Julius Eastman

Now listening to the works of post-minimalist composer Julius Eastman (1940 – 1990) – or well, to those works that have been tracked down. Eastman was evicted from his house in the 1980s, all his stuff, including his scores thrown out too. Eastman went on to live in Tompkins Square Park, until his death. The story is incredible: http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=4411, the music is like a slap in the face. I generally dislike minimalist music, but Eastman makes a maximum impact. Can anybody explain why we’re bothered with Philip Glass and John ‘Other’ Adams-operas when there was somebody like Eastman? (Yeah, difficult person, et cetera…. but the music!)

(Btw: there are two contemporary composers by the name of John Adams; the ‘famous’ one and then John Luther Adams — most known for the fact that he lives in northern Alaska. According to Samuel Vriezen John Luther Adams writes by far the more interesting music — hence he calls the famous John Adams, John ‘Other’ Adams.)

en,music | October 25, 2006 | 14:00 | Comments Off on Julius Eastman |