"The mind"

new piece

"The Mind"

comment by David Bateman

gorgeous music and video - the purple curtain at the end is just stunning as it blows and then ends with a powerful still shot - i remember hanging that curtain, and again, Wallace Stevens comes to mind with his words

For all his purple, the purple bird must have Notes for his comfort that he may repeat Through the gross tedium of being rare.

but i think i would revise Stevens and say

"for all its purple, the purple curtain must have songs for its comfort that she may repeat through the graceful billowing of being beautiful"   dbxo David Bateman

"Pavane for a Live Piano Player"

Piece from 2009 which contains text which describes the composer's quest for composing which satisfies the needs of performers who play and sing at the same time.

Pavane for a Live Piano Player

"Ryerson University as a French Painting" piano piece

This piano piece was posted on Nov 6.

Thank you to the gardeners at Ryerson.

"Ryerson University as a French Painting"

making compilations of longer instrumentals

I am making CD disc compilations of longer piano instrumentals.

If anyone is interested,

you can purchase them by special order, through the mail.

write to me at charnie_wish@yahoo.ca

"Vad är det jag söker?"

"Vad är det jag söker?" (What am I looking for?)

Jag söker styrka. (I am looking for strength).

From a swedish section of the opera.

"Vad är det jag söker?"

Lyrics to the Opera

Making a poetry book of the lyrics to the opera.

Harmonious Soliloquy

No, I think the type of piano piece that contains conversation between the pianos, and harmonies and answers with the piano player's voice, should rather be called:

"Harmonious Soliloquy"

dramatic piano

Yesterday I named the recording technique in many of the recent compositions:

"Harmonic Soliloquy"

It is an expansion of the self-accompanied singing. Often I will sing and play one of the "parts" of a dramatic sequence, make a disc of it, and while listening to the disc playing in the room, play the other piano in harmony, or in statement and response to the initial recording. Sometimes I will make a disc of this second recording, and play 'against' it once more, or even twice more, creating a conversation with subsequent soliloquies. This deepens the relation between the pianos, and creates more space for the "second melody" harmonic vocal interactions. ('Subsequent Soliloquies": I like that). It allows me to go more deeply into both the dramatic and harmonic possibilities.

Furthermore, I can expand the "stage" of sequences of the drift and interaction of solo, chorus, solo, duet, solo, trio, chorus, etc, and provide for the drama unfolding in the music.

The first disc available for sale, recorded in this way, is "In Mir Leben Geister" (There are ghosts living in me)

inquire at charnie_wish@yahoo.ca

The opera is being born by deepening the conversation between the ranges of my voice, and the complimentary and very different qualities of the Steinway and the Feurich.

The covering term, for the way I use the piano, I think might be "dramatic piano".

cadenza for "blues for i don't know what"

cadenza

cadenza for blues for i don't know what

"blues for i don't know what"

a piano blues. maybe i will define the opera as "a blues opera"

"blues for i don't know what"

Hon drömde en annan dikt

From "Kantate"...Eva Kormak, translator

Hon drömde en annan dikt,

gick och sökte efter den..

(She dreamed a different poem,

went looking for it)

The Swedish is from my mother's side of the family, so the lyrics in Swedish have a lot to do with my connection to her.

The opera is composed in all of the languages from which I am descended. This is having quite an extraordinary effect on the process of writing the music. More about the other languages, another day. en annan tag.

"Kantat för älskande"

"kantat för älskande" (Cantata for Lovers)

Jag vill tränga in

djupare i hurdan kärleken

är för mig.....

(I'd like to go a little further

into what love is like

for me)

© charnie guettel aug 4, 2010

"cloudy sun 2"

another study for the opera

"cloudy sun 2"

cloudy sun: piano study

study for the opera

"cloudy sun"

"untitled two" study

Piano study for the opera, on the Feurich.

"untitled two"

"untitled" piano study for the opera

I have the translations of the lyrics now, and have divided the opera into its acts and scenes. This piano study involves themes in Act Two.

"untitled"

"Composing the Opera"

Piano studies involved in composing the opera. In the coming months I will be posting piano studies concerned with themes and harmonies for the opera in progress. This music video starts to describe the process. The first songs for the opera should be available for sale at the end of the summer.

Composing the Opera

"Free Transit"

New composition is also a search for an emblem for a campaign.

The gouaches are back in the studio.

