REBELLIOUS Notes powered grain elevator was developed there. Gay Guerilla for four pianos (1980) In 1843, the railroad came to Buffalo. The town Billy Childs, Scott Dunn, Daniel Schlosberg, Louise Thomas at the end of the Erie Canal became a city of in-

Stay On It for seven or more performers (1973) creasing importance as a transportation center Seth Parker Woods, cello & leader; Zanaida Robles, sop- and the chief grain depot of America.” rano; Adam Tendler, piano; Shalini Vijayan, violin; Max Opferkuch, clarinet; David Brennan, saxophone; Dustin The Center in Buffalo, with its ideally scaled Albright Donohue & Sidney Hopson, percussion Knox concert hall was unique. Within four years, the Center would play a key role in the rapid advance A remarkable new music scene developed in Buffalo of minimalism as we know it, and soon contribute at the State University of New York (SUNY), which important strands to that history – even if they are only strived to be thought of as the "Berkeley of the East." now gaining proper attention and understanding. Extensive vision planning helped to create a new social dynamic for music that would bring perform- The Buffalo Generation ers and composers closer together without the nec- Foss initially recruited the most progressive and ac- essity of teaching duties. They were called Creative complished young artists to be CAs. Percussionist/ Associates (CA). Financial support from the Rocke- composer John Bergamo, who would later become feller Foundation helped create this new paradigm a leading figure at CalArts, fellow percussion inno- for collaboration that opened in March 1964 – the vator Jan Williams, who would remain in various cap- Center of the Creative and Performing Arts. At the acities as composer, conductor and director until center of the Center was the warm and charismatic 1980, and avant-garde jazz bassist Buell Neidlinger personality of pianist/composer Lukas Foss (1922- signed up. The LA-born soprano Carol Plantamura, 2009), a naturalized Jewish-American born in Berlin. who was active in Rome with Musica Elettronica Under his leadership nothing quite like the scene in Viva (MEV), joined the collaboration, as did the Buffalo existed elsewhere, before or since. non-English speaking Italian experimental com- poser Sylvano Bussotti. Renee Levine Packer, who worked at the Center as an administrator and authored the scene’s definitive When the center opened, two newly appointed pro- chronicle This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New fessors – the German-Argentine composer Mauricio Music in Buffalo (Oxford University Press, 2010), Kagel, and the Belgian composer Henri Pousseur, compared the Center to its historical models and to who was closely associated with the Darmstadt like-minded programs: school and electronic music – felt liberated by the arrival of so many fellow travelers. They had accep- “Although these groups were comparable to the ted those university positions with the understand- Buffalo center for their dedication to fostering ing that sleepy Buffalo would soon become the most the composition and performance of contempo- exciting American city for new music. rary music, each was different in practice. Most used professional freelancers from their com- John Cage’s frequent collaborator, the composer/ munities or faculty members and ad hoc perfor- pianist David Tudor followed in the second year along mers. None had an ensemble brought together with trombonist/composer and extended technique to live in a community for the sole purpose of the pioneer Vinko Globokar. In that spring, Frederic study and performance of new music. None pre- Rzewski took a break from MEV and Rome for a sem- sented as broad a cross-section of repertory with ester to join the Buffalo scene. Cornelius Cardew, allegiance to no one school of thought, and, in- the notorious English experimentalist and assistant deed, none incorporated as broad a represen- to Karlheinz Stockhausen, followed in 1966-67. With tation of international composers and performers.” rock star looks, the formidable, but elfin pianist Yuji Takahashi stayed for two years. Packer goes on to explain Buffalo’s DNA, if you will, that made it a city historically destined for such mu- The center’s groundbreaking Columbia recording sical uniqueness: sessions March 27-28, 1968 of Terry Riley’s