New album: Julius Eastman – Gay Guerrilla

On 18 September, New European Ensemble releases a new album featuring three works by Julius Eastman: Joy Boy(1974), Gay Guerrilla (1979) and Buddha (1983).

Eastman developed a distinctive musical language in which repetition, freedom and political expression come together. His compositions are built from short musical motifs that return, shift and gradually accumulate. At the same time, he gives performers room to make their own choices within that structure.

The result is music that feels direct and constantly in motion.

In Joy Boy, short tremolo figures and chords gradually build into an energetic sound world. Buddha has a very different character. Its egg-shaped score has no fixed beginning or end and gives performers considerable freedom in shaping the work as it unfolds.

Gay Guerrilla is one of Eastman’s best-known compositions. Repetition and accumulation gradually grow into an increasingly powerful whole. Over time, Martin Luther’s chorale Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott emerges within the musical texture, taking on new associations with community, identity and resistance.

For this recording, New European Ensemble performs Jessie Montgomery’s arrangement for solo strings. Eastman originally wrote Gay Guerrilla for four pianos. In this version, the work takes on a different sound world while retaining its rhythmic intensity and relentless forward movement.

Artistic director and violist Emlyn Stam:

“These works invite us not so much to listen to a completed final product, but to participate in an ongoing process of evolving practice and transmission. From this perspective, Eastman’s music invites us to imagine collective acts of resistance in the ongoing search for a more just socio-political future.”

Under the artistic direction of Emlyn Stam, New European Ensemble brings these three works together in a recording that reflects the open and collaborative nature of Eastman’s music.

Music in which structure and freedom constantly coexist — and which, decades after it was written, still feels immediate and urgent.

Julius Eastman – Joy Boy, Gay Guerrilla & Buddha will be released on 18 September 2026 and will be available on all major streaming platforms.