GLR November-December 2022

same name of the club in the earlier series), comes with this warning: “ Queer as Folk is a fictional series about the vibrant LGBT community in New Orleans rebuilding after a devastat ing tragedy. Some viewers may find elements of the first episode distressing as it depicts the aftermath of a shooting,” followed by a “our hearts go out to all of those affected by these senseless tragedies.” The shooting is an obvious reference to the Pulse nightclub shooting of 2016. As a jumping-off point, this feels somewhat exploitative. We are given the stock figure of a man dressed all in black, shot from behind, but his motive is never unpacked, which turns a real-life tragedy into some thing of a hollow plot device. To illustrate that life always goes Queer as Folk Continued from page 50

on in the face of death and destruction, Char gives birth to twins on the same night of the shooting and, improbably, in the very same hospital where the gunshot victims are being treated. You might call the updated cast of Queer as Folk 3.0 a col lection of “trauma queens,” not a term I use glibly but one used by the snarky Marvin, who sighs “I’m hate-crime’d out for the week.” After the massacre, the sound of firecrackers sends the survivors scrambling to their knees. For all its wokeness, it’s a good thing that Dunn has dusted off Queer as Folk during some very dark times. It’s about one’s chosen family, human connec tion, and the power of individuals and communities to rebuild after unthinkable tragedy. That’s not a power possessed only by GLBT people, but they have had to develop these skills more than other groups.

anthology on New Amsterdam Records. Last year, they released Julius Eastman Vol. 1: Femenine , which was hailed as a “masterpiece” by The New York Times. NPR placed it among the top ten records of 2021. The propulsive seventy-minute sym phony, built on circular phrasing and ex panding repetitions, generates an ecstatically immersive experience of cas cading lyricism. The ensemble performed Femenine at Los Angeles’ Broad Museum last summer. In June, Wild Up released Julius East man Vol. 2: Joy Boy . His idiosyncratic compositional style—open-ended scores that interweave multiple genres and whose instrumentation is not always specified—is lovingly realized by artists whose back grounds encompass classical, jazz, and im provisational music. Exuberance abounds throughout this recording. The title track features a never-before-recorded song, “Joy Boy,” a buoyantly discordant intro duction followed by the trippy, undulating “Buddha (Field).” Two radically different versions of “Touch Him When” showcase the virtuosic players veering from placid minimalism to metallic drones. The record culminates with “Stay On It,” a dance-in flected harmonic convergence of incanta tory rapture within a cacophony of chaotic sounds. Artistic director of Wild Up Chris Roun tree writes in press material that he wants listeners “to find themselves in these pieces. And in their multiple iterations. We want this work to be quintessentially queer. Every moment full of choice.” Julius East man, the fierce, Black, gay iconoclast, con signed to oblivion in his day, is finally being celebrated for his musical genius and the sheer audacity of his compositions. Brava diva! John R. Killacky, a longtime contributor to this magazine, is the author of “ because art: commentary, critique, & conversation” (Onion River Press).

Julius Eastman. Cover photo for Joy Boy, Volume 2.

later, but until then people didn’t know whether he was dead or alive. His legacy languished in limbo until composer Mary Jane Leach and other colleagues published a book of essays, Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and His Music , in 2015. Frag ments of scores were reconstructed, aided by tapes of early performances, and that jumpstarted a resurgence of performance, first in alternative spaces and then by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Orches tra of St. Luke’s. American Modern Opera Company guest curated some of his music at the June 2022 Ojai Music Festival in Southern California. In a pre-festival online conversation, a member of the company, bass-baritone Davón Tines, who is Black and gay, left the audience with a provocation: “I would love for you to hold the question: Why was someone like Julius Eastman neglected?” The contemporary music collective Wild Up has also been championing Eastman’s compositions, committing to a seven-part

piano pieces and one night sang the Henry Purcell songbook,” she reminisced. Monk loaned her upstate cottage to him for three months. “He was not of this earth, just needed someone to take care of him.” Choreographers loved his music. Andy de Groat collaborated with him on GRAVY , a medicine of spaces (1981) at The Kitchen, and Molissa Fenley commissioned him to create a score for two sections of her Geo logic Moments (1986), which were per formed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She told me: “Working with Julius was al ways surprising. I often had to telephone his brother to find him for rehearsals.” Backstage he would be fast asleep in his dressing room. “He was very sick at the time, but once on stage, he’d be unbeliev able, brilliant, completely obsessed. People loved him.” He eventually disappeared from Manhat tan and died destitute in a Buffalo hospital in 1990 at the age of 49. An obituary was published in The Village Voice eight months

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