Maverick and Rebel

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Jaime Roque: Walking through the Getty grounds today feels special, like something extraordinary is about to happen. This is my first event I am attending as a full time podcast producer at Getty. As I walk up the main stairs after the tram ride, I hear sounds of instruments coming from the courtyard. Soon, I’m standing in a crowd, watching musicians warm-up and soundcheck. The ocean fog begins to roll in, casting what feels like a magical veil over the scene.There's an energy—something electric. And when the music starts, I’m immediately into it.

Hello my name is Jaime and welcome to ReCurrent.

The music you’re hearing was composed by Julius Eastman in 1974, and it’s his music this concert was celebrating. Not only was I unfamiliar with Eastman—this concert was also my first real introduction to minimalist music, a style of music that strips down sound to its most essential elements. Minimalism is a genre that emerged in the mid-20th century, built on repetition, gradual change, repetitive pulses, steady drones, and often, hypnotic rhythms. It can sound meditative or even unsettling at times.But Eastman’s take on it was different. It wasn’t just about simplicity—it was about raw energy, emotion, and pushing boundaries, both physically and mentally. His music often centered on repeated hooks, like in "Feminine," where a core set of notes repeats over and over while other musicians build on top of it.

This repetition, much like a pop hook, creates something instinctual that was pulling at at me, not just intellectually but deep in my gut. Eastman was blending the complexity of classical and minimalist music with something familiar to me, making his work both challenging and accessible. It’s this mix of intensity and emotional depth that makes Eastman’s music resonate today.

In an article written about Julius on NPR, it was noted that, “that confident self-awareness enabled Eastman to write music that was challenging, irreverent, and sometimes ecstatic.” That same article also mentioned how Eastman insisted on incorporating racial slurs into some of his works, even if it ruffled feathers, while another from The New York Times called his approach “bluntly provocative.” Eastman blended worlds that others kept separate, and it’s this daring fusion that continues to make his work resonate, even decades later.

I started playing music officially when I was 12 years old. Music has always been a part of my life, and for most of it, I thought about music in a very structured way: chord changes, verses, choruses, bridges—like what you hear on the radio. But hearing Eastman’s minimalism suggested another way for me to make music, opening up a world of new musical possibilities. And it reinvigorated me to create new sounds and sonic landscapes.

Roque: So After the concert, I couldn’t help but wonder—who was Julius Eastman? What kind of life experiences could produce such powerful art?

So I reached out to Sarah Cooper, who developed the event that brought Eastman's music to Getty. And she gave me a bit of initial background. Julius Eastman was a composer, pianist, and performer. He was born in New York City on October 27, 1940, and grew up in Ithaca. His whole family was musical, and he studied classical piano and composition. But surprisingly few people have heard Eastman’s powerful compositions, especially if you don't frequent the world of classical minimalist music, which I was one of them. Sarah also tells me about her first experience with Eastman’s music, and it sounds a lot like my own.

Sarah Cooper: It was a performative experience that went beyond just listening. It was physical, emotional. By the end, you’re left thinking, ‘Whoa, that was something entirely new,’ at least for me.

Roque: It was exactly how I felt. Hearing Sarah describe her experience felt like validation—like I wasn’t alone in feeling that rush, that sense of discovery. In that moment, her words clicked with my own journey, making me realize how powerful Eastman’s music truly was, not just for me, but for anyone who encounters it for the first time.

Cooper: Julius Eastman is an artist who was involved in the downtown music scene in New York in the 1970s and 80s and he made several extraordinary compositions that dealt with a lot of the preoccupations of new music at that time. Eastman was an intense, eccentric character. He pushed boundaries in ways that were extraordinary.

Roque: Because Julius was a Black, openly gay artist in a predominantly white classical music world, he stood out—not just for who he was, but for blending minimalism with raw emotion, Eastman created works that were both challenging and transformative. He also rebelled against genre expectations placed on him as a Black man, in a music world that was—and still is—very segregated.

