Wild Up: Arthur Russell’s 24 to 24

Arthur Russell understood the ecstasy available through minimalism. Though he is best known now for his winsome art-pop cello songs and his delightful cuts of warped disco, he built a mountain of wide-ranging work before his death in 1992, at the age of 40, that is slowly being discovered as his archive is unearthed. To wit, one of his landmark pieces—24 to 24 Music—was only issued in its full form in 2021, and it was a revelation. (For sticklers, Russell’s Dinosaur L used the title 24→24 Music and some of the themes in 1981.) Russell successfully bonded the dance music and ebullient minimalism he loved, an octet of guitar, drummers, sax, trombone, and Julius Eastman’s pulsing organ bound to his pizzicato cello. For an hour, they formed a sort of disco trance, the locked groove of their playing letting different layers fade in and out of the mix like hallucinatory phantoms.

Wild Up has turned 24 to 24 Music into the dance party it always deserved to be. Founded 15 years ago by artistic director and conductor Christopher Rountree, Wild Up is a transformative classical-plus ensemble, obliterating any preconceptions about what such groups are supposed to play, how they are meant to play it, and where they are meant to play it. In 2019, they began a relationship with New Amsterdam Records, first releasing work by Christopher Cerrone and then embarking on a groundbreaking multi-volume series interpreting the works of Julius Eastman. As committed to new pieces as they are to finding the overlooked gems in the dustbin of history, Wild Up—a rotating pool of nearly 40 high-caliber players who also understand the spirit of the music at hand—is truly one of the United States’ indispensable groups.