In C overdubbed ten musicians with Williams on marim- “Buffalo, New York, as it turns out, had a tradition baphone. The UK premiere followed in May with the of embracing challenge and innovation. There was help of Cardew’s connections, and the LP was releas- pride in being first. The first elevator in the world ed before year-end. Riley overlapped Takahashi’s was built in Buffalo in the 1840s. The first steam- Buffalo stint in the spring of 1969 and soon gained worldwide crossover attention. However, the Center’s pared less well to the many Anglo students who role in fostering his rise, and that of minimalism along entered with more privilege. So the young Cuban, with it, was largely eclipsed by Riley’s celebrity. Mexican and Brazilian women students became his closest companions. Composition would soon sup- Julius Eastman became a CA in the fall of 1969 plant his interest in being a pianist and his grades and stayed until 1975. David Del Tredici, who had improved markedly. already begun his Neo-Romantic devotion to Lewis Carroll’s book Alice in Wonderland, completed A final recital in 1963 made up exclusively of his own Vintage Alice during his 1972-73 stay – many years compositions earned him a diploma from Curtis. Du- before he became an outspoken champion of gay ring the intervening five years before entering the identity. Eastman’s fleeting moment of fame came Buffalo Center, his enterprising nature and talent be- from his matchless bass baritone performance of came so evident that his mentors found extraordin- Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell ary opportunities. He was selected by the conductor Davies in 1970, recorded by Unicorn in 1971, and Eugene Ormandy for a minor part in a production of released in the US by Nonesuch in 1973. Critics Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss and assign- and audience alike rapturously received his perf- ed a German coach with decided success. Of even ormances across Europe as part of a Center-org- greater impact was his casting as Tiresias in Strav- anized tour and the recording was nominated for a insky’s Oedipus Rex with the Cornell Symphony Grammy. Orchestra and the great mezzo-soprano Lili Choo- kasian as Jocasta. He was then asked to tour the Julius Eastman U.S. and Europe as a member of the singularly From an early age Julius was willful, obstinate and American Gregg Smith Singers in 1968. After a stint had an air about him that his father read as effemin- as a dance accompanist, he joined Foss’s forward- ate. His mother was protective and concerned only looking enterprise in 1969. with the boy’s development claiming that before he was born she sensed that he was special. At age In 1968 four short piano pieces by the twenty-eight- ten he asked for a beginning piano book that seem- year-old composer and pianist were performed in ed to him as easy to read on the piano as a text- Buffalo’s Albright Knox Museum and in Carnegie book. He sang in St. John’s Episcopal Church choir, Hall as a guest performer. Packer remembers: where he was a paid boy soprano, until his voice changed at age fourteen, darkening into a resonant “Julius simply appeared in my office one day – a bass baritone. tall, slim, handsome black man dressed in a long Army-green trench coat and white sneakers carry- Suddenly, this slight and spindly boy had an identity ing some scores under his arm. ‘Lukas Foss said as a singer that could rivet an audience with a com- I should come over and talk to you,’ he said in a mandingly large voice. Outright racism was hardly low, modulated voice. ‘I have a string quartet I’d evident in Ithaca, where the black population was like the Creative Associates to play.’ Foss hadn’t small and educated. Julius participated in science mentioned a thing to me, which meant that I had- club and his high intellect was accepted. As the boy n’t approached any of the musicians – some matured, however, his options seemed to narrow in of whom could be quite surly about agreeing to the eyes of his school counselor despite good grades do anything that might encroach on free time. I and prizes for singing. Perhaps ironically and with gave him the musicians’ phone numbers, sugges- a hint of gender rebelliousness, Julius chose to sing ting that he could call them. ‘Good luck,’ I said Stormy Weather at his class graduation. skeptically.”

