A short text exhorts Joan to speak boldly with phrases that repeat, growing in intensity. Lighted with a halo, Tines sang Eastman’s solo “Prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc” with what may be even more otherworldliness and mesmerizing sanctity than the composer himself brought to his performances. The Zipper program began with a darkened hall and the young bass-baritone Davóne Tines placed high above the stage. He may have felt he was still a voice in a white wilderness, but he would, nonetheless, have been thrilled by what he heard. But from what I remember of Eastman, I doubt that he would have been happy. If the gripping performances, and the gripped crowd, on Monday are any indication, we will be hearing much more Eastman. (The newest, the hourlong “Femenine,” is compulsively listenable.) An important study, “Gay Guerrilla,” titled after one of Eastman’s pieces, has recently been published. Historical recordings have been released. Phil included Eastman on its 2014 Minimalist Jukebox festival. The piece performed Tuesday had its West Coast premiere 10 years ago at REDCAT, and the L.A. But the new music scene was simply, and in Eastman’s case tragically, not ready for identity politics.Īll of that, of course, makes Eastman speak with tremendous immediacy to our own time, and a revival of Eastman has been brewing for a while. Many had proud, angry titles, such as his N-word series of scores for multiple pianos. His pieces had power and compositional integrity, and they sounded like no one else’s. Composers practiced ego removal in an effort to liberate music, in belief that whatever thoughts and feelings the music engendered must be allowed to belong to the listener.Įastman’s contribution was to expand hardcore process-oriented Minimalism, finding ways to fit in expressive dissonances, improvisation and elements of African American music, including its spirituality. The musical avant-garde, be they European radicals, the experimental New York School around John Cage or the Minimalists, espoused an abstract art form meant to open ears to new ways of hearing. Eastman, who was recognized from the start as a major talent, was immediately welcomed.īut he and the community nevertheless turned out to be a troubling fit. And if all but a very few were white, that was widely thought regrettable. It was a community that many thought was basically without prejudice, sexually or racially. The purposely provocative title, “Crazy ,” tells you something, but far from everything, about Eastman, who was African American, gay and out-of-step with the new-music community in which he was a rising star. In the final piece on Monday’s program, four pianos thundered for 55 minutes unlike four pianos had ever been asked to thunder before the music was written in 1979.
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