THE GUARDIAN It is eminently readable throughout. BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE effectively rewrote the history of post-war American New Music, restoring to its narrative a gay black voice creating a liberating, high-energy form of organic minimalism. While there are amusing anecdotes about his more madcap moments.the overall message is that he was an artist deserving of significant respect. Here, highly engaging essays by those who knew Eastman well recall him as a person and assess his brilliance. This important volume of essays brought forth by two brilliant women who have long championed Eastman's music, belongs in every music conservatory library and beyond.-Pauline Oliveros, composer, Julius Eastman enjoyed the admiration of peers such as Morton Feldman, Meredith Monk and Pierre Boulez. Jones, choreographer and dancer This book has arrived just in time for Black Lives Matter and gets my deepest praise. For those who are interested in iconoclasts of whatever stripe, this volume will be a revelation and an invitation to rethink what composition, performance, and life at the precipice of madness can be.-Bill T. ALBANY TIMES-UNION The publication of this rigorously researched, lovingly produced, multidimensional study of a singular artist will surely be met with joy by those of us who remember Julius Eastman-the inspired creator, the sly provocateur and martyred saint of the avant-garde. An indication of his impact is the very fact that so many people have come together to remember him and are actively championing his music. His music is politics by other means, in search of a form, alighting toward a future that could grant him dignity, when he could be something other than an abstraction.THE NEW YORKER A fascinating new collection of essays exploring the life and work of the enigmatic composer Julius Eastman.who worked fluently in jazz, improvisation and acoustical experiments. THE NEW YORK TIMES Outspoken about his own identity as a black queer man.Eastman was ahead of his time. BAY AREA REPORTER A composer of visionary power, a singer with a cavernous bass voice, a collaborator with the diverse likes of Meredith Monk and Pierre Boulez, Eastman had long been a fixture of the New York Music scene.Part of the pleasure of Eastman's rediscovery has been the belated, deserving reinsertion of a black, gay figure into music history. ARSC JOURNAL A picture of -charismatic performer, magnetic personality and emotional escape artist-that puts his work in a context larger and more representative. JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC STUDIES a starting point for others who want to engage with Julius Eastman as a performer, scholar, or composer. Mary Jane Leach is a composer and freelance writer, currently writing music and theatre criticism for the Albany Times-Union.Julius Eastman enjoyed the admiration of peers such as Morton Feldman, Meredith Monk and Pierre Boulez. Renée Levine Packer's book This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music in Buffalo received an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence. The book presents an authentic portrait of a notable American artist that is compelling reading for the general reader as well as scholars interested in twentieth-century American music, American studies, gay rights, and civil rights. In addition to analyses of Eastman's music, the essays in Gay Guerrilla provide background on his remarkable life history and the era's social landscape. These episodes are examples of Eastman's persistence in pushing the limits of the acceptable in the highly charged arenas of sexual and civil rights. Eastman tested limits with his political aggressiveness, as reflected in legendary scandals like his June 1975 performance of John Cage's Song Books, which featured homoerotic interjections, and the uproar over his titles at Northwestern University. Eastman's provocative titles, including Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, Crazy Nigger, and others, assault us with his obsessions. His music, insistent and straightforward, resists labels and seethes with a tension that resonates with musicians, scholars, and audiences today. Composer-performer Julius Eastman (1940-90) was an enigma, both comfortable and uncomfortable in the many worlds he inhabited: black, white, gay, straight, classical music, disco, academia, and downtown New York.
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