NYTimes Names Gay Guerrilla one of the Best Classical Music PErformances of 2023

While visiting Paris this summer on vacation, I impulsively went to a staged performance of Julius Eastman’s “Gay Guerrilla,” a work of barbed drive and insistent beauty, conceived and choreographed by Gerard & Kelly in a ground-floor gallery of the Pompidou Center. Outside the museum, the bass-baritone Davóne Tines began by singing Eastman’s Prelude to “The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc” with a hellfire intensity that confused and fascinated passers-by, before coming inside for an account of “Gay Guerrilla” that included members of the Paris Opera Ballet and Soa de Muse, a drag performer of titanic presence. Theatrical, queer, combative, true to Eastman, it was not only a life-affirming jolt, but also a vision for new ways to present this composer’s music.