Julius Eastman - one of my fav composers

April 11, 2007

THE CALIFORNIA EAR UNIT PLAYS JULIUS EASTMAN
"Eastman was an energizing underground figure, one whose forms are clear, whose methods were powerful and persuasive, and whose thinking was supremely musical… When has such a brilliant composer come so close to disappearing from history’s grasp?" Kyle Gann
The high-flying Los Angeles new music ensembles devotes its latest concert to the incandescent music of Julius Eastman, an iconoclastic composer, pianist, singer and dancer who died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of 49. The program this evening comprises a single work titled Crazy Nigger--a piece of postminimal ecstasy performed on four grand pianos. This amazing work takes the device of additive process to a new structural level in the service of of an irresistable political motivation.

Julius Eastman (October 27, 1940–May 28, 1990) was a gay African-American composer, pianist, vocalist, and dancer of minimalist tendencies. His music was among the first to combine minimalist processes with elements of pop music, and he often gave his pieces titles of provocative political intent, such as Evil Nigger and Gay Guerrilla.
Eastman grew up in Ithaca, New York, where he began studying piano at age 14 and made rapid progress. He began college at Ithaca College and transferred to the Curtis Institute of Music, where he studied piano with Mieczyslaw Horszowski and composition with Constant Vauclain, and switched majors from piano to composition. He made his debut as a pianist in 1966 at Town Hall in New York City. He was also possessed of a rich, deep, and extremely flexible singing voice. The latter became famous owing to his 1973 Nonesuch recording of Eight Songs for a Mad King by the British composer Peter Maxwell Davies. Eastman's talents brought him to the attention of composer-conductor Lukas Foss, who conducted his music with the Brooklyn Philharmonic.
Eastman's music was often written according to what he considered an "organic" principle by which each new section of a work contained all the information from previous sections, though sometimes "the information is taken out at a gradual and logical rate." The principle is most evident in his three works for four pianos, Evil Nigger, Crazy Nigger, and Gay Guerrilla, all from around 1979. The last of these appropriates Martin Luther's hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" as a gay manifesto. Eastman's Stay On It from 1973 was an influential postminimalist piece that incorporated pop music influences.
Despondent about what he saw as a dearth of professional possibilities worthy of him, Eastman grew increasingly dependent on alcohol and crack after 1983, and let his life fall apart. He had taught theory at University at Buffalo, but not very successfully, and a promised job at Cornell University failed to materialize. At one point he was evicted from his apartment, his belongings (including scores) confiscated by the sheriff, and he was forced to live in Tompkins Square Park. Despite a temporary attempt at a comeback, he died alone in Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo of cardiac arrest. So far had he descended from the public eye that no public notice was given to his death until an obituary in the Village Voice by Kyle Gann on January 22, 1991, eight months after he died. Eastman's notational methods were loose and open to interpretation, and consequently revival of his music has been a difficult task, dependent on people who worked with him.