Wild Up’s latest entry in their GRAMMY-nominated compendium on the late American composer and polymath Julius Eastman is Gay Guerrilla, a provocative and epochal work that sanctifies queerness and envisions a genuine revolution of gay liberation. To coincide with Pride Month and Juneteenth alike, this album is available June 19th on all streaming platforms.
As Eastman shared in remarks preceding Gay Guerrilla’s 1980 premiere: “If there is a cause — and if it is a great cause — those who belong to that cause will sacrifice their blood, because, without blood, there is no cause. So, therefore, that is the reason that I use gay guerrilla, in hopes that I might be one, if called upon to be one.”
On this release, Wild Up draws out the compositional characteristics and urgent themes that mark Eastman as a singular figure in American Experimentalism: queered allusions to Lutheran hymnals, almost unbearably tense passages of frenzied repetition, and explosions of melodic ecstasy. It’s a testament to the ensemble’s carefully-honed ability to perform Eastman’s idiosyncratic scores in a spirit befitting its creator.
For more information, please contact Andrew Stein-Zeller.