Nevertheless his talent was being nurtured by obser- The university made him full faculty in 1971, and with vant others who had connections to Juilliard School extensive performing responsibilities, including tour- and Curtis Institute of Music, where he enrolled in ing with his newly composed Stay On It and Fred- 1959 as one of two black male students and three eric Rzewski’s breakthrough work Coming Together Latinas among one hundred plus students. Eastman (1972), show-stopingly rendered by Eastman. The lived at the YMCA, and his homosexuality was now three-week tour of Evenings for New Music con- apparent enough that friendships were limited. Weigh- certs visited Paris, London, Scotland (Aberdeen, ing only 125 pounds, it must be considered that he Edinburgh, Glasgow), Lisbon, Barcelona, Rome, suffered from malnutrition. He wore glasses. His shy- Perugia, Karlsruhe, and Berlin. Upon his return, ness and technical sophistication as a pianist com- Eastman stayed in Buffalo until 1975. His faculty bio at the time listed two ballets, songs, orchestral, and early Reich and Glass, the “outside world” of pol- piano works. That any of them survived his tragic itics and the vernacular was readily embraced.” death – addicted and evicted – is an open question. Packer quotes a frequent performer of Stay On It who Stay On It contrasted Rzewski as being “aggressive and hard- The ensemble piece Stay On It (1973) was Eastman’s nosed” and Eastman as “malleable and sensual.” first important work to survive and is his clear entry He summed up by saying “Eastman drew most of to the history of minimalism. That there was a black his musical conclusions by breathing the same air and voice with a significant gay African-American per- feeling the same vibrations as his more commercially spective at this important turning point of Western successful counterparts.” music is a topic of considerable interest today, more so as the cultural dimensions of disco with roots in Gay Guerrilla Motown and Funk are contrasted with minimalism. That being said Eastman’s so-called “Nigger series” – Evil Nigger (1979), Crazy Nigger, and Gay Guerilla Matthew Mendez, in his essay “That Piece Does (both c. 1980) each for four pianos certainly demon- Not Exist without Julius: Still Staying on Stay On It” strates Eastman’s later and total integration of these from Gay Guerilla: Julius Eastman and His Music two sides, so well contrasted in Stay On it. Evil Nig- edited by Packer and Mary Jane Leach (University ger has an energetic grandiosity that recalls Rach- of Rochester Press, 2015), elaborates: maninov before its growing dissonance and struc- tural reduction. The esprit de corps is heightened by “It is noteworthy that Eastman should emphasize the cuing calls at key moments of “1, 2, 3, 4!” that rhythmic continuity (“the beat”) at the exclusion heightens audience involvement! of the other building blocks of early minimalism, such as process, repetition, consonance, slow At 55-minutes, Crazy Nigger is more than double harmonic rhythm, and machine-like imperson- the length of its predecessor. Eastman’s “organic ality. For no matter the direction Eastman’s later form” is on full display as described by Kyle Gann projects would take, the truth is that Stay On It in his trenchant program notes to the three-disc stood askew from these minimalist standbys: too treasure trove of historic recordings, Unjust haphazard for “process music,” too wild and wooly Malaise. “Every phrase contains the information of for ‘another look at harmony,’ too expressive for the phrase before it,” he explains “with new assembly-line industrial precision. We could not material gradually added in and old material be farther away from midcentury modernism, gradually removed: minimalism’s additive process where complexity and richness of signification expanded to the level of phrase structure.” were implicitly valorized as desirable (straight) ‘masculine’ traits. And this is to say nothing of The form of Crazy Nigger is so elaborately drawn out the abstractions of early minimalism: with [C.A. that some extraordinary textures emerge slowly with Benjamin] Hudson’s Diana Ross snippet, from rivulets of melody and an engulfing darkness of bass [“Stop in the Name of Love” interpolated in some notes that require sixteen more hands belonging to performances] Stay On It cited disco as a social eight pianists in the audience in a coup de theatre! entity, highlighting the genre’s associations with Luciano Chessa, in the anthology portion of Packer’s gay and ethnic subcultures.” book edited by Mary Jane Leach, considers Gay Guerrilla “Eastman’s most powerful tribute to the Packer, further observed the linkage of Eastman and modern fight for gay rights and one of his most