Charles Eakin: Frames (Owl Recording)
Purchased at Jerry's Records dollar sale
Hoo boy. There's little question I have something of a hoarder tendency I have to fight against. You know that the lower the price, the more tempting it becomes to buy something.
I could have bought a lot more things at the Jerry's dollar sale today. Box sets are $2. Murray Hill Records has cheap, thin pressings with huge quantities. "Complete Keyboard Music of Bach", 18 discs' worth, $2.
Mostly I hunt down the 20th century works, and even then passed over many. When I looked at this record of solo piano music by a composer whose name was unfamiliar, one thing stood out: "six strings interwoven through adjacent piano wires."
That sounds like it was worth a dollar.
It was yet another Duquesne University collection buy, meaning it was probably never played, ever.
Here's a composer I don't know, an academic guy who taught out of University of Colorado, PhD from University of Minnesota. I've just read in his obit (died in 2020) that he received his master's degree from Carnegie Mellon, which I'm guessing was Carnegie Tech at the time. All the more reason to own this.
I don't have anything against academic composers, there are a few I think are exceptionally good. But it's also rare that I find one who sets my hair on end. Eakin, as indicated here, sounds like he was reasonably good at what he did. The work itself is a a series of miniatures, played continuously. You can hear shifts in the music, but I often don't know where one ends and the next begins.
The record is on Owl Recording Inc, a small composer's label that I also don't know. Discogs.com list the catalog numbers from 25 to 35, making me wonder how many there actually are on this label. I might seek out more, especially the electronic-oriented LPs.*
*Note: Owl Recording, Inc is not the same as Owl Records, who released Tod Dokstader's early music.
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