EASTMAN, JULIUS - Femenine

"The end sounds like the angels opening up heaven... Should we say euphoria?" This is Julius Eastman himself, speaking about Femenine, a piece that remains as a big and slow breathing, with something informal driving the listener to a near-hypnosis state. J.E. (1940-1990): There was some for John Cage, then came Christian Wolff, and finally Morton Feldman, from this school in New York. Only Julius Eastman remained outside the game, the last figure, the most solitary and enigmatic -- undoubtedly also one of the most powerful. And it is this power that is revealed through these recordings. In the 1970s and 1980s, Eastman was one of the very few African-Americans to gain recognition in the New York avant-garde music scene. He was politically committed, a figure of queer culture and a solar and solitary poet whose melancholy influenced his genius as well as his tragic destiny: suffering from various addictions, declared missing, actually homeless. During winter of 1981-82, he got deported