See Kent Devereaux, “The Twin Cities-Twelve Years After,” in New Music Across America (Valencia, CA: California Institute of Arts, 1992), 13. The Walker’s iteration was more expansive and included a more diverse range of projects in order to investigate the breadth of avant-garde music at the time. In 1979, the Kitchen presented New Music, New York, a ten-day series of performances and panels. The Walker’s 1980 New Music America Festival was not the first of its kind. The event, which was presented by the Walker in conjunction with the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the Minnesota Composers Forum, included more than seventy-five composers, performers, and ensembles from throughout the United States in an attempt to represent the stylistic diversity of experimental music at the time. In a 1980 handwritten letter to Nigel Redden, the director of Performing Arts at the time, the composer and vocalist Julius Eastman (US, 1940–1990) details what he will perform at the Walker’s 1980 New Music America Festival. Yours, Julius Eastman Julias Eastman, handwritten letter to Nigel Redden, director of Walker Performing Arts about the artist’s requirements and plans for his performance as part of the New Music America Festival, Spring 1980, Walker Art Center Archives. Let me know by phone if these things are possible. I will arrive the day before the first rehearsal, and I am to receive the agreed in cash on the day of arrival. The instruments to be used are 4 violins, 4 violas, 3 celli, 1 Bass. Īs agreed upon the two works to be performed are Gay Guerrilla & Evil Nigger, the lengths of the pieces are 28:30 and 19:35 respectively, a total 48:05. IV of the Living Collections Catalogue (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2020). Jackson, “Julius Eastman at the Walker,” in Creative Black Music at the Walker: Selections from the Archives, ed. "Unjust Malaise 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.Danielle A. Via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Includes unlimited streaming of Julius Eastman: Unjust Malaise "Unjust Malaise 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." -The Guardian This set of discs is a bold beginning to restoring to history the works of one of the most important members of the first post-minimalist generation. His works show different routes minimalism might have taken, and perhaps some of those will now be followed up. These three pieces, all scored for multiple pianos, build up immense emotive power through the incessant repetition of rhythmic figures."Įastman was an energizing underground figure, one whose forms are clear, whose methods were powerful and persuasive, and whose thinking was supremely musical. The pieces he wrote in this style often had intentionally provocative titles intended to reinterpret the minorities Eastman belonged to in a positive light: for example, Evil Nigger, Crazy Nigger, and Gay Guerrilla (all circa 1980). Applying minimalism's additive process to the building of sections, he developed a composing technique he called 'organic music,' a cumulatively overlapping process in which each section of a work contains, simultaneously, all the sections which preceded it. In his book American Music in the Twentieth Century, composer/author Kyle Gann briefly sums up Eastman's work and its importance: "Born in New York, he graduated from the Curtis Institute in composition and was discovered by Lukas Foss, who conducted his music, including Stay On It (1973), one of the first works to introduce pop tonal progressions and free improvisation in an art context. This comprehensive and definitive document, which comprises almost all of Eastman's signature works, will undoubtedly be a revelation for those who have thus far been unable to hear his work. This three-disc set marks the first appearance on disc of the music of the African-American composer Julius Eastman (1940-1990), who died under unexplained circumstances and whose musical legacy was thought lost.
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