He swerved in, out, and through academia, downtown experimental music, discos, Meredith Monk’s early ensembles, European tours, sex clubs, and Carnegie Hall. He died in 1990 at age 49, less than a decade after the New York City Sheriff’s Department evicted him and threw most of his scores and belongings into the winter snow of the East Village. Eastman sometimes gifted his manuscripts. Now, more than three decades since his death, his work is being regifted by those whose lives he touched.

The Los Angeles music collective Wild Up is creating a series of performances and a multi-volume anthology to carry his music forward, starting with Femenine. The minimalist Femenine debuted in 1974, two years before Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach had their first performances; yet Eastman was punished for being ahead of his time, in the rejection of both his music and his person. “Wild Up’s new rendition takes a page from Eastman’s personal playbook: It’s exuberant, a bit in your face, sometimes capricious, and always surprising.” (NPR Music)