com- Rzewski at this time when key works of Riley, Glass positionally memorable – and moving – works...if and Reich were gaining ground in the public sphere: all of Eastman’s music but this one were to disappear, Gay Guerrilla would still be enough to guarantee him “All in all, Eastman’s admiration for Rzewski’s work a firm place in the history of twentieth-century music.” of this period makes considerable sense. If the modular structure of In C provided a manifest For the audience new to Eastman’s music, the most precedent for questions regarding notation and distinguishing feature of Gay Guerrilla is his surprising ensemble coordination, Rzewski, for whom mini- interpolation of an unlikely but highly recognizable malism was merely a means to an end, offered theme – the reformation’s battle hymn A Mighty For- an appealingly messy approach to pulsation and tress is Our God (Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott) writ- repetition. In Rzewski’s hands, pulse-pattern min- ten in 1528 by none other than Martin Luther, the imalism was never rigidly non-referential. Unlike namesake of Dr. Martin Luther King. Of course, J.S. Bach famously incorporated the hymn Scott Dunn, piano, orchestrated and premiered Ver- into a 1723 cantata of the same name with soloists, non Duke’s “lost” Piano Concerto in C in Dunn’s 1999 chorus and chamber orchestra. Lukas Foss was a not- making his Carnegie Hall debut with Dennis Russell ed Bach conductor and may have employed East- Davies and the American Composers Orchestra. He man as the bass soloist, or he knew it from church. recorded Lukas Foss' complete piano works at Ameri- can Academy of Arts and Letters in 2003, after four On this 500th anniversary year of the Reformation years of working as Associate Music Director of the [2018], the puzzle of this choice deepens as one con- composer's Festival of the Hamptons. The recording siders the Protestant stance against Catholicism’s was released on Naxos in 2005. He recorded the doctrine of earning grace, rather than it being an in- Duke Violin Concerto as conductor and pianist with trinsic spiritual state. Martin Luther’s pronounced the Royal Symphony Orchestra and the complete anti-Semitism only muddies the waters. Gann opts for works for violin and piano with violinist Elmira Darvar- a perverse use of the quotation, “being quite sub- ova in 2015. Soon after, he conducted the cast re- versively transformed, given the intention implied by cording of Misia, a musical based on the life of Paris- Eastman’s title, as a gay manifesto.” In the context of ian muse and Sergei Diaghilev confidant Misia Sert such a manifesto coming ten years after the 1969 and set to music by Duke arranged and adapted by Stonewall Inn origin of gay liberation, another inter- Dunn. He is Associate Conductor of LA Phil’s Holly- pretation may be that by appropriating this famous wood Bowl Orchestra since 2012. He has led perf- music – especially after reading the four verses that ormances with Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, BBC Luther wrote to his own melody – Eastman triumph- Concert Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Royal Phil- antly ennobles what had been long rejected as un- harmonic, Seattle Symphony, Sydney Symphony speakable. Orchestra and Vienna Radio Orchestra, as well as © PATRICK SCOTT 2020 premieres of new one-act operas and Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park with UCLA Opera. Dunn has ARTIST BIOS: GAY GUERRILLA conducted a number of live orchestral performan- Billy Childs, piano, began performing publicly by ces of film scores, including Fantasia, Star Trek age six. At sixteen, he was admitted to USC Com- Beyond, and Rebel Without A Cause, which he munity School of the Performing Arts, going on to arranged for live performance premiered by the LA earn a degree in composition under the tutelage of Phil, performed also by Cleveland Orchestra. Robert Linn and Morten Lauridsen. After grad- uation from USC, he was discovered by trumpet Daniel Schlosberg, piano, can be heard on record- legend Freddie Hubbard, with whom he embarked ings, including Stephen Andrew Taylor’s quartet on a performing and recording tour leading to other Quark Shadows with members of the Pacifica Quartet such work with such influential jazz musicians as and Chicago Symphony, as soloist in Dimitri Tym- J.J. Johnson, Joe Henderson, and Wynton Mar- oczko’s piano concerto Another Fantastic Voyage, salis, before landing a contract with Windham Hill and performing Augusta Read Thomas’s solo work Records in 1988. As a pianist, he has performed Starlight Ribbons, commissioned by Harvard’s with Yo-Yo Ma, Sting, Renee Fleming, LA Phil, Fromm Foundation, that he premiered in 