Photo: Julius Eastman in the Water © 1975, 2017 Chris Rusiniak, (published in Performing the Music of Julius Eastman) cropped for record dimensions Mastered by Reuben Cohen at Lurssen Mastering, Los Angeles, CA Produced, recorded and mixed by Lewis PesacovĮngineered by Clint Welander and Lewis Pesacov Solos in order of appearance: Sidney Hopson, vibraphone (prime) richard valitutto, piano Marta Tiesenga, baritone saxophone Seth Parker Woods, cello Jonah Levy, flugelhorn Odeya Nini, voice Allen Fogle, horn Brian Walsh, tenor saxophone Jodie Landau, synth and voice Isabel Lepanto Gleicher, flutes / piccolo / bellsĬhristopher Rountree, music director / bells Shelley Washington, baritone saxophone / alto saxophone / bellsĮrin Rogers, baritone saxophone / alto saxophone Jodie Landau, vibraphone / marimba / synth / voice / bells ![]() Richard valitutto, piano / bells / leader Included on NPR Music’s 26 Favorite Albums of 2021 (So Far) Still, in the frenzied ecstasy of performing his work, we feel a little more alive, a little more connected, a little more free, and by embarking on this anthology, we endeavor to carry this freedom forward. Though the band worked with scrupulous care to realize this project, part of the joy of performing it is accepting that Julius Eastman’s precise intentions for this elusive score will always remain something of a mystery - just a little out of reach. For us, to play Eastman’s music is to feel we are in, of, and visiting his world at the same time. Now, over three decades since his death, his work is being regifted by those whose lives he touched. It makes sense, then, for Femenine to arrive on New Amsterdam Records - a sort of loving backwards embrace of a musical forefather to 21st century composers.Įastman sometimes gifted copies of his musical scores. (At the time of his death, it took some eight months for a newspaper - any newspaper - to run his obituary). Eastman’s music flowed freely from - and through - his myriad influences, and was terribly served by the musical infrastructure of his day. Any term used to characterize today’s musical landscape - “genre fluid” or the like - was anticipated by Eastman decades before yet he was punished for being ahead of his time, both in the treatment of his music and, tragically, his person. Eastman is a special case, a composer whose music shines like a retroactive beacon to today’s musical creators. This album represents a departure for New Amsterdam Records, which until this point has exclusively released new music by active, living composers. ![]() The recorded performance reflects a blend of strict adherence to Eastman’s specific instructions with an embrace of individual and collective decision-making within the ensemble, a continuous three-way conversation between Eastman, our individual members, and the group as a whole. In our unique 70-minute interpretation of Eastman’s open score, we’re challenged to work in dialogue with the composer’s own creative impulses channeling his individualistic spirit, augmenting Femenine with strategically placed solos-individual cantor-like proclamations. And in 1990, at age 49, Eastman died in Buffalo, New York, less than a decade after the New York City Sheriff’s Department threw most of his scores, belongings, and ephemera into the East Village snow. He swerved through academia, discos, Europe, Carnegie Hall, and the downtown experimental music scene. ![]() Simultaneously static and active, Femenine lulls listeners into musical reverie.Įastman was young, gay, and Black at a time when it was even more difficult to be young, gay, and Black. Within Femenine, Eastman, whose music The New Yorker hailed as “brazen and brilliant,” evolves material based on a two-note, 13-beat “prime” melody - a cosmic clamoring of bells. 1: Femenine is the opening entry in our multi-volume anthology celebrating Eastman, the late composer whose amalgamated musical vision was repeatedly dismissed during its day, but is now being unearthed to critical acclaim.įemenine is the epitome of Eastman’s longform “organic music” - where phrases live inside of phrases, multiple layers ebbing and flowing with the passage of time.
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