Cooper: Julius felt pigeonholed as a black man, expected to play jazz. But he was adamant: ‘I’m not going to play jazz. I’m going to be a classical composer. I’m going to write new music. He refused to be confined to a role others set for him. So that's what I think is also really interesting with Julius Eastman. Is that he brings a sort of more fluid dynamic, a more sort of emotional dynamic, a more sort of bodily dynamic into minimalism. Minimalism is also associated more with white composers. There really are no composers of color other than Julius Eastman working within the language of minimalism that I know of, so discovering that adds to the excitement of discovering his work.

Roque: Sarah also told me that besides being a Black man in classical music, refusing to be limited to jazz simply because of his race. He was also openly gay in a time when that could close doors in the music world—and society more broadly. He fought to carve out a space where he could create freely, on his own terms. In many ways, that struggle resonates with me. This feeling of being "ni de aquí ni de allá"—not fully belonging anywhere—that’s something I’ve experienced, too. Growing up, I felt caught between different cultures, different expectations, just like Eastman must have felt, pushing against boundaries others had set for him. There’s something universal in his story—the fight to define yourself, to break free from what others expect of you, and the desire to express something true to who you are.

Cooper: I think it's so compelling to see, he wasn't a “woe is me” person. He was so defiantly himself. And I think on some level that he was like himself, even if it meant that it was going to hurt his career. You know, his loyalty was to his artistic and spiritual journey. His loyalty wasn't to the careerism that was really rampant in that community, people are really vying for press attention. And that created a weird dynamic because they were a level community at one point, you know, of collaborators sharing in an artistic journey and then there were some superstars. I think that he probably reacted to that dynamic by just not wanting anything to do with it. So I think that the community lost track of Julius in some way and then, thanks to efforts from some of his close friends, mostly this woman named Mary Jane Leach, she's sort of been the steward of his story.

Roque: To learn more about Eastman, I tracked down Mary Jane Leach. She’s a composer, performer, musicologist, and a kind of accidental archivist.

Mary Jane Leach: I was so stubborn that I just kept working at it until I found what I wanted to find, or found enough, you know, enough to sort of make an impression on people. So besides my composing—which, sometimes, you know, I like people to remember that I am a composer—I did spend an awful lot of time tracking down his music.

Roque: Let’s go back to the beginning. I was curious about those first moments when someone met Julius With that in mind, I asked Mary Jane Leach about her very first interaction with him.

Leach: My first encounter with Julius was when we were both hired to be in a theater piece, and we were just basically making mouth noises and, you know, kind of stuff. And he got bored with it fairly easily. But at the first rehearsal, he showed up—it was early in the day, you know—and he's wearing black leather and chains and he's got a glass of scotch in his hand. And I'm kind of like, whoa. You know, I thought it was kind of cool, but this is like ridiculous. There's no competition.

Roque: After meeting in the late 70’s, Mary Jane and Julius crossed paths regularly in the vibrant New York art scene.

Leach: Yeah, I mean, we weren’t like buddies, you know, he was just part of the scene. The way that any composer you might know is part of it. And at that time, the 'scene' wasn’t just music. It was dancers, choreographers, painters, and sculptors—it was much more enveloping of the arts. People weren’t specializing in just one form back then. But now, everybody not only specializes in one type of music, they specialize in a certain kind of music, and it’s all become so splintered. Back then, everyone just hung out together.

Roque: She has played a pivotal role in bringing Julius Eastman’s music back to the public, rescuing many of his compositions from obscurity. She tirelessly tracked down lost scores and worked to piece together his fragmented legacy. Through her efforts, Eastman’s groundbreaking compositions are not only preserved but celebrated now by new generations.

Roque: The more I talk to people, the more names pop up for me to pursue.

Cooper: Some jazz musicians that I've worked with, I'll say, 'Oh, I'm working on this Julius Eastman project,' and they'll be like, 'Oh, I knew Gerry.' You know, so, like, some people in the jazz world really know Gerry.

Roque: The Gerry, Sarah Cooper is Julius Eastman's brother. If I want to know Julius I need to know and talk to Gerry. The taxi drops me off in front of a small bar on the corner of a snow-covered street, in Brooklyn New York. It’s February, and the snow is falling heavily—an icy shock for this California native. From the outside, Huge "WMC" letters mark the doorway, lit by neon lights that cut through the winter night. The entrance is surrounded by bars, a safeguard against would-be intruders during off hours. But once I step inside, it’s a whole different world.