"Free Transit"

composing for piano-self accompaniment

This is a music video, and piano track, I made to describe the particular challenges of writing for the piano self-accompanied singer. It is written in the form of a letter to poet and singer Anita May.

"Pavane for a Live Piano Player"

jazz compositions for videos made in Buffalo

"my sister's garden"

"stan's birthday party"

translating "recovery"

Remove

Charnie Guettel I'm not sure that my German translation of "Recovery" into "Die Wiederfinden" is accurate, but I claim poetic license!!

Die Wiederfinden Blaüe (Recovery Blueness) charnie guettel music video #101 may 17 2010.mov

www.youtube.com

charnie guettel music video #101 a jazz composition about recovery..... blueness, the beauty of blueness, getting the strength to transform trauma into remaking a life, renewing, returning, .....the "you" that gets up is different from the "you" that fell down.

Arden Innis

Try this translation .
Wiederaufnahme vom Blau .
In poetic german form it says . . .
"Taken from the blues"

9 hours ago ·

Charnie Guettel

Danke Herr Innis!!

9 minutes ago ·

www.charnieguettel.com

the site that is a map to all the charnie guettel sites, and where you can purchase material, and find out about works in progress is

www.charnieguettel.com

Studio 33

In 2009 we had what we called "Studio 33" sessions: guests came to the studio to listen to the longer tracks that had been recorded. This story is about the feeling of those sessions.

"Three Visitors, Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Carson McCullers" Charnie Guettel Music Video #49, sept 16, 2009

more on the inspecting of compositions

This composition from Oct 9, 2009, is the soundtrack for an introspection about my jazz development, which flows both from having been a classical piano player, and a country singer with a banjo, and later playing in rock bands. The singing and playing were formed from all these traditions. Thats what piano bar was like. Piano bar work was the great combiner.

FREEDOM TWO © charnie guettel Oct 9, 2009

Japanese In-sen scale for "Toronto": Cityscape

These are the intervals used to tune the Japanese stringed instrument, the Koto. They form a pentatonic scale with a very reflective mood. I think I will use it for a few compositions during the next while.

"Toronto": Cityscape. (Again, lots of blueness)

Die Wiederkind Blaüe (Recovery Blueness)

charnie guettel music video #101

a jazz composition about recovery..... blueness, the beauty of blueness, getting the strength to transform trauma into remaking a life, renewing, returning, .....the "you" that gets up is different from the "you" that fell down.

Die Wiederkind Blaüe © charnie guettel may 17 2010

an overview of the compositions this past year

I have begun an inspection of the composing over the past year. It was about this time last year that I began to concentrate solely on the instrumental composing for jazz piano, the best form for the transformations I have been experiencing in my hearing and my playing.

This piece recorded February 02, 2010, at about the halfway mark, "what i am doing is what is happening to me" CG music video #77, is described as "an openly therapeutic meditation on the realization of the effect of the composer's music on herself ". It was me taking in the results of recording new material each workday, and preparing for it by listening intently to the music I had written the day before. I was transforming myself into a vehicle for my own composing process.

"what i am doing is what is happening to me" CG music video #77 feb 02, 2010

parallel abstractions

I noticed just now, photographing a visual that had been formed from the blue tissue paper that had stuck to the blue trunk, after a display had been removed (the earring display)...that there was a direct line from the poetry shawl project of eight years ago, to the current soundtracking of abstract visuals now, or rather using visuals to display the jazz (soundtrack in reverse) (then it was a relationship between the poems and the cloth itself)...and I wanted to thank you, David Bateman, for sponsoring that poetry shawl concert in Calgary what is now several years ago...for seeding that recognition, and that possibility...one artist is parallel to another artist, one artist's abstractions are parallel to another's, but we look out of the speeding train windows of our lives, to the parallel abstractions that rush by.

Comment from Nicolas Sanaa

Nicolas Sanaa

C'est à dire que cette musique me touche beaucoup, et dans son style et dans les émotions qu'elle suscite, accompagne... C'est très beau.

jazz video study #3 "i still have you"

Listening has levels of focus, as does what is captured by the camera. We call transitional focus "out of focus", but really during the "blurry period" we are between the selection of what the eye puts together. During the transition, we are in touch with a deepened sense of colour, as when music catches us unawares, with a different sense of harmony, or tone, than we are able to hear at one moment, rather than during another. Or perhaps are able to return to. Later something else will reach us, from the same music.

I'm beginning to sound like Yeats, aren't I.

