The rise of Julius Eastman as one of the most significant composers of his generation remains one of the most remarkable stories to have emerged in recent years. Following his death in 1990 at the age of only 49, cult interest in Eastman among followers of minimalist and experimental music has burgeoned during the past decade to almost mainstream canonisation of his oeuvre – what George E Lewis has dubbed ‘Eastmania’.

Central to this story is the work contained on this latest Eastman instalment, Femenine. Composed in 1974, the musical material for this large-scale work for ensemble is generated from an oscillating two-note, 13-beat figure, heard on vibraphone and played more or less continuously throughout its 70-minute timespan. Like Terry Riley’s In C, with which the work shares some surface similarities (a steady pulse, modular structure and flexible instrumentation, for example), Eastman’s score provides little more than a set of sketched-out ideas and timeframes on what to play and when to play it, although in Femenine more emphasis is placed on improvisation and taking creative liberties.

As a result, significant variations exist between a growing body of recordings featuring this work. Wild Up ensemble’s free-form, multilayered performance for their 2021 three-volume Eastman set on New Amsterdam Records exudes a raucous, party-like atmosphere and ritualistic celebratory tone, while Apartment House’s approach is altogether more relaxed, pared-down and laid back.

The Talea Ensemble and Harlem Chamber Players combine a bit of both. In the opening section, melodic shapes and patterns are subtly woven around the repeating two-note figure, as if emerging out of empty space and silence. Around the 20-minute mark, these nascent musical thoughts converge into a series of stronger and more forthright statements. By the halfway point, rising and falling interlocking pentatonic patterns evoke the more sensuous sound quality of mid-period Steve Reich, while the blaring fanfare-like car horn interjections that herald Femenine’s final section prefigure the bold post-minimalism of John Adams or Anna Meredith.

Under Chris McIntyre’s astute direction, the Talea Ensemble and Harlem Chamber Players’ interpretation remains closer in spirit both to SEM Ensemble’s original live recording (given at Albany Arts Center in November 1974 and released on the Finnish label Frozen Reeds in 2016), and to Eastman’s concept of an ‘organic music’ where, in Kyle Gann’s words, each section repeats what was in the previous section to create a kind of ‘accumulating transcendence’ – a transcendence that is impressively captured in this measured, focused, finely tuned and nuanced performance.