One of the most unusual recordings in the Grateful Dead universe has finally surfaced. Bear’s Sonic Journals: Concordance, 150 Years of Charles Ives is out now via the Owsley Stanley Foundation, and it delivers something Phil Lesh specifically requested when the archiving of Owsley Stanley’s estimated 1,400 reels of live recordings began: find the Ives.
What they found is extraordinary. The centerpiece is a live performance of Charles Ives’ Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840-1860,” recorded at the Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium on March 7, 1974, captured by Stanley and Lesh featuring pianist John Kirkpatrick, whose interpretation of the Concord Sonata stands as one of the definitive performances of the work. The recording was made to celebrate the centennial of Ives’ birth and documents a remarkable intersection between American experimental composition and the sonic explorers of the Dead’s world.
The two-disc set pairs that 1974 performance with a modern interpretation by pianist Donald Berman, Kirkpatrick’s final student, recorded live in Concord, Massachusetts in February 2025, in the very town that inspired Ives’ transcendentalist masterwork. The set also includes Other Transcendentalists, a collection of new commissioned works inspired by figures from the transcendentalist movement, featuring compositions by Eve Beglarian, David Sanford, Marti Epstein, and Elena Ruehr.
The release is as much a historical document as it is a musical one. A 112-page booklet accompanies the set, featuring reflections on Lesh’s deep connection to Ives, a new interview with Berman, and contributions from Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten, bassist Dave Schools, and Grahame Lesh. For Phil Lesh, Ives’ music was foundational, something he described as “welded into my DNA.”
Fifty years in the archive. Worth every year of the wait.