Article Contributed by Gratefulweb
Published on 2026-03-16
Photo: Courtesy of the Owsley Stanley Foundation
When Phil Lesh learned that the family and friends of legendary Grateful Dead sound engineer Owsley “Bear” Stanley were beginning the monumental task of archiving Bear’s estimated 1,400 reels of live recordings, he had two requests: “Find the Miles. And find the Ives.”
With the arrival of Bear’s Sonic Journals: Concordance — 150 Years of Charles Ives, the latter has now surfaced. The remarkable release captures one of the most unusual recording adventures in Bear’s vast archive: a live performance of Charles Ives’ monumental Piano Sonata No. 2, “Concord, Mass., 1840–1860”, recorded in 1974 by Stanley and Lesh.
The recording features pianist John Kirkpatrick, whose interpretation of the “Concord Sonata” became one of the definitive performances of the work. Captured at the Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium on March 7, 1974, the recording celebrates the centennial of Ives’ birth while also documenting a fascinating intersection between the experimental composer’s music and the sonic explorers of the Grateful Dead universe.
Now, fifty years later, the release pairs Kirkpatrick’s historic performance with a modern interpretation by pianist Donald Berman, recorded live in Concord, Massachusetts in February 2025. Berman, the final student of Kirkpatrick, brings the piece full circle with a contemporary performance in the very town that inspired Ives’ transcendentalist masterwork.
The two-disc set also includes Other Transcendentalists, a collection of new works commissioned by Berman inspired by figures from the transcendentalist movement, featuring compositions by Eve Beglarian, David Sanford, Marti Epstein, and Elena Ruehr.
Beyond the music itself, the release arrives as a richly documented artifact of both experimental composition and Grateful Dead history. The package includes a 112-page booklet featuring reflections on Phil Lesh’s deep admiration for Ives, a new interview with Donald Berman, and contributions from Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten, bassist Dave Schools, and Grahame Lesh.
For Lesh, the connection to Charles Ives ran deep. As he once reflected, Ives’ music “was welded into my DNA,” recalling how the composer’s layered sonic architecture resonated with his own explorations in sound.
In many ways, Concordance represents a meeting of two worlds: the radical musical imagination of Charles Ives and the boundary-pushing sonic curiosity that defined Owsley Stanley’s recordings and the Grateful Dead’s musical universe.
Bear’s Sonic Journals: Concordance — 150 Years of Charles Ives will be released March 17 via the Owsley Stanley Foundation.
