![]() Charles – blonde, almost certainly one of Eastman’s boyfriends – he said, “I might congratulate you in the audience who are from Buffalo, because Mr. As he invited the couple onstage with him to strip – the man ended up naked, the woman only partially so due to embarrassment – he declared them “the best specimens in the world.” Of Miss Suzyanna he said, “She comes from a special tribe which is found only in the Great Woods of Haiti.” Of Mr. Over the next 14 minutes, Eastman delivered a bizarre lecture that focused on the erotic, but played on and exploded notions about race, colonialism and sexuality. 8,” which read in part: “In a situation provided with maximum amplification (no feedback), perform a disciplined action, with any interruptions, fulfilling in whole, or in part, an obligation to others.” A few overarching notes, like “we connect Satie to Thoreau,” guide the enterprise. The Song Books consist of 92 pieces, many of them koan-like instructions to the performers that leave much to interpretation. Julius Eastman, one such Creative Associate, was performing part of John Cage’s 1970 masterpiece Song Books – with Cage himself sitting in the audience – as a member of the experimental S.E.M. “This conservative, provincial city became a mecca for the avant-garde starting in 1962,” says Renée Levine Packer, author of This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music in Buffalo, “when the private University of Buffalo became the State University of New York at Buffalo, and huge amounts of money were poured into creating a ‘Berkeley of the West,’ vastly expanding the faculty and attracting artists and intellectuals.” With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, composers Lukas Foss and Allen Sapp created the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts to support young musicians of exceptional talent with a bent for contemporary music, and the renowned “Creative Associates” program incubated some of the most vital composers and performers in the country, including the likes of Maryanne Amacher, Terry Riley, George Crumb and Cornelius Cardew. to the Sideway-and-Sensitive System.” The audience roared.īuffalo at the time was an improbable hotbed of the American experimental music scene. The first system being the main system, the In-And-Out System, which I have now revised. He continued, “There have been many systems of love in the West which have been sort of degenerate, should we say. “And I am here to teach you a new system of love.” “ My name is Professor Padu,” he said in a dry, droll voice that sliced through the crowd’s laughter. Eastman looked around and introduced himself. He was accompanied on the Baird Recital Hall stage by a young white man and a young black woman, identified only as Mr. 317.It was a cooler than usual evening on the SUNY at Buffalo campus on June 4th, 1975, when Julius Eastman – a charismatic, black, openly gay composer – stepped forward. The Horizon Leans Forward., compiled and edited by Erik Kar Jun Leung, GIA Publications, 2021, p.If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich? (1977).Please note that many of his works (not listed here) have deliberately provocative titles. Most of Eastman's works are open score and can be performed by any ensemble of similar instruments or voices. "The brazen and brilliant music of Julius mands attention: wild, grand, delirious, demonic, an uncontainable personality surging into sound," writes Alex Ross for The New Yorker. In the years since, there has been a steady increase in attention paid to his music and life, punctuated by newly found recordings and manuscripts, the publication of Gay Guerrilla, a comprehensive volume of biographical essays and analysis, worldwide performances and new arrangements of his surviving works, and newfound interest from choreographers, scholars, educators, and journalists. He left behind few scores and recordings, and his music lay dormant for decades until a three-CD set of his compositions was issued in 2005 by New World Records. "Eastman is something of a cult figure among composers and singers," reads a 1980 press release.ĭespite his prominence in the artistic and musical community in New York, Eastman died homeless and alone in a Buffalo, New York, hospital, his death unreported until eight months later, in a Village Voice obituary by Kyle Gann. He was not only a prominent member of New York's downtown scene as a composer, conductor, singer, pianist, and choreographer, but also performed at Lincoln Center with Pierre Boulez and the New York Philharmonic, and recorded experimental disco with producer Arthur Russell. Julius Eastman was an artist who, as a gay black man, aspired to live those roles to the fullest. ![]() ![]() Julius Eastman (27 October 1940, New York –, Buffalo, N.Y,) was an American musician and artist.
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