Roque: As I walk inside the WMC in Brooklyn my eyes catch something on the wall—a framed article about Julius. It feels like a sign, as if Julius himself is saying, "You’re on the right path." And then, between songs, as the bartender puts away wine glasses, the clinking resonates through the room. It’s starts subtle, but then overtakes the room, it reminds me of the opening notes of Eastman’s "Femenine." In that moment, there was nothing better than listening to jazz in New York City. But after a long day of traveling, I had to call it a night.

The next day, I returned to the Williamsburg Music Center, run by Julius Eastman's brother, Gerry Eastman. Gerry is also a musician, but unlike his brother, who felt creatively confined as a black man in the jazz world, Gerry carved out his own space there. He made a name for himself, traveling the globe and performing with legends like the Count Basie Band, Sarah Vaughan, and Frank Foster, while also recording countless albums of his own. He has also worked for Motown, writing string parts. And for the last 45 years, he’s been right here in Brooklyn, running his jazz club and performing every weekend.

Connecting with Gerry wasn’t straightforward. In our first phone call, his tone was very guarded.

Gerry Eastman: I'll put it to you this way, you got through the telephone check with me, you know? Because a lot of them, I might bait them, you know what I mean? What is it you want to talk about? And if they come with the wrong answer.

Roque: You shut them down

Eastman: I'm not doing that.

Roque: We began our conversation the way many musicians do: geeking out over equipment. Gerry's eyes light up as he talks about his collection of instruments, each one carrying its own history. He shares memories of their mother and the unwavering support she provided.

Eastman: But for the most part, my mother gave us every tool. Like that guitar I got from my mother.

Roque: That would be a Gibson Stratocaster that cost $312 back in 1962, a sum that would be worth thousands today. For Gerry, that guitar was more than just an instrument; it was a symbol of his mother's belief in his talent.

Eastman: You see how much junk I have in here. Everything that you see around here was here in 1981, except the piano. Because the piano I got from my mother after my mother died, that was the piano that Julius grew up using.

Roque: The piano—Julius's first instrument was the canvas for his earliest compositions.

Eastman: Julius is five years older than me, So, I used to be his page turner, all the time, whenever he played a little concert around town or something, or in the church, I would go. And, that was kind of the beginnings of me learning how to play.

Roque: I continued to listen to Gerry speak about their childhood, the early days of discovering music, and the different paths they each choose.

Eastman: Julius's writing opened me up to a new kind of freedom. He would write graphically, illustrating the sound he wanted. And working with him, it opened me to experimenting with music in ways I hadn't considered before. That's when me and Julius were working together and working with Julius, his music was so difficult to play that it really expanded my whole bass thing, you know, and playing his music, I was hearing all of that kind of changed my compositional style. Julius would play piano and sing my songs. A lot of times I would have, he would write lyrics to my songs and then he would sing them. You know what I mean? It's just the way he sings everything else. And it was really powerful.

Roque: In 1976, Julius abruptly moved to New York City after a productive period in Buffalo, where he composed several works including the widely celebrated Stay On It, leaving Gerry—and their collaborations—behind.

Eastman: We didn't take it to the full extent that we should have taken it because he went to New York a couple of years before me. And I stayed because I was living in his house. And he just said, “I'm leaving Jerry. Take care of the house. Do whatever you want with it. I'm out.

Roque: But this time in New York became one of his most creatively charged periods. New York in the 1970s was not the New York of today. The city was on the brink of bankruptcy, and the streets were often dangerous. Buildings were crumbling, and entire neighborhoods were filled with empty, derelict spaces. But amid the chaos, places like SoHo and the East Village—Julius's old neighborhood—became hotbeds for experimental music and avant-garde art. Here, Julius created compositions as intense and complex as the city itself. To understand this period of Julius’s life, I needed the perspective of someone who had been there with him. I tracked down Nemo Hill, Julius's former partner, a confidant who witnessed both the brilliance and the turmoil of Julius's life.

