Composer, pianist, performance artist and choreographer, Julius Eastman straddled New York’s uptown and downtown arts scenes for two decades before dying in obscurity in a Buffalo hospital in 1990. In recent years there’s been a steady resurgence of interest in him and his work – not just as a gay, Black composer, but as a significant musical personality whose maverick minimalist beats earned him a reputation for artistic confrontation.
This concert, part of US bass-baritone Davóne Tines’s Barbican residency, offered a snapshot of his eclectic output. Touch Him When, arranged here for electric guitar and performed with head-banging intensity by Jiji, explored Eastman’s belief in music as a performative art. Distortion pedals and reverb leant the music a doom-metal vibe as consonant and dissonant waves crashed and burned. At the opposite end of the spectrum was Piano 2, a tripartite work with a conventional, early-20th-century feel, presented with calm authority by pianist Conor Hanick.
