Apartment House and Elaine Mitchener. Photo: Dimitri Djuric
View Programme Note
Frederic Rzewski Coming Together (1971)
Julius Eastman Femenine (1974) (UK premiere)
Performers
Apartment House: Gavin Morrison (flute), Emma Williams (flute), Mira Benjamin (violin), Anton Lukoszevieze (cello), Mark Knoop (keyboard), Kerry Yong (piano), Simon Limbrick (percussion)
Elaine Mitchener (Rzewski)
We open the series with the UK premiere of Julius Eastman’s newly unearthed long-form masterpiece, Femenine.
Lasting over 70 minutes, and propelled by mechanised sleigh bells and a call-of-the-wild refrain, the piece is both insistent and unruly, alarming and euphoric, exemplifying Eastman's push-me-pull-you minimalism. An early recording, released this year on the Frozen Reeds label, has been a catalyst for the current Eastman revival.
Written in 1974 for the S.E.M. Ensemble, its 'luminous ovals of sound' (New Yorker) is given new life by Apartment House.
Before entering this blissed-out world, we're confronted with the brutal realities of American life in the 1970s in Frederic Rzewski's Coming Together, which became one of Eastman's signature vocal roles. The 1971 Attica prison riot in upstate New York was the bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War. It provided the impetus for Rzewski's charged composition, which set the words of one of the murdered inmates, Sam Melville, and helped shape Eastman's political outlook.
Rzewski’s intense, loose, politically driven minimalism was a vital influence on Eastman, who got to know his style close up. Tonight, Apartment House is joined by acclaimed singer and improviser Elaine Mitchener to perform this postwar classic.