Chamber Review
EASTMAN Gay Guerilla
Julius Eastman
August 2026
With the fifth in their projected seven-volume anthology of the music of Julius Eastman, US ensemble Wild Up and conductor Christopher Rountree arrive at perhaps the composer’s definitive statement. Gay Guerrilla (the racialised pun is intentional) was one of three pieces written for a 1980 portrait concert at Northwestern University; its title, along with those of the other two, which included an even more provocative slur, was considered too controversial to print in the programme. Eastman gave a spoken introduction instead, explaining: ‘I use “gay guerrilla” in hopes that I might be one, if called upon to be one.’ Or, as the composer George Lewis summarises, the Black, gay Eastman viewed the gay guerrilla as a necessary agent for radical change.