"i still have you" jazz video study #3, charnie guettel music video #100

"resurgence" jazz video study #2, CG video music video#99

the video studies: pursuing the rhythm of image and tune: while listening to the recording takes, i photograph what i see.

there is a daily evolution of what is happening in the music.

"resurgence"

Twentieth Century Poetry Writing

the jazz video studies show a quality, I think, structurally akin to Robert Creeley's poems. which means, that what I am hearing, to cause the choice of notes, and what I am selecting, when I create a photograph or moving picture sequence, to blend with the notes, is in a continuum with the modern poetry traditions of the twentieth century, from which we write. i become more and more direct.

"no angle, rather a need" jazz video study #1, charnie guettel music video#98

"Thinking About H.D."

H.D. was an imagist poet in the early part of the twentieth century. Her poetry was spare and reverbrant.

And that is why I am Thinking About H.D.

"the photographer's eye"

a photo shoot of the piano player.

the photograph is a moment chosen by the photographer.

jazz is the player's choice of notes.

"the photographer's eye"

This was a comment received about "APRIL".

Nicolas Sanaa

C'est très chouette ces notes de piano, de la nouvelle à l'ancienne Orléans qui célèbrent avec style ; les frondaisons.

"APRIL" jazz piano with sounds from the neighbourhood

In this composition, I left the birdsong and talk from the neighbours in the mix.

"APRIL"

"going further"

Going further means going further inside. But maybe you have to "leave" some things, to do that.

"going further" CG music video #94"

"going away" CG music video #93

This piece comes from a longer musical sequence recorded April 1, called "Political Conversation". This segment sounded so effervescent and at the same time bluesy, that I called it

"going away".

Expresson: power from within.

The piece "what did you think i said? music video#92 came from a longer musical sequence called

"Expression: power from within"

"what did you think i said?"

jazz composition

"what did you think i said?" CG music video #92

"Emotion and Personality"

Well, I seem to be following a treasure map: the books I read, explain the music I write. A book which speaks of the very things I am thinking about, provides the title for this piece.

"Emotion and Personality"

Another Whole Tone Glimpse

For those following the whole tone figures, this one is very small, almost hidden in passing.

The second composition in the "Whole Tone Glimpses".

"Another Whole Tone Glimpse, CG music video#90"

David Bateman reviews "the objectivist press"

Re:David Bateman reviews the new music video "the objectivist pss"

---

the dining room just looks so gorgeous in this with the perfect music - at the start the blurred effect gives the room and furnishings a lovely impressionist quality - like 'Monet at the Brick on a rainy afternoon' and the way you have coupled beautiful objects in your apartment (jewelry and figurines with photos and such) placing objects alongside the notion of objectivism, giving the narrative such gorgeous contrasting layers around the idea of object/objective, and the music becomes, at times, single objects dropping delicately yet with such strength & objectivity upon the surface of our lives the objectivist press 'objet's d'arts' or perhaps 'objectif d'arts'

whole tone glimpse #1

"whole tone glimpse #1 is a link to a composition using the whole tone scale. It gives a suspended feeling, connecting to the universe in a thoughtful way.

"the objectivist press" CG music video #88

here is the new composition

"the objectivist press"

the objectivist press

i'm not sure if "the objectivist press", the original one, still exists, but I am posting a sequence of music that i am calling "the objectivist press", because of reading certain poets. probably posting it tonight.

Charnie Schoenberg meets Charnie Laura Nyro

In recent months there has been a progression in the composing, a deepening of some of the modern harmonies, blended with the the lounge playing styles I have been performing since the 1970's. This is a characteristic of my jazz writing that I wish to take further. Charnie Schoenberg meets Charnie Laura Nyro. Both from piece to piece, and within pieces. I began to really notice this over the past year, for example in "What I am Doing is What is Happening to Me" (composition). I just noticed that when I posted this on Feb 2, I described it as "an openly therapeutic meditation on the realization of the effect of the composer's music on herself".

The Science of Harmony

Harmony is the subject of composition. Harmony is a science, so is rhythm, rhythm is a part of harmony. (Vibration). A musician is a scientist of harmony. Feeling the harmonies growing within our inner hearing, is what commands our emotion, not the other way round. If we do not tend to the nurturence of our harmonic sense (and our harmonic knowledge), we impede the life of emotion. In a serious musician, the need for developing the music comes first, and life follows from that.

redux

Older, we open to the subjective stream differently. This is what I am only beginning to really appreciate.

an idea

Abstraction is the core of meaning.

