Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner

A new radio play about composer Julius Eastman will premiere this Saturday, November 12, at the Performa Biennial in New York.

Eastman is a compelling though little-known figure in American composition. He was a gay African-American composer, hailed as an incredible vocalist and pianist. Eastman is probably best known for singing on the 1973 Grammy-nominated Nonesuch recording of Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs for a Mad King. Raised in Ithaca, New York, he started studying piano at fourteen and was playing Beethoven after only six months of lessons. He studied at the Curtis Institute of Music as a piano major under Mieczyslaw Horzowski but soon switched to composition. In 1968 he moved to Buffalo where he was a member of the Creative Associates, under the leadership of Lukas Foss and later Morton Feldman.

While in Buffalo, he performed and toured music by many prominent contemporary composers, as well as had his own music performed. He eventually moved to New York City, where he was associated with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and worked with downtown composers like Meredith Monk, Peter Gordon, Arthur Russell and Evan Lurie. Once he left Buffalo, the titles of his pieces started to change, from poetic and evocative titles like "The Moon's Silent Modulation" to much more confrontational themes like "If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich," and "Evil Nigger."

A 1980 piece for Eastman's voice and cello ensemble, The Holy Presence of Jeanne d'Arc, was performed to wide acclaim at The Kitchen in New York City, and in 1981 Eastman recorded with Meredith Monk's ensemble for her influential album Dolmen Music.

However, success was fleeting. Desperate for paid work and despondent about what he saw as a lack of professional opportunities, Eastman began using drugs heavily. At one point he was evicted from his apartment, his belongings confiscated by the sheriff, and he took up residence in Tompkins Square Park.

A job teaching music theory brought him back to SUNY Buffalo, but his music career never recovered. Eastman died alone at the age of 50 in Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo. No public notice was given to his death until an obituary by Kyle Gann appeared in the Village Voice eight months after he died.

In 2005 New World Records released a 3-CD set of Eastman’s music.

The radio show, called "Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner, features several pianists and voice-actors, and will be broadcast live twice before being archived. It should be a fascinating event. Below is a recording of Eastman's piece “Evil Nigger” from 1979, here played on four pianos, including one played by Eastman himself.

To Hell With February

February is the month where people start thinking about Spring. They’ve endured November, December, and January, the holidays are well past, and now February -- which is just dark and cold. Personally, I’ve always been kind of depressed in the month of February. I used to joke around with friends in college that February was coming and it kind of took on a persona. This is when I was living in Buffalo. February is darkness and brutal cold and all gray and ice and dirty snow. It’s a disgusting month that must be stopped.

From an interview with Shane Jones at Bookslut.

It's a perfect moment to pick up Shane Jones' charming novel Light Boxes. Jones was born in Albany and educated in the impressive poetry program at the University of Buffalo. In 2009, at the tender age of 29, he published Light Boxes, his first novel, as a “chapnovel” by Publishing Genius in an edition of 500 copies. Light Boxes, now published by Penguin in considerably larger numbers, is a small and bewildering fable of a town battling to free itself from the brutal hold of the month of February, which has maintained its grip for 300 days. When the despairing townspeople, led by the valiant Thaddeus, suffer reprisals from February and its priests for trying to break the weather, a group of former balloonists don bird masks and instigate a rebellion. It's a lovely little book, full of sadness and magic.

A fine interview with Shane Jones at 3am Magazine.

The Mistake by the Lake

Photographer Chris Mottalini has taken a lovely series of photographs of makeshift enclosures in Buffalo, NY built by parents whose kids have to wait for the school bus in that town's famously brutal winters. The shelters dot the Buffalo landscape, but when I lived there they just blended into the background. I'm impressed that Mottalini took the time to notice them. The series carries the ignominious title "The Mistake by the Lake." Many more images here.

Ishmael Reed

Today is the birthday of writer, poet and social critic Ishmael Reed, born February 22, 1938. Reed was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but grew up in Buffalo. He attended Buffalo public schools from elementary school until he dropped out of Buffalo State University in the early 1960's. Reed's writing career began with a jazz column he wrote for Empire State, a long defunct African American weekly paper out of Buffalo.

Reed moved to New York City in 1962 and co-founded the East Village Other, an underground newspaper that became an important organ for the burgeoning counter culture movement. He published his first novel, The Free-Lance Pallbearers, in 1967, and since then has published some 10 novels, five books of poetry, four collections of essays, six produced plays, dozens of songs, and countless reviews and critical articles. Reed's huge body of work conforms to no one style, but more often than not Reed is combative, suspicious, deeply cynical and funny as hell.

In addition to his own prolific career, Reed has been a champion for younger writers, founding and serving as editor and publisher of various small presses and journals. His current publishing imprint is Ishmael Reed Publishing Company, and his online literary magazine, Konch, features contemporary poetry, essays and fiction. Reed recently retired from teaching at the University of California, Berkeley where he taught literature and creative writing for thirty-five years.

beware : do not read this poem

tonite, thriller was
abt an ol woman, so vain she
surrounded herself w/
many mirrors

it got so bad that finally she
locked herself indoors & her
whole life became the
mirrors

one day the villagers broke
into her house, but she was too
swift for them. she disappeared
into a mirror
each tenant who bought the house
after that, lost a loved one to

the ol woman in the mirror :
first a little girl
then a young woman
then the young woman/s husband

the hunger of this poem is legendary
it has taken in many victims
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr feet
back off from this poem
it has drawn in yr legs

back off from this poem
it is a greedy mirror
you are into this poem. from
the waist down
nobody can hear you can they?
this poem has had you up to here
belch
this poem aint got no manners
you cant call out frm this poem
relax now & go w/ this poem

move & roll on to this poem
do not resist this poem
this poem has yr eyes
this poem has his head
this poem has his arms
this poem has his fingers
this poem has his fingertips

this poem is the reader & the
reader this poem

statistic: the us bureau of missing persons re-
ports that in 1968 over 100,000 people
disappeared leaving no solid clues
nor trace only
a space in the lives of their friends

Tough Stuff from the Buff

People who haven't spent time in Buffalo, New York probably don't know about the Queen City's potent media arts community with a long tradition of creating unusual works that blur the lines between video art, personal documentary and media activism.

Straight out of Buffalo, filmmakers Marc Moscato and David Gracon are currently on a bike tour of the Northwest, carrying a collection of short films and videos by Buffalo artists. "Tough Stuff from the Buff" is a collection of 16 short films being shown in a dozen theaters, all ages venues and non-traditional spaces throughout the Pacific Northwest. Having already stopped in Anacortes, Bellingham and Vancouver, BC, they are now headed South, from Port Townsend down to Portland, and will be in Seattle for one night, july 28th, at the Caffe Vita on Capitol Hill. Full tour dates here. The tour website is being regularly updated, with photos, video and stories from the road.

The "Tough Stuff" collection purposefully presents a diverse sampling of Buffalo artists, from accomplished media makers to first timers, who reflect the city's rustbelt charm and demonstrate how ballsy one has to be to find a unique voice in a town suffering from the advanced stages of capitalism.