Roque: Hey Nemo!

Nemo Hill: Is it a little colder than you thought it would be?

Roque: A little a little bit. How you doing?

Hill: I’m good, I'm good. Good to see you. Come on in.

Roque: Thank you, thank you. I made it.

Roque: Nemo now lives in Fleischmanns, New York, two and a half hours from the city. But his relationship with Julius began in the heart of Manhattan, amidst the grittiness and creative chaos of the early 1980s.

Hill: Okay, so I met him in the bar. I had just come back from San Francisco. I was like 25 and I was incredibly shy when I was young, I was just sort of quiet and serious. I think I always had a scowl on my face. So I think that's kind of what attracted him to me. He probably started talking to me because I was too shy to really initiate a conversation.

Hill: I didn't have a place to live yet. I had lived in San Francisco for five years and so I ended up moving in with him.

Roque: From the time you met, how long did it take you to move in?

Hill: Probably days.

Roque: I asked Nemo how does he think living in the East Village influenced Julius.

Hill: It was just, that's where all the misfits went, who couldn't fit in anywhere else, because you could afford to live. I think the rent on the apartment was probably like 170 or something. He only thought about music and, you know, and sex and just, you know, being a human being. So he didn't have all those, uh, Worries that the rest of us have like I gotta get to work. I don't need money to pay the rent. None of that mattered because he would just adapt to whatever circumstance. You know what I mean?

Roque: In The East Village, Julius Was at home among the misfits and the intellectuals, moving effortlessly between the chess players in the park and the high end of the art world. This environment allowed him to fully embrace his passions and his desire to live in the moment. Julius was the kind of person who could captivate a room, not just with his sound, but with his very being.

Hill: He had this booming fucking baritone voice. It was like, his voice was just amazing.

Roque: This is Julius' booming voice singing the prelude to the Holy Presence of Joan d' Arc in 1981.

Hill: So, I mean, his presence was so commanding that people immediately, You know, we're taken by him, he was hilarious, he was just a hoot to be around, you know? So there was a part of him that was really human. And there was another part that was incredibly pompous. And he had almost a register in his voice that he would change when he was going to tell you Something important who was going to impart some wisdom. He almost would like assume kind of a strange, almost British accent or something.

Roque: But as close as Nemo was to Julius, there was still a part of him that remained out of reach.

Hill: Well, you know, when I was with him, I hardly knew his music at all. It was like, he kept it kind of separate in a way.

Roque: Maybe it’s because Nemo came into Julius's life during an artistic crossroads.

Hill: You know, I met him when his official career had kind of petered out, when he was teetering from being an artist to being, to courting some spiritual enlightenment. It was a turning point in his life. I mean, his whole thing was that he, you know, that he was suffering his way to enlightenment. So I mean, he told me at one point, I don't really have to write music anymore. It was like, the art was kind of like a stepping stone. His goals were bigger and deeper than that.

Roque: The music that once defined Julius was beginning to fade into the background. Nemo recalls a man who was searching—looking for something that went beyond artistic recognition. In 1982 Julius Eastman was evicted from his East Village apartment. All his belongings were thrown onto the curb. That included all his compositions, his notes, his books, everything he owned. This is why it has been so hard to make sense of Eastman’s career and legacy—the material documentation of his artistic output just isn’t there. This is why Mary Jane has had to become an accidental archivist, one because of his belongings being thrown out onto the street curb and two, because of Julius’ desire to not have his music recorded but only to be experienced live.

Cooper: I think from people who knew him, it's just more complicated. He didn't just become destitute, he wasn't in agony and like had all of his belongings thrown out and there was this tragedy. He was on a spiritual journey. That he chose to become less attached to his possessions. To live his life like a monk, like in a different way.

Roque: When I first heard this, I was shocked. How could this happen to someone so talented and respected? What happened to all his things? Were they tossed into a landfill, or are they sitting in some warehouse somewhere, waiting to be rediscovered?

After the eviction, Gerry tried to support his brother in whatever ways he could, even offering Julius to stay with him. But Julius's free-spirited lifestyle often meant that stability was fleeting. Julius’ final years are shrouded in a mix of truth and myth. He had stints of staying with his brother; others recall stories of him living in Tompkins Square Park, or upstate New York, and eventually returning to Buffalo for work at SUNY.

