»blood & cause«

Seth Parker Woods, Violoncello
Ensemble Resonanz

Programm anders, Text anpassen

At the center stands Julius Eastman’s Gay Guerrilla: a work of relentless force — a manifesto, a call to visibility, to resistance, to transformation. His music does not settle. It accumulates, intensifies, demands. Just as uncompromising as his life as a Black, queer composer in a world shaped by exclusion.

Around this core, the program unfolds in shifting constellations.

With two works by Jessie Montgomery, including Chemiluminescence, a contemporary voice comes into focus that extends and refracts Eastman’s legacy — connecting to the lineage of the Blacknificent 7 (of Black composers) and carrying it forward into the present. Her music moves between pulse and radiance, structure and freedom.

Pēteris Vasks opens a space of reflection, while Edward Elgar’s Elegy traces a fragile line of farewell.

The program moves between stillness and intensity, between individual voice and collective force.
Eastman remains at its center.
Unresolved. Unyielding. Unforgettable.

»Now the reason I use Gay Guerrilla — G U E R R I L L A, that one — is because these names — let me put a little subsystem here — these names: either I glorify them or they glorify me. And in the case of guerrilla: that glorifies gay — that is to say, there aren’t many gay guerrillas. I don’t feel that ›gaydom‹ has — does have — that strength, so therefore, I use that word in the hopes that they will. You see, I feel that — at this point, I don’t feel that gay guerrillas can really match with ›Afghani‹ guerrillas or ›PLO‹ guerrillas, but let us hope in the future that they might, you see. That’s why I use that word guerrilla: it means a guerrilla is someone who is, in any case, sacrificing his life for a point of view. And, you know, if there is a cause — and if it is a great cause — those who belong to that cause will sacrifice their blood, because, without blood, there is no cause. So, therefore, that is the reason that I use gay guerrilla, in hopes that I might be one, if called upon to be one.«

From Julius Eastman’s remarks to the audience before the premieres of Crazy Nigger, Evil Nigger, and Gay Guerrilla in January 1980 during his composer-residency at Northwestern University.