Hello to all, very rare post-er Bob Lodge here with some thoughts following a fine performance last Saturday by David Beardsley of his semi-improvisational composition "Temple in the Ear 2000' . 

The performance was the first in a hopefully ongoing series by the 'Music Annex' performed at but not aligned with the Univ. of Penn. First up was a piano and cello duet by Doug Boyce and David Langella, two Ph.D. candidates at Penn. Nattily attired in matching Dockers and loafers, they offered four movements of free-improv squeaky-squawky and clangy-bangy full of sul ponte bowing and fingers-on-strings piano drumming. 

On to better and more soulful things. David renders his Just Intonation guitar synthesizer music using a conventionally fretted 12-ET solidbody electric but using only the MIDI pickup output. His synth modules then respond in a chosen JI scale. 'Temple' uses a 19-limit scale that I believe was first used by Wendy Carlos; 1/1, 17/16, 9/8, 19/16, 5/4, 21/16, 11/8, 3/2, 13/8, 27/16, 7/4,15/8. This scale offers (to me) a particularly vivid mix of consonance and dissonance, a mix that Beardsley used subtly in this very slowly unfolding (hour-plus) exploration. 

Digital delays were relied upon heavily here, repeating high limit arpeggios against tonic drones then layering in cross motives for textural effect. Occasionally, high pealing tones of simpler consonance seemed to signal a move to different sections of the music and different moods of the scale. The piece ended with a much more active (for this style) melodic improvisation.

 I don't know Beardsley's influences in this field but I heard much more of Indian music than Klaus Schulze, more of LaMonte Young than Star's End. Overall, it was a thoroughly involving and convincing performance. 

Missed the final musician Aharon Varady, a sound collagist.