Rabbit Holes

New recordings of Julius Eastman compositions aren't as rare as they were a decade ago. Eastman's profile has grown with each repetition of his story, which seems to become more dramatic with each iteration. Trained at the Curtis Institute of Music; worked with Peter Maxwell Davies, Meredith Monk, and Petr Kotik; composed significant works often for instrument multiples (four pianos, 10 cellos); then drugs, homelessness, and dying alone in a hospital at the age of 49. A recent resurrection has brought new recordings, new research, and new visibility. An exciting recent realization of his 1974 composition Femenine, recorded jointly by Talea Ensemble and Harlem Chamber Players, offers fresh perspective. It led me to listen to some older releases, some with the composer himself performing.

Eastman's closest popularly known artistic contemporaries are Philip Glass and Steve Reich, each born a few years before him. All three employ heavy repetition. But something sets Eastman's work apart from those other masters of minimalism. Where Reich often works in mounting tension and Glass in trance-inducing accumulation, Eastman's work is more organic; he used that word himself.

Eastman was nothing if not provocative, as in the names he gave works typically performed by a quartet of pianos: Crazy N----r (1978), Evil N----r (1978), and Gay Guerrilla (1979). (Eastman intended for the first two titles to be spelled out; Stereophile demurs.) His scores are open to interpretation within prescribed limits—and complete scores don't exist for the roughly 50 works known today. Improvisation is sometimes allowed. To my ears, they swing.

Eastman also works—not always, but more often than Glass or Reich—with near-repetition, a powerful and underacknowledged tool. While minimalist music can lull or excite the mind (sometimes at the same time) with repeating structures, near repetition works in a different way, giving the mind a line to fill in and the space to do it in. Near repetition can put an R'n'B single over the top. There are any number of examples, but to suggest one with near-universal familiarity, let your mind play the 1975 Ohio Players' hit "Love Rollercoaster," or put it on the hi-fi. After the slow build of the intro, we get the first vocals: "rollercoaster of love," an inversion of the title. The words "love" and "rollercoaster," in the same sequence as the title, never appear in the song. The line repeats, but dropping the "of love," almost forcing the listener to fill it in. That couplet happens four more times, and then the structure shifts with "your love is like a rollercoaster," setting up a new repetition. It's catchier and much more memorable than if the singers had just repeated "love rollercoaster" over and over.

Beyond its ideological trappings, Eastman's music is often catchy. It can be enjoyed simply and purely at that level.

Eastman, who was known for introducing pop elements into his music, used near repetition to great effect on his 1981 voice solo "Prelude to The Holy Presence of Joan d'Arc," the powerful introduction to the cello tentet The Holy Presence of Joan d'Arc. We're fortunate to have a recording of the prelude delivered in Eastman's powerful baritone, included on the essential New World Recordings box Unjust Malaise, which also includes recordings of the aforementioned quartets, with Eastman as one of the pianists. An exceptional live performance of the piece can also be found on YouTube, with singer Davóne Tines and an ensemble including cellists Marika Hughes, Tomeka Reid, and Seth Parker Woods. The prelude begins with a descending four-note ostinato—"Saint Michael said / Saint Catherine said / Saint Margaret said"—before breaking at length into the two-note ascending "She said / He said / They said." The number of repetitions may well be up to the performer, but its power lies at least in part in the alterations. Like a rollercoaster, baby.

I will not be so base as to assume that this black, gay, exceptional composer was drawing from jazz and disco (although others have), but I will say that listening back to the recordings we have, my ears attuned by the new Femenine, led me to hear the music that way. In contrast to Glass and Reich, Eastman's got groove.

Femenine, which generally stretches over an hour, has two dominant elements: a clattering set of jingle bells, which provide a constant rhythm, and a two-note theme on vibraphone, a quick trill leading to a leaping interval. Melodic lines are hung on that scaffold, but the basic structure changes only with the imprecisions of bells and human muscles. The Talea/Harlem recording is surprisingly bright, richer than the usual, austere new music album. But what makes the record stand out—what makes it brilliant, really—is music director Chris McIntyre's synthesizer. It fills the bass floor and reaches across the registers occupied by other instruments. It dances through the forward motion.

There are other recordings: a 1974 tape with Eastman on piano (released by Frozen Reeds) that serves as a baseline; a beautifully pristine version by the ensemble Apartment House; and a wildly popular record by the ensemble Wild Up, which feels too soft to me. But the Kairos release is a jam. Listening to it also led me back to Sō Percussion's 2021 recording of Eastman's 1973 Stay on It. With added strings, electronics, woodwinds, and voices, and Adam Tendler's piano, the quartet makes the piece alive, vivid, and contemporary.

I'm not trying to suggest that the recent recordings of Femenine and Stay on It mark a trend. It takes three to make a trend, anyway. But they are vibrant examples of the work of a composer who is at last starting to get a performance history.