played at the open mike there many times) and I’m looking forward to it. If you like music that’s both tranquil and edgy, “be there or be an equilateral quadrangular parallelogram.”

Here’s the skinny:
Concert of acoustic and experimental music
S. Eric Scribner, piano etc.
Wayne Lovegrove, guitar

Woodland Park Presbyterian Church
225 North 70th Street (off of Greenwood), Seattle
7:00 to 9:00 PM, Saturday, October 20, 2012
A free-will donation will be taken.

A scheduling snafu resulted in this concert being on the same night as a recital by a friend of mine, another pianist, Keith Eisenbrey. His concert starts an hour later and is only a few blocks away (at the Good Shepherd Center), so concertgoers to either of these concerts might like to check out the other.

Now about that other heading, “CALLING ALL AVANT-GARDE PIANISTS!!!” A week ago or so Wayne e-mailed me that the owner of A-1 Pianos (just across Greenwood Avenue from Woodland Park Presbyterian) was interested in doing an avant-garde concert for all (or most) or the pianos in their showroom. I called them and set it up. The tentative date is Friday, December 14th, from 6:00 to 9:00 PM, as part of the “Art Up Phinneywood” Art Walk. Possible pieces of music may (or may not) include:

Free improvisation

One of more of John Cage’s “Number Pieces” (One, One2, One5, and Four3 all use piano, though the latter has a couple of other instruments too – and there are some for “unspecified”; due to the nature of these pieces, several could be played simultaneously without creating cacophony.)

Terry Riley’s “In C” (has this ever been done on only pianos?)

Takemitsu's "Corona for Pianist(s)" – a graphic score. We shouldn't try to do it like the famous "London Version" by Roger Woodward (it also uses a harpsichord and an electric organ), but other versions are possible.

Both Keith Eisenbrey and Neal Kosaly-Meyer have pieces that just might be adaptable for multiple pianists...?

I’ll be sending out notices to my pianist friends, and anyone else interested (especially pianists) can let me know – my e-mail is listed under my profile in this blog.