It was difficult not to imagine agendas for the pairing of Julius Eastman and Steve Martland. It would be a celebration, a demonstration, a protest march, a parade. This concert by pianists Adam Tendler and Conor Hanick at Kaufman Music Center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side held potential to be many things, but it was certain to be undeniably, inescapably, avowedly queer. Not every gay composer comes with an agenda, but this was Julius Eastman in New York City, where the new music community regularly prostrates itself (or damns its forebears) for allowing him to die – the words ‘homeless’ and ‘forgotten’ always intoned – 33 years ago.
Eastman titled his compositions so as to ensure that we couldn’t forget who he was and what he stood for. Programming him alongside Martand put social concerns at the center of the table. The Liverpudlian composer studied under Louis Andriessen, whose own work was often strongly informed by Marxist ideals. Martland’s recordings were released on Factory Classical, an imprint of the Mancunian label Factory Records, best known for releasing the two albums by the post-punk band Joy Division. His Drill programmed alongside Eastman's Gay Guerilla held promise of an exciting evening.
The only dynamic marking on the score for Martland’s 1987 Drill is “loud”, and the performers obliged with no sacrifice of precision. The performance began with a recording of Martland speaking about artists reluctant to get involved in politics in Margaret Thatcher’s England. The pianists then commenced to punch at the upper register in unison under stark white lights. With precious few notes played, and with most of those repeated, a harmonic complexity was suggested, like a brittle and fractured Robert Schumann. They played in strict 4/4, but it was never certain on which count the next boot would fall. Eventually, they landed on interlocked lines, more assemblage than melody. For much of the first half, it very nearly could have been a solo, or at least it seemed that way. The prevailing sense coming from the stage was that the pianos weren’t complementing one another but were amassed, united. Only after a tightly controlled frenzy did it recede into a fantastic dual complexity, growing brighter, muscles still tensed but breathing slightly easier.
Eastman’s Gay Guerilla also began with a recording of the composer, this time addressing the title of the piece: “a guerrilla is someone who is... sacrificing his life for a point of view. And, you know, if there is a cause — and if it is a great cause — those who belong to that cause will sacrifice their blood, because, without blood, there is no cause. So, therefore, that is the reason that I use ‘gay guerrilla’, in hopes that I might be one, if called upon to be one.”
The repetitions were soft now, and under warm, amber lights. Eastman is often, and rightly, thought of as strident (in his music and his politics) but Hanick and Tendler suggested a vulnerable guerilla, full of yearning, not amassing forces but striving to be a single whole. The count was still strict, but in a winsome legato.
As hard as Eastman’s life was, and as hard as he sometimes made it for himself, and as tragic as his end was, and as much as the story is repeated in New York City in recent years, I’ve never heard his music as mournful. The duo found a richness, a harmony that landed the piece somewhere between Steve Reich and Stephen Sondheim, which meant (for me) intellectually provocative and emotionally straightforward. And wrenching as well – complicated, but pure. There was still resilience, if not resolution.
