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Wild Up Announce New Recording of Julius Eastman’s Joy Boy

Wild Up Announce New Recording of Julius Eastman’s Joy Boy

Last year, Los Angeles music collective Wild Up issued studio recordings of late composer Julius Eastman’s work Femenine. Now, the group is coming back with Julius Eastman, Vol. 2: Joy Boy, the second entry in its seven-volume anthology celebrating Eastman. The new album arrives June 17 via New Amsterdam. The collection includes never-before-recorded compositions such as “Joy Boy” and “Buddha.” Today, Wild Up have shared a recording of Eastman’s piece “Stay on It.” Find that below, and scroll down for the album art and tracklist.

Eastman was a queer avant-garde composer who wasn’t fully appreciated for his work until after his death in Buffalo, New York in 1990. He was 49 years old when he died. Eastman worked and performed in the downtown New York music scene, between the worlds of disco, experimental, and classical.

“Since we first learned about Julius Eastman in 2010, we’ve had an increasing affinity for the way that he set out to make music,” Chris Rountree, artistic director for Wild Up, said in press materials. “Eastman’s process and approach feel like an ever-present teacher, embedded in the works. The composer has been an inspiration, larger than life, changing the way we want to work, how we want to make, what we want to make, and what we want it to mean.”

“We want listeners to find themselves in these pieces,” Rountree added. “And in their multiple iterations. We want this work to be quintessentially queer. Every moment full of choice.” He continued:

Wild Up feels changed when we play this music. We’ve found that Eastman’s pieces are an ideal way to create the space we see for classical music going forward. We want listeners to find something joyous and raucous, something everchanging, and yet somehow also repeated over and over. To us, Eastman’s music feels like a perfect mirror in the search for self.

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