Thank you for posting this bc I’d not heard of him, and it’s good stuff.
Apologies for a historic diversion, but I still think awareness of a particular seedy part of American history is an issue: I looked him up, first on Wikipedia, and he died in 1990 of, officially, cardiac arrest.
But a man like him who died young in NYC in 1990 almost assuredly didn’t die of cardiac arrest, even though the official records reflect that. Indeed, it’s confirmed that he contracted HIV, and there are now varying pieces reporting that he died from AIDS or died from cardiac arrest related to AIDS. Purposefully mislabeling AIDS-related causes of death is among the many shameful aspects of that period in US history. As early as 1986, t
he NYT published a piece about this, including a quote from one SF doctor who said he didn’t list AIDS as cause of death bc it could be a “problem for the family.”
Here’s a fascinating piece that alludes to AIDS as Eastman’s cause of death but is about something much more interesting from a musical perspective:
One incendiary Julius Eastman performance shook up the avant-garde.
daily.redbullmusicacademy.com