It is eminently readable throughout.- 'JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC STUDIES' An indication of his impact is the very fact that so many people have come together to remember him and are actively championing his music.- 'ALBANY TIMES-UNION'Ī picture of -charismatic performer, magnetic personality and emotional escape artist-that puts his work in a context larger and more representative.- 'BAY AREA REPORTER' a starting point for others who want to engage with Julius Eastman as a performer, scholar, or composer.- 'ARSC JOURNAL'Ī composer of visionary power, a singer with a cavernous bass voice, a collaborator with the diverse likes of Meredith Monk and Pierre Boulez, Eastman had long been a fixture of the New York Music scene.Part of the pleasure of Eastman's rediscovery has been the belated, deserving reinsertion of a black, gay figure into music history.- 'THE NEW YORK TIMES'Ī fascinating new collection of essays exploring the life and work of the enigmatic composer Julius Eastman.who worked fluently in jazz, improvisation and acoustical experiments. effectively rewrote the history of post-war American New Music, restoring to its narrative a gay black voice creating a liberating, high-energy form of organic minimalism.- 'THE GUARDIAN' Mary Jane Leach is a composer and freelance writer, currently writing music and theatre criticism for the Albany Times-Union. This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music inBuffalo received an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence. The book presents an authentic portrait of a notable American artist thatis compelling reading for the general reader as well as scholars interested in twentieth-century American music, American studies, gay rights, and civil rights.

In addition to analyses of Eastman's music, the essays in Gay Guerrilla provide background on his remarkable life history and the era's social landscape. These episodes are examples of Eastman's persistence in pushing the limits of the acceptable in the highly charged arenas of sexual and civil rights. Eastman's provocative titles, including Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, Crazy Nigger, and others, assault us with his obsessions.Įastman tested limits with his political aggressiveness, as reflected in legendary scandals like his June 1975 performance of John Cage's Song Books, which featured homoerotic interjections, and the uproar over his titles at Northwestern University. His music, insistent and straightforward, resists labels and seethes with a tension that resonates with musicians, scholars, and audiences today. A compelling portrait of composer-performer Julius Eastman's enigmatic and intriguing life and music.Ĭomposer-performer Julius Eastman (1940-90) was an enigma, both comfortable and uncomfortable in the many worlds he inhabited: black, white, gay, straight, classical music, disco, academia, and downtown New York.

Eastman gay guerrilla