His personal motto, which he described to the Buffalo Evening News in 1976, was "to be what I am to the fullest: Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, and a homosexual to the fullest." But as his personality blossomed, he became the charismatic, uncompromising artist that many who knew him remember. Known for his singular compositions, Julius Eastman was also a gifted vocalist, dancer and conductor.Įarly on, Eastman was characterized as shy, with few friends. Eastman would have many opportunities to perform his music there over the years, and would eventually teach at the university beginning in 1970. His collaborators included John Cage, Morton Feldman and, importantly, Lukas Foss - who, in his position at the State University of New York at Buffalo, presided over the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, a hothouse of experimental music. In the years that followed, Eastman would breach the boundaries of the classical avant-garde, a white and Eurocentric club then and now. But we do know that in December 1966 he made his New York debut as a soloist at Town Hall, with a program that mostly featured his own compositions. The details of his life in the years right after college are sketchier according to Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and his Music, a 2015 book co-edited by Renée Levine Packer and Mary Jane Leach, and still the most authoritative text on the composer. It's perhaps a foreshadowing of the religious pieces - One God, Buddha and Our Father - that the artist would write near the end of his short and tumultuous life.Įastman's career began auspiciously at the Curtis institute, where he studied with revered pianist Mieczyslaw Horoszowski at age 19, and played only his own works at his graduation recital in 1963. Near the end of Femenine comes a characteristic Eastman curveball: From the depths of the roiling ensemble, the hymn tune "Be Thou My Vision" rises momentarily. "Most classical players don't grow up improvising, but most of the players in Wild Up are composers and improvisers as well." Along the way, solos pop up for piano, cello, baritone saxophone, flugelhorn and even vocalists - a nod to Eastman's gifts as a singer, which earned him a 1974 Grammy nomination for his arresting performance of Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies. "The biggest liberty is the inclusion of a dozen or so long solos - all at architecturally significant moments in the piece," Rountree explains. In Wild Up's freewheeling performance, it sounds as fresh as ever: The group adds a few bells (literally) and whistles, both to Eastman's score and the example set by his own relaxed 1974 recording of the piece. I love that something so gargantuan, like Femenine, can come from something so succinct."Ĭomposed in a minimalist style for winds, marimba, vibraphone, sleigh bells, piano and bass, Femenine was prescient for its day, premiering some two years before Steve Reich's lauded Music for 18 Musicians. "And one that, maybe because of its brevity, encourages an amazing creative maelstrom. For Christopher Rountree, Wild Up's founder and artistic director, that made Femenine a kind of creative sandbox for the musicians to play in. His music was scattered to the winds.Įastman's score for the hour-plus piece is only five pages of manuscript, and the entire work is based around one melodic building block, a two-note theme in the vibraphone that emerges from a forest of bells. When he died in a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital in 1990, he was just 49 years old and alone. But in the 1980s, after he moved back to New York City, he began spiraling into unpredictable behavior and rumored addiction. He graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, collaborated with key musical figures like Pierre Boulez and Zubin Mehta, and taught at the University of Buffalo. Today he's a visionary to many, even if his insistence on incorporating racial slurs into his titles still ruffles feathers.īorn in Manhattan in 1940, Eastman was a precocious pianist, blessed with a commanding bass voice. ![]() But that confident self-awareness enabled Eastman to write music that was challenging, mischievously irreverent and sometimes ecstatic. To be proudly gay as a composer in the 1970s was brave enough to be Black and gay in that world, even more so. In a combustible career, the late composer swerved from critical acclaim to gate-crashing controversy, and from success to homelessness. ![]() There have been many misfits in classical music, but Julius Eastman stands tall among them. Composer Julius Eastman's music is slowly moving from neglected to championed.Įditor's note: This story includes multiple uses of offensive language.
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