Julius Eastman

The music of African American composer Julius Eastman has been revived increasingly often since his death in 1990. Eastman was a pioneer not only as an openly gay and Black composer in the 1970s but also as one who incorporated elements of free jazz and pop into a minimalist compositional language. Eastman was born in New York City on October 27, 1940, but grew up in Ithaca, New York. He took up the piano when he was 14 and progressed rapidly, studying at Ithaca College and then at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied piano with Mieczyslaw Horszowsk...