The earliest most of us heard about Julius Eastman's death was in January of 1991, when Kyle Gann wrote an obituary in the Village Voice. At one point, Gann called me to ask if Julius had died from AIDS. I didn't know, and didn't feel comfortable asking Frances, his mother. Cardiac arrest is the official cause, but evidently he was also on the verge of starvation. It has been said that when he was in his last days at the Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo, New York, the nurses asked him what family members or close friends they should contact. He replied that he had no family or friends, and he died alone in May 1990. In fact, Eastman gave Karl Singletary's name to the staff, and the hospital notified Singletary when he died. It was Singletary who called Julius's mother with the dreadful news.

Almost immediately, I felt the urge to compose a piece in his memory. I decided to compose it for two pianos, because his friend Edmund Niemann was half of the duo piano team Double Edge with Nurit Tilles. They premiered the piece at Lincoln Center Out of Doors in July 1991. The title, Unjust Malaise, is an anagram of Julius Eastman, and is part of my Anagram Portrait series. In 2005, New World Records released a three-disc set of Eastman's music under the same title, with my blessing. In fact, I’m proud to say that I had a small part in making the release possible.

I first met Julius in the spring of 1967 in Ithaca, New York, a few months after his New York Town Hall debut piano recital. He was twentysix and I was twenty-eight. There was no inkling then of how self-fulfilling his anagram would become. He had returned to Ithaca to sort out his options, and volunteered to give a piano recital for the students at DeWitt Middle School in Ithaca, which he himself had attended. According to the music teachers, it was supposed to inspire kids from modest economic backgrounds to work hard toward their dreams, no matter what the circumstances of their lives.