Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

What's In A Name?

I thought by now everyone would be abuzz with what I think might be the most important new music recording of the year—a three CD set devoted to the music of Julius Eastman (1940-1990), a gay African American composing postminimalism when all the name brand minimalists were still codifying the genre. The music's amazing, the story maybe even more so: drug and alcoholic problems which he overcame; homeless and destitute; scores thrown in the garbage when he was evicted, most presumably lost forever; and on and on.

We rushed Mary Jane Leach's first-hand account of her seven-year quest to track down his music onto NewMusicBox fearing all the while that we'd be trumped by a giant feature in the Sunday Times Arts and Leisure, a spot on NPR, or even a mention on some other website. After all, New World Records' mailing went out late last week and Kyle Gann mentioned writing the notes for the set a while back on his Artsjournal blog saying it was coming out in the Fall...

Silence. Why? Might some of the titles have scared folks away (Gay Guerilla, Evil Nigger)? Seems like they're tailor-made to make people wonder what music given such titles could possibly sound like? (For the record—well, CD actually :)—I think they sound like a weird alternate universe where four pianists are playing John Adams's Phrygian Gates—composed around the same time—as if it were that Morton Feldman piece where everyone is playing from the same score but human nature quickly prevents unisons. Only it goes from being really quiet to being deafeningly loud: try it on headphones and bliss out!)

Might it be that the disc is "classical music" and most folks who cover this stuff still don't think new music is the most important thing out there, especially new music that technically can't be even called new since the composer has been dead for 15 years? Yet, this is exactly the kind of story the classical music world should be embracing since it is ultimately a testimony of classical music's humanity and tells the story of an important compositional role model for several groups under-represented in its ranks.

I knew about this project being in the works a few years ago, being blown away by a recording Mary Jane made for me of Julius's The Holy Presence of Joan of Arc for 10 cellos. But that remarkable and deeply moving composition still didn't prepare me for the sonic onslaught of the three masterpieces for four pianos—Gay Guerrila, Evil Nigger, and Crazy Nigger. As Willy Loman's wife declaimed in Death of a Salesman, attention must be paid! Which is why I've temporarily abandoned my usual anti-critical pose and am gushing here.

It's great that these recordings are now available, but there's plenty more that should be and needs to be done. There should be concerts, articles, symposia, debates, you name it. He's one of the important ones and we should not lose this rare opportunity when something this good from our extremely specialized world, through the uniqueness of the story of the man who made it, has the power to make people outside our world listen. But, of course, we first need to listen ourselves and so far that hasn't seemed to happen yet. So check it out!

posted by Frank J. Oteri 11/10/2005