(CG)

"Perception and Memory"

"...there is no perception which is not full of memories" (Henri Bergson, Matière et mémoire)

"...il n'y a pas de perception qui ne soit imprégnée de souvenirs."

this phrase of Bergson's captures the mood of the jazz piano in this composition.

In Canada

In Canada the late afternoon is very beautiful. The sun stretches across rivers, and the trees on the other side of rivers, or comes into apartment buildings, reflected off other apartment buildings. It is a quiet time, once we are home, or sometimes even when we are working late, and are on break. We calm down, either get warm, or cool off, depending on the season. It is a time when we are especially grateful for those we love. In Canada the late afternoon is very beautiful.

Going amongst different parts of the personality.

Am finding ways of going amongst various schools of modern jazz voicings, within my own playing. Each calls up a different mindset, and a different kind of pull on the emotions. Note yesterday's "Critique".

Where I Belong

What I mean, is, I have found my place within modern art.

Abstract Expressionism

I don't think it would be far off to call the piano writing of the past several months "Abstract Expressionism". I am trying to get to the bare bones of my own harmony and subjective self- expression.

Modern Jazz and Modern Art

Jazz was born in a world where abstract art was also being born.

Where I Belong

I have found my place.

Emotional

It strikes me that the music I write is very emotional, and very particular to the kind of emotion the listener might be willing to experience, at that moment. Very subject to mood, and individual experience.

The Interpretation of Dreams

You know, Norma, pictures have changed quite a bit.

Under the Bell Jar

The composition "Feature", posted here today, reminds me what a bell jar I am under, sometimes, in the studio. It was recorded shortly after the piano was tuned, and you can tell it is about the piano.

A Recording Studio of One's Own

I featured the piece "Introaction" on facebook this morning, because I am listening to it myself, (it feels to me to be the only recent piece to have the right quality for this moment),while I am reading. In recent months I have invited to the studio listeners who are following what is happening in the composing, to listen to alternate takes of recent compositions, and to longer versions of what is edited for broadcast, but may be released in total on CD's. We call such gatherings "Studio 33 sessions" and they evolved because of the need for fellow listeners to be present sometimes, to create a vibe to help absorb and consume all the "playback" tracks involved in having a recording studio of one's own. Now there is the Virginia Woolf concept: "A Recording Studio of One's Own".

Kantat för älskande (Cantata for Lovers)

I am writing material for a show in 2011. The songs in the show are to be sung in all the languages from which I am descended. The first series is in Swedish, "Kantat för älskande" (Cantata for Lovers). The ten poems I wrote for the lyrics have already been translated into Swedish. When I compose something in two languages, I like to write the melody on both the original English and the translated lyrics at the same time, going back and forth, in the singing, and that is how I perform them as well. I am very moved by the sound of Swedish, my mother is descended from Swedes on both sides. Singing in Swedish is all about my mother. So naturally I get through a trial melody, and I am already balling my eyes out. Even learning to pronounce a few words at a time sends me into the zones.

In digging for the melodies, the first melody that was seeming to work for me was to match the lyrics that include the phrases "Poeter stapplar omkring i mörkret, stöter i väggar, Med kompositörer är detän värre. Vi bara hör, och är inte ens säkra pa vad vi hör.

"Poets stumble around in the dark,

bumping into walls.

With composers

its even worse.

We only hear things, and aren't even sure of what we're hearing."

The beautiful Swedish translation is by Eivor Kormak.

To the piano.

Thinking about Rahel Varnhagen

I named the current composition for Rahel Varnhagen, a very unusual 18th century Jewish thinker, because I have been reading her biography by Hannah Arendt. Rahel had such a way of analyzing and living with her own unhappiness: she had to make it interesting to herself, and worthy of appreciation, and cherish her own survival as an accomplishment. 1771-1833.

narrative structure inside the music

I think there is a narrative in the pieces posted since last June, when I started to take apart my piano playing, and music writing. Each week I set myself a chord voicing or harmonic task, and followed my feelings, living with the sounds I had recorded the day before. Gradually I pretty much stopped listening carefully to anyone else's music, just listened to what I was writing, and let the music I was writing, take me to the next music to write.

Charnie Guettel: the first day of the Blog

I just posted the jazz piano piece "Rahel Varnhagen" on www.youtube.com/charniemaeguettel.

Today is the beginning of this blog, a place to comment on the musical structure of the compositions I am writing.