Zvokotok

ZVOKOTOK
17. December ob 20:00, Palača Kazina, Ljubljana
 
Program:
1. Julius Eastman: Evil Nigger
2. Milko Lazar: 4 Pianos
3. Julius Eastman: Gay Guerrilla
 
Pianists:
Miha Haas, Marjan Peternel, Nika Tkalec, Jasmina Raković
 
Program Zvokotoka je v letu 2022 zasnoval Steven Loy.
 
Produkction: Zavod Sploh
Partners: Japan Piano Center and Akademija za glasbo Ljubljana
 
History can be cruel to composers who were perhaps successful during in their lifetimes; it can also enact justice for those who’s unique creativity was not understood in their own time. On Dec. 17, listeners in Slovenia will get to hear live for the first time music by one of the most unjustly ignored composers of the last 100 years. 

Julius Eastman was a composer, pianist, vocalist, and performance artist active in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s. He was also an out gay man and African-American in a white-dominated field. His very distinctive music can be categorized as “post-minimalism”, but at a time when Minimalism itself was just getting started. In fact, he was one of the first composers to combine classical elements and expression with the directness of pop music, notating it in such a way as to give the performers total freedom in shaping the material, in order to create what he called “organic music”. Despite relative fame, especially as a vocalist, early in his career, Eastman died homeless and penniless at age 49 in 1990. 

Eastman’s music is unlike anything you have ever heard before: powerful, direct, ambitious, emotionally complex and absolutely unforgettable. It is admired by both classical musicians and pop musicians and everyone in between. It is music that effortlessly and successfully erases genre boundaries and goes straight to the core of what music can mean.

 On Dec. 17, in the newly renovated Kazina Palača of the Ljubljana Academy of Music, Zvokotok presents two of Eastman’s major works –- Evil Nigger and Gay Guerrilla – for the first time in Slovenia. Performed on 4 pianos by Miha Haas, Marjan Peternel, Nika Tkalec and Jasmina Raković, the concert also features 4 Pianos by Milko Lazar. You won’t want to miss this rare opportunity to hear Eastman’s music live in Ljubljana.
 
More information about Eastman: Julius Eastman - Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Eastman