Wild Up: Julius Eastman's 'Buddha' (LP Release Show)
$20 ($15 student)
Wild Up earned widespread praise in 2021 for its New Amsterdam recording Julius Eastman: Vol. 1. This dawn to dusk performance celebrates the release of Vol. 2: Joy Boy. The entire ensemble will perform Eastman's Buddha, a hand-drawn one-page score that the composer left behind without performance instructions. In his elegant manuscript, a hand-drawn oval encloses twenty staves of stemless pitches, with rippling lines emanating outward from the center. Over the course of this 14.5-hour event, Wild Up will perform original short- and long-form realizations of the work simultaneously, from dawn (5:34am) to dusk (8:08pm) with the audience dispersed amongst the everchanging ensemble.
Wild UP writes:
"This is a portrait and response to one of our favorite composers. A series of performances and a multi-volume anthology, over a half decade or so.
"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."
COVID-19 Protocols: Proof of full vaccination required. Masks and distancing not required. More information: https://www.2220arts.org/events#h.1ftzxuby5p07