John Bull was the most dazzling keyboardist of Renaissance England, a fact made abundantly clear in the new album “Basically Bull” (Steinway & Sons), by an American lion of the keyboard, Alan Feinberg. But Bull was equally well known for his bad behavior; the Archbishop of Canterbury notoriously opined that Bull was “as famous for the marring of virginity as . . . for the fingering of organs and virginals.” (Fleeing charges of adultery, he died in exile, in Antwerp in 1628.) For Feinberg, Bull is a classic case of negative capability: the daring of his music is of a piece with his reckless behavior. But the technical innovations in Bull’s works, however brilliant, don’t always make for engaging listening; he is bested in some of Feinberg’s supporting selections, which include two limpid miniatures by Orlando Gibbons and a pair of flawless gems by William Byrd. Yet Bull triumphs in such pieces as “In Nomine V,” a decadently repetitious essay in contrapuntal invention, and in the justly loved “Bull’s Goodnight,” lulling variations on a folk-like tune. Feinberg, transferring all this music from the virginal to the piano, gives it warmth and poetry as well as intellectual rigor.
“The Julius Eastman Memory Depot” (New Amsterdam), a record from the d.j. and producer Jace Clayton, pays tribute to another rebel. Eastman achieved renown both for his singing (in the seminal recording of Peter Maxwell Davies’s “Eight Songs for a Mad King”) and for his compositions, which brought an irreverent pop influence to super-serious nineteen-seventies New York minimalism. (Eastman, African-American and openly gay, was even more transgressive than Bull: his death, in 1990, was hastened by alcohol and crack-cocaine use.) On the album, the fine pianists David Friend and Emily Manzo play excerpts from “Evil Nigger” and “Gay Guerilla,” performances that alternate with electroacoustic fantasias by Clayton that are based on the pianists’ sounds. Comparison to the Eastman-led performances of the original, full-length pieces, heard on the New World album “Unjust Malaise,” is not always flattering: Clayton simplifies and streamlines the complex emotions—both jubilant and grim—of these radical works. With Eastman, there’s no substitute for hearing the real thing: an extreme composer, he demands complete commitment. But this sleek new album will advance his cause with an eclectic young audience.
