During this period he performed with Arthur Russell, Meredith Monk, Peter Zummo and others in venues ranging from Carnegie Hall and the Brooklyn Academy of Music to downtown lofts and disco clubs. Foss, then conductor of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, arranged a part-time job for Eastman as co-director and conductor of that orchestra’s community outreach series designed to provide performance opportunities for minority composers. In the summer of 1976, Eastman moved to New York City, where he became part of the “downtown” music scene. Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His MusicĮdited by Renée Levine Packer, Mary Jane Leach The recording, with Eastman’s electrifying vocal performance, was reissued by Nonesuch in 1973 and nominated for a Grammy Award. In 1970, Eastman travelled to London to record Peter Maxwell-Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King under the direction of the composer with the Fires of London group. Over the years, at least eight of Eastman’s compositions inclu ding Piano Pieces I-IV, Thruway, Macle, and Stay On It, were performed by the Creative Associates in the United States and abroad. The group performed its “Evenings for New Music” concerts regularly at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, Carnegie Recital Hall in New York, and on tour. Looking back, members of the Creative Associates constituted a now-legendary group of composer-performers including Sylvano Bussotti, George Crumb, Buell Neidlinger, Cornelius Cardew, Maryanne Amacher, Terry Riley, Jan Williams, Fred Rzewski, Morton Feldman, and others. In the late sixties, Eastman moved to Buffalo, New York, where he was invited by composer-conductor Lukas Foss, to join the prestigious university-based new music group, the Creative Associates, eventually becoming a member of the University of Buffalo music faculty. He continued his musical training in piano and composition at the Curtis Institute of Music, graduating in 1963. While still in high school, he played the piano well enough to accompany dance classes in a local studio. John’s Episcopal Church and in the glee club during his middle school and high school years. Julius Eastman was born in New York City and raised in Ithaca, New York. Julius Eastman – Femenine (1974), performed by the Echoi Ensemble for Monday Evenings Concert As the composer/performer Christopher McIntyre wrote, “It’s feeling more and more like Julius’ work is here to stay.” That important event was followed more recently by several other recordings including what critic Zachary Woolfe called “his shining, tidal masterpiece” Femenine on Frozen Reeds Piano 2 on Joseph Kubera’s Book of Horizons for New World Records and The Zurich Concert also on New World Records. Then not much happened until several years later when the composer Mary Jane Leach, after a lengthy search for Eastman’s scores and tapes, initiated the recording project with New World Records that eventually led to the issuance of Unjust Malaise in 2005, a 3-disc set of Eastman’s work. Eastman was a casual kind of guy and because he had no reliable home base or telephone number in those pre-cellphone days, most of us just expected him to call or show up at some point, as he usually did. Hardly any of his friends and colleagues knew he had died. The astonishing thing is that, as music critic Kyle Gann writes in his chapter for Gay Guerrilla, “Julius Eastman’s music rose from the dead.” On January 22 1991, Gann’s obituary for Eastman was published in the Village Voice. Renée Levine Packer, co-author of the book, gives an insight into the composer’s enigmatic and intriguing life and music. Schirmer, greatly facilitating access to and performance of his music and, what’s more, the University of Rochester Press has announced publication of a paperback edition of Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music, a book of essays, originally published in 2015. The American composer Julius Eastman (1940-1990) has “entered the canon.” Since that joyous 2016 headline in the New York Times, Eastman’s compositions have found a home with the venerable classical music publisher G.
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