WNYCSTUDIOS:#5154, Christopher Rountree on Julius Eastman's Gay Guerrilla
by Sırma Munyar
Conductor Christopher Rountree has been on a mission to highlight the works of late American composer Julius Eastman. After founding the expansive music collective Wild Up, he continuously looked for challenges to reinterpret unconventional compositions, which urged him to dive into Eastman’s barely decipherable scores. He’s been under the spell of Eastman’s music long enough to conjure up an anthology in his name, brought to life with strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion instruments.
What was so intriguing about Eastman’s creative mind? According to Rountree, it was his unique brand of “organic music”, which he describes with these words: “…his idea was that the music is cellular, and that each cell contains every bit of information that came before it. So, something grows, and then one element is added, and something social happens, and catalyzes a subtle change. And also, he sometimes doesn’t indicate what that change is. He just adds an F sharp.” He, with the rest of the Wild Up ensemble, co-exist in “one harmonic space that shifts very slowly or seldom,” each time they record a piece by Eastman. As they play on, the harmony expands, the rules change, and each musician finds themselves in a position to make their own choices.