Julius Eastman Vol. 3 Release Party
We celebrate the release of the third volume in our Eastman Anthology, a portrait and response to one of our favorite composers, with a week of in-studio events, gatherings, talks, and performances.
Julius Eastman was young, gay, and black, when it was even more difficult to be young, gay, and black in America. He swerved in, out, and through academia, downtown experimental music, discos, European tours, sex clubs, and Carnegie Hall. He died at 49 in Buffalo, New York, less than a decade after the New York City Sheriff’s Department threw most of his scores and belongings into the winter snow of the East Village.
Julius sometimes gave the single manuscript copies of his scores as gifts. Now, his music is being rightfully acknowledged because the people whose lives he touched are sharing his gifts in return.
There’s something about the identity and presence of Eastman’s music that engages us and makes us obsessed. It’s music that, we’ve found, lives in the minds of audiences unlike anything else Wild Up has performed. With this Anthology we endeavor to discover the way to carry his music forward.
photo by Chris Rusiniak