While parts of this narrative are based on fact, others have become sensationalized over time, adding to the mystery that surrounds his life and legacy. Julius Eastman died alone in Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo, New York, on May 28, 1990. He was just 49 years old. How did you hear of his passing?

Eastman: It was in the winter time and I probably hadn't talked to him for a couple of weeks and he went to Buffalo so I didn't know where he was. What happened was, somebody found him outside, called the ambulance, they took him to the hospital. And it just so happens that a friend of his, a dancer, saw him on the gurney, dead.

Roque: And yet, the world wouldn’t learn of his death until much later. It was eight months before Kyle Gann, a music critic, found out. Gann wrote a belated obituary for The Village Voice, a well-known weekly newspaper in New York City, finally alerting the rest of the community to his passing.

Julius's brother was left to piece together what happened. When I spoke to Gerry about his brother’s death, the pain and frustration were still palpable.

Eastman: By the time we found out he was dead, he had already been cremated. So we didn't even get a full autopsy.

Roque: The story that surfaced later was that Julius died of heart failure. But the truth is, no one really knows.

Eastman: So we don't know if somebody hit him in the head, we don't know if he fell and tripped on the sidewalk. We don't know if he was drunk and tripped and how long he was there, we don't know. I have no idea, nobody knows. The autopsy says non-specific cause of death.

Only thing I got from the hospital was his ashes. I don't even know where the ashes are because I gave them to my mother. And when I cleaned out her house, I didn't find them. So, I don't know anything.

Roque: Julius's story didn't end with his death, though; in many ways, that's where a new one began—the struggle to revive and safeguard his music. This has been no small feat. Eastman’s music was often unrecorded or written in a way that made it hard to reproduce, so much of it ended up being lost. But those who knew Eastman’s genius couldn't let his work fade into obscurity. Gerry took it upon himself to honor his brother's memory, fighting legal battles, managing royalties, and ensuring that Julius’s music could be heard once again.

Mary Jane Leach also worked tirelessly to recover, archive, and perform his works. Working with friends and colleagues who knew Eastman and performed with him they found scraps of scores, hunted down rare recordings, and slowly pieced together a catalog that was at risk of being lost forever.

Leach: You know, it's like preserving an oral tradition in a way cuz a lot of music at the time wasn't written down, you know. when preparing for a concert, we would spend like 80% of the time discussing the piece. Well, what do you think that was meant here? What should we do here? You know, just working it out. So I know people like to pretend that Julius was really sloppy with his scores, but he was just doing the same thing that everybody else was doing.

Roque: By 2005, 15 years after Julius’s death, Julius’s work came back into the public eye. Here’s Sarah Cooper again.

Cooper: So she was compelled to compile these recordings and worked with a music label called New World worked with her to release this record. Kyle Gann, who's a well known music critic, wrote the liner notes, and I think that that was some of the first details about Julius's life that people started to unearth.

Roque: The record excited musicians and scholars, and spurred more research. Ten years after the album, Mary Jane Leach and her co-editor Renee Levine Packer, who was a co-director of the Center of the Creative and Performing Arts at SUNY Buffalo, where Julius Eastman was part of the prestigious Creative Associates program, which focused on avant-garde classical music, published the book Gay Guerilla: Julius Eastman and His Music, which fully launched “Eastman-mania,” as musicologist George Lewis called it. Gerry has often found himself protecting his brother's legacy, shielding it from sensationalism.

Eastman: I don't want people coming here asking me about the last days of Julius, what kind of drugs did he use, did he do this? No, that's none of your freakin business. You know, don't come by first and ask me, was he homeless? Did he die?

Cooper: Like there were all these stories about his homelessness, about his belongings being thrown out on the curb, about him having an argument with John Cage who slapped him across the face and like all of these things that were these kind of extreme legends.

And I think there's also a bit of a fervor to rediscover him and make that a sensationalized thing as well and say, “this forgotten master.” I mean, it is kind of true and I think we're both here because we both fell for that on some level.