2013. Add- Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Chick Corea, Kronos itionally, he has released two solo albums and gives Quartet, Wynton Marsalis, Jack DeJohnette, Dave frequent recitals at Bargemusic and Los Angeles Holland, Ron Carter, Ying Quartet, American Brass County Museum of Art. In past seasons he has ap- Quintet, and Chris Botti. He has also occupied a peared in solo and chamber repertoire at the Aus- parallel niche as an in-demand composer. His orch- trian Cultural Forum (New York), Dame Myra Hess estral and chamber commissions include Esa-Pekka Series (Chicago), Phillips Collection, and at the em- Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the bassies of Romania, Israel, Austria and Germany in Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Leo- Washington, D.C. He has frequently collaborated nard Slatkin, LA Master Chorale, Kronos Quartet, with Eighth Blackbird and Third Coast Percussion, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, American Brass as well as with International Contemporary Ens- Quintet, Ying Quartet, Dorian Wind Quintet, and Lyris emble, Ensemble Dal Niente, Pittsburgh New Music Quartet who premiered his Unrequited at Jacaranda Ensemble, pianist Amy Briggs, and new music en- in 2016. He has garnered thirteen Grammy nomin- sembles at University of Chicago and University of ations and five awards: two for Best Instrumental Illinois. A founding member of Yarn/Wire, he was Composition, and two for Best Arrangement Accom- staff accompanist the Perlman Music Program, panying a Vocalist. Steans Music Institute vocal program at Ravinia, and as répétiteur for the 2016 Ojai Music Festival, Zanaida Robles, soprano, has sung throughout the he held the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship in Piano U.S., Europe, New Zealand, and Australia with Gus- at Tanglewood in the summer of 2000. tavo Dudamel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Carl St. Clair, John Mauceri, Charles Dutoit, Leonard Slatkin, Louise Thomas, piano, is Director of Keyboard Jeffrey Kahane, Grant Gershon, and Michael Tilson Collaborative Arts, and Associate Dean of Academic Thomas. She prepared choirs for Kristin Cheno- Affairs at Chapman University. A native of Ireland, she weth, Audra McDonald and Wayne Brady, con- studied with John Perry and has concertized through- ducted USC Thornton University Chorus, and was out Europe, North America and Asia at such not- Director of Classical Choirs at Los Angeles County able concert venues as the Tchaikovsky Con- High School for the Arts appearing at Disney Hall servatoire in Moscow, the Forbidden City Concert and Hollywood Bowl. She directs “Project Mes- Hall in Beijing and Carnegie Hall in New York City. siah” for Street Symphony founded by Vijay Gupta She won the 1998 concerto competition at the to engage homeless and incarcerated people. She University of Southern California and played under serves on the National Association of Negro Music- the baton of the late Sergiu Comissiona. She has ians board, and co-chairs the board of Tonality, made CD recordings in Germany (as part of the which promotes peace, unity, and social justice chamber music festival, Schwetzinger Festspielen), through choral music. at the Banff Center for the Arts in Canada with the Irish contemporary music group Nua Nós, as well David Brennan, alto saxophone, has performed as appearing on numerous radio broadcasts for with LA Phil, Long Beach Opera, New West and Irish Radio, BBC Radio Northern Ireland, Moscow Santa Barbara Symphonies, and West Hollywood radio, and KUSC in Los Angeles. She has played Orchestra. He has worked with conductors and live and recorded many times for RTE (Irish Na- composers including Marcelo Lehninger, Nir Kab- tional Television) and the nationally distributed Ov- aretti, Christopher Rountree, Bill Conti, and John ation Arts Channel in Los Angeles. In 2007, she per- Williams, and artists including Guster, Rashawn formed a program of "California Composers Today" Ross and Boyd Tinsley (Dave Matthews Band), and at Carnegie Hall. Her distinguished recent appear- Seth Macfarlane. He has performed on film scores ances for Jacaranda have included highly virtuosic including Pumpkin, Don’t Say A Word, and Shrek solo and chamber music of her countryman Gerald the Halls. He is a member of Encore Saxophone Berry, as well as Jacaranda’s 2016 contribution to Quartet, winner of the 2016 Beverly Hills National the LA Phil’s Noon to Midnight new music mara- Auditions concert series. He is currently on faculty thon in Schnee by recent Grawemeyer Prize winner at both UCLA and La Sierra University (Riverside, Hans Abrahamsen. CA), teaching courses in saxophone, chamber music, jazz improvisation and theory, woodwind technique and humanities.

