Coming Together

Praised for their “acute sense for sonic and sensuous intensities” (Frankfurter Rundschau), contemporary chamber music ensemble Extended Music Collective presents a program confronting confinement and the human responses it provokes.

Through works by Julius Eastman and Frederic Rzewski, this concert explores physical imprisonment, social marginalization, and ideological restriction, and the music that emerges in response, realized through the sustained focus and collective intensity of EMC’s performers.

Julius Eastman’s Gay Guerrilla channels a radical vision of self-determination and sacrifice, fusing minimalist composition with uncompromising expressive force. Eastman described a “guerrilla” as someone willing to sacrifice their life for a point of view, a concept embodied in the work’s relentless drive and refusal to soften its message. One of the few openly gay Black composers recognized within the New York avant-garde of the 1970s and 80s, Eastman’s music remains urgent and resonant today.
Frederic Rzewski’s diptych of Coming Together and Attica was written in response to the 1971 Attica Prison Riots, one of the most deadly prison riots in U.S. history. Inmates of the prison revolted and took control; foremost among their demands was the recognition of their right "to be treated as human beings.

" Coming Together, which Rzewski described as “about being as free as possible in an extremely confining situation,” sets words from a letter written by prisoner Sam Melville shortly before he was killed during the Attica riots. Attica, intended to follow Coming Together, offers a counter-image in the form of a single sentence spoken by a survivor, “Attica is in front of me.” Though conceived as a pair, these works are rarely performed together, making this program both historically faithful and unusually powerful.

For audiences, this program offers music of extraordinary momentum and focus. Insistent rhythms, accumulating layers, and sustained intensity create an experience that is charged, urgent, and deeply engaging to hear.

7 juni 2026 - 15:00
De Graaf, Graaf van Vlaanderenplain 32 - 9000 Gent

Koop tickets