Julius Eastman’s Femenine

Composer Mary Jane Leach, who performed with Eastman in the 1980s, has remained active as an archivist and advocate for preserving Eastman’s compositional legacy, but the case is far from easy. Beyond the crucial tasks of retrieving scores presumed lost and transcribing those works which only survive via archival recordings, there is the nature of Eastman’s notational methods in the documents that do survive. His existing manuscripts provide only basic or open- ended musical material, such as melodic lines or cells constructed for repetition and improvisation. This style of notation aligned Eastman with contemporaries like Morton Feldman, who became a colleague during Eastman’s years in Buffalo, and Terry Riley. Eastman would elaborate and develop details for performers during rehearsals using these notations as musical building blocks. Thus, reconstruction and future presentations of Eastman’s compositions depend on any surviving documentation, the memories of original performers, and any preserved recordings of live performances. Using the various sources available, composer Chris McIntyre prepared the score utilized for Orchestra of St. Luke’s performance of Femenine.