On Saturday, December 14, 2019 from 3.30 to 5.30pm, concert performed by students of École de Musique du Sundgau within the exhibition Le couteau sans lame et dépourvu de manche and in dialogue with Julius Eastman's works (1940-1990).
Training musicians open a dialogue with the exhibition in a musical course through each gallery, inviting the visitors to form connections between music and artworks. Based on a listening session of Julius Eastman's works (New York, 1940-Buffalo, 1990), the musical program proposes new interactions with the exhibition.
Pianist, composer, singer, dancer, Julius Eastman is the author of Evil Nigger, Gay Guerrilla & Crazy Nigger (1979). Instead of the minimalist term, Julius Eastman preferred the term <organic music>: each sentence includes a trace of the previous one.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Eastman was one of the few Afro-descendants to be recognized on the avant-garde music scene in New York. It invests a political commitment with works that reflect, by their titles, the testimony and reality of a person from the African-American minority in the United States. Many of his compositions were destroyed when he was evicted from his apartment by his landlord. In 1990, he was missing and probably lives in Central Park, homeless. He died the same year in general indifference and the artistic community paid tribute to him only a few months later. His work has tended to be forgotten by history. In recent years, his compositions have been increasingly cited, taken up and adapted.
Following this listening and Eastman's magnetic aura, the young musicians perform works from their choices.