ARTIST BIOS: STAY ON IT Dustin Donahue, percussion, has commissioned Seth Parker Woods, cello/group leader, is a visiting and premiered a large body of solo and chamber lecturer/Artist in Residence at University of Chicago music by living composers while continuing to per- and the inaugural Artist in Residence at Seattle form music of the twentieth-century avant-garde. Symphony’s new concert venue Octave 9. He work- He frequently collaborates with International ed with Louis Andriessen, Elliott Carter, Georg Fried- Contemporary Ensemble, and many of Southern rich Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Peter Eotvos, Lou California’s presenters of contemporary music, such Reed, and Dame Shirley Bassey. He has appeared as WasteLAnd, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, with Ictus Ensemble, Ensemble L’Arsenale, zone Ojai Music Festival, Monday Evening Concerts, Experimental, Basel Sinfonietta, New York City Ballet, San Diego New Music, and Jacaranda. As a solo- and Orchestra of St. Luke’s. He has appeared in ist, Dustin has recently performed in Reykjavik, concert at Royal Albert Hall, Snape Maltings Iceland, and Christchurch, New Zealand, and fea- Festival, Ghent Festival, Musée d’art Moderne et tured performing the music of Brian Ferneyhough Contemporain, Le Poisson Rouge, Sound & Body at Stanford University. He appears on Mode, Decca, Festival, and Virginia Tech, among others. Recent Stradivarius, and Populist Records. awards include a DCASE artist grant, Earle Brown/ Morton Feldman Foundation Grant, and the Paul Sidney Hopson, percussion, performs frequently Sacher Stiftung Research Scholarship. with Los Angeles Master Chorale, Opera Santa Bar- bara, Southeast Symphony, West LA Symphony, and was a featured soloist with Los Angeles Mas- LA Opera, London Symphony Orchestra, Jacaranda, ter Chorale in Chinary Ung’s Spiral XII and Tan Dun’s and with musicians from the LA Phil. He has prem- Water Passion. She is a member of Lyris Quartet, iered chamber works by John Williams, Philip Glass, Jacaranda's resident ensemble. John Adams, Steve Reich, Peter Eötvös, Kaija Saar- iaho, and John Corigliano. Hopson currently serves as director of percussion at the California State Sum- mer School for the Arts, hosted by California In- stitute of the Arts. He is also faculty at Young Mus- icians Foundation, Los Angeles. Since 2009, Hopson has served as a freelance cultural policy analyst. Since 2013 he is vice president of cultural development for Gigantic Worx.

Max Opferkuch, clarinet, took home top honors from the 2019 Pasadena Showcase House for the Arts Instrumental Competition and the 2015 San Diego Clarinet Society Young Artists’ Competition. A stu- dent of Yehuda Gilad at University of South Calif- ornia, Opferkuch is also a fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center. He recently won the winds/brass/ percussion division of the USC Thornton concerto competition and has been a soloist with USC Thorn- ton Symphony. He spent a semester studying at Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki.

Adam Tendler, piano, has performed solo in all fifty United States, at venues including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, San Francisco Symphony/SoundBox, The Broad Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Bary- shnikov Arts Center, Columbia, Princeton, NYU, Boston Conservatory, Rothko Chapel, Stonewall Inn, and James Turrell's Skypace in Sarasota. His association with John Cage’s music includes three sold-out recitals at the Rubin Museum in New York City, and recitals in the “Cage100” festivals at Sym- phony Space, and Jacaranda, as well as a 2018 three-part Cage retrospective at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles. He is a New School and Manhattan School of Music guest lecturer, and Third Street Music School Settlement faculty. He received the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists in 2019.

Shalini Vijayan, violin, was a founding member and Principal Second Violin of Kristjan Jarvi’s Absolute Ensemble. She has performed with throughout the United States, Europe, and on several of their recordings, including 2001's Grammy-nominated Absolution. A member of New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida, from 1998-2001, she was concertmaster for Michael Tilson Thomas, John Adams, and Oliver Knussen. She features regularly with Grammy Award-winning Southwest Chamber Music, including on their Grammy-nominated “Com- plete Chamber Works of Carlos Chávez, Vol. 3,”