Cooper: It is really exciting to discover a new artist that is this extraordinary, you know, and that even though It has become perhaps opportunistic for some places or some people who are interested in writing a sensational article or creating performances, I think for the people who knew him, it was never forgotten, it was never this, you know, sensationalized thing. And it feels really silly and kind of salacious that other people without a connection to him are coming in and trying to make something of it. I definitely have reflected on that a lot because I am part of that.

Roque: For Sarah, one way to honor Eastman’s legacy, has been to bring in new artists from diverse backgrounds and different mediums to create works inspired by Eastman.

Composer Sarah Hennies is one of these artists. Hennies took the minimalist tradition that Eastman was part of in the '70s and used it to explore her own identity as a transgender woman through music.

Cooper: it was really interesting for us to invite her to think about Eastman's legacy, because not only was you know, his gender identity, a big part of his experience navigating through the music world, but also the dynamic that was brought out in the specific relationship between the masculine and feminine pieces that we were revisiting. What Sarah Hennies ultimately did was a composition for brass instruments. But there was such an emotional quality to those tones that I think, you know, represents the complexities that we see in Eastman's legacy. So I think Sarah did a really, you know, wonderful job in creating something with depth.

Roque: Inviting artists to create new work not just revisits Eastman’s legacy but propels it forward. Eastman’s works are not static; they breathe, they pulse, they change. By reimagining his compositions, we keep them alive, allowing them to inspire and provoke, to challenge and to comfort. And that’s one reason why his music continues to resonate—because it's not just about what he created in his lifetime, but how his work ripples out to touch new generations.

Mary Jane Leach compared Eastman’s artistic output to oral traditions because much of his work was not written down. But I think that analogy goes even deeper. In many cultures, storytelling keeps the past alive in the present. These spoken narratives ensure that even without a written record, culture endures, adapting and evolving with each retelling.

Eastman music has found a way to survive and thrive through those who choose to retell it, or re-present it. Composer Sarah Hennies is one example of this tradition in action. And like oral traditions, Julius Eastman’s story is now a vibrant part of America’s cultural heritage landscape. His music continues to impact those who experience it.

Cooper: You know, I had that classic experience that we all have with great art when you experience it and you're like, wow, this is incredible. This changes my view of the world. It changes my view of music history. It changes my overall picture of what I find really thrilling and exciting because it's an important part of it now.

Roque: Sarah Cooper summed it up well: preserving art, preserving cultural heritage—it’s about changing how we see the world. And Julius Eastman’s life does just that.

He once described himself as "Black to the fullest, a musician to the fullest, a homosexual to the fullest." Those words capture a man who was unapologetic, bold, and indifferent to the opinions of others. When I started this journey, I thought I was uncovering the story of a dejected, overlooked musician. But the reality? Oh man, was I wrong. Julius wasn’t defined by his struggles. He was defined by how he embraced them. His life and music were raw expressions of his experiences—his battles, his victories, his truth. His work asks us to look deeper, to find beauty in complexity, and to embrace what we don’t immediately understand.

Ultimately, Eastman’s life and music invite us to engage with the past to better understand the present and reshape the future. And in many ways, this journey to understand Julius has mirrored my own reflection on life since my mom passed. Like him, I’ve been learning how to live with greater purpose, embracing the lessons from loss and using them to shape who I am today.

Roque: How do you want people to remember Julius?

Eastman: I want them to just listen to his music and listen to his message.

Roque: And just like that, we’ve reached the end of Season one of ReCurrent. I want to take a moment to thank each of you for listening and going on this journey with me. It’s been an incredible experience diving deep into these stories. But, don’t worry, we’re not done yet. While I start working on Season two, I’ve got some bonus episodes in the works to hold you over. So, stay subscribed, stay connected, and keep an ear out for those. I’m Jaime, and this has been Season one of ReCurrent.

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ReCurrent was written and produced by Jaime Roque, audio production by Jaime Roque, with creative support from Zoe Goldman. Our Executive Producer is Christopher Sprinkle. For transcripts, images, and additional resources, visit getty.edu slash podcast slash recurrent.