“The pieces he wrote in this style often had intentionally provocative titles intended to reinterpret the minorities Eastman belonged to in a positive light: for example, Evil Nigger, Crazy Nigger, and Gay Guerrilla (all circa 1980),” says Gann in American Music in the 20th Century.

Listeners can hear the process as Eastman’s pieces unfold, mesmerizing and hypnotic.

This style is centered on a compositional technique that accumulates used pitches over the duration of a piece, essentially piling up previously used harmonic material into densely layered sonic entities. Eastman’s music, as described by Gann, “builds up immense emotive power through the incessant repetition of rhythmic figures.” Pulsing grooves keep the pieces driving forward, but Eastman’s self-described style of “organic music” creates visceral intensity. His compositions took on grand sizes, often spanning well over 20 minutes each, and scored for large groups of the same instrument (e.g. Eastman was interested in jazz and improvisation, but was also influenced by disco and popular music. “Whether they were aware of it or not, Eastman and his colleagues were part of a growing sociological sea change - the blurring between popular and high culture, and an increasing disregard for established borders within traditionally accepted disciplines,” says Renée Levine Packer in Gay Guerrilla. Thanks to the hard work of a few individuals, his rhythmic and visceral music is available to both performers and listeners, and Eastman is now recognized as one of the important figures in American minimalist music. A comprehensive collection of essays on his life and work, titled Gay Guerrilla: Julius Eastman and his Music, was published in December 2015, comprised of both academic and personal accounts of the composer. In the years since the album’s release, Eastman’s music has been making a comeback, showing up in concert series and in conservatory classrooms across the country. Over the next seven years, she tracked down performers of Eastman’s music, partial scores and audio recordings, and in 2005 released the first commercial recording of his music, Unjust Malaise. But in 1998, composer Mary Jane Leach started to compile all of Eastman’s works, after first trying to find the score to The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc for 10 cellos. In the following decade, the classical establishment essentially overlooked Eastman. The first news of Eastman’s death was an obituary published by Kyle Gann in the Village Voice eight months after the composer passed away from cardiac arrest. The majority of his compositions were lost, presumably destroyed after he was evicted from his Lower East Side apartment, and only recordings of his pieces and partial musical scores remained.

Through the ‘80s, Eastman lived in downtown New York City, distanced himself from the classical music establishment and close friends, and in 1990 died alone in Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo at the age of 49. Eastman held a teaching position in the University at Buffalo Music Department in the early ’70s, was a respected performer of modern vocal works and wrote brooding minimalist pieces of music, with titles centering around homosexuality and race.

One such product of his time was Julius Eastman, born in 1940, who found himself straddling both academic and reactionary styles in the classical scene. To add another level of complexity, the changing social climate of the ‘60s and ‘70s directly influenced composers and their compositions. Emerging composers found themselves drafted into one camp or the other. Atonal compositions (lacking a tonal center, often with pitch material derived from formulas) were the academic norm minimalist compositions (rhythmic, often tonal pieces, derived from simple repeating processes) were the reaction. In the mid-20th century, classical music was in a state of rapid flux.

Julius eastman works