![]() Mary Jane: I mean, Julius was always trying to be provocative, sexually. I think he resented Julius bringing it out and making a thing out of it, and resented Julius using one of his pieces to draw attention to himself. Kyle: He did get angry, he pounded his fist on the piano. John: The next day, Cage was pounding his fist on the podium deck railing against it. There were still other performers going on that we eventually returned our attention to. Kyle: And, you know, the performance went on after that, nothing ground to a halt. John: He started camping it up, the SEM musicians all started improvising, and doing this whole kind of crescendo of stuff. Kyle: …and undressed the young man on stage tried to undress the woman and she resisted and he didn't do it. John: Julius has, I think, a white man that I think he was dating at the time and then a Black woman and invite them to come up on stage… John: Cage’s instructions were “in a situation provided with maximum amplification, no feedback, perform a disciplined action, with any interruptions, fulfilling in whole or in part, an obligation to others.” Until Julius started taking somebody's clothes off. Kyle: There were different performers all over the place, so there was no one center of attention. Songbooks is a collection of short pieces, some involve music, instruments and electronics, others are theatrical instructions or suggestions. Kyle was in attendance for this performance of Cage’s work. James: That’s Kyle Gann, a composer and writer for The Village Voice in the late 80s and 90s. Kyle: Well, Songbooks is this big theater piece and it was in a large hall. One of the strictures of the piece was that they couldn't rehearse and they couldn't confer with each other about what they were doing. So he wanted to know if they would do it again. Mary Jane: John Cage's Songbooks was programmed the SEM ensemble had performed that before and Cage loved the performance. James: This is Mary Jane Leach, a composer whose work has kept the music of Eastman alive. Mary Jane: In 1975, there was a “June in Buffalo” festival. John: There's this great story of when John Cage was doing something and Julius was in residence with the SEM music ensemble. ![]() Including one with John Killacky, the author of a recent article about Eastman. That comment he just made about John Cage not liking Julius Eastman is something that came up in almost all of the conversations I’ve had about Eastman. James: That’s the voice of Daniel Bernard Roumain or DBR, who spoke with us in our last episode. DBR: Julius Eastman was a proud, gay, Black man, composer, pianist, inventor I would say in the model of John Cage, who apparently did not like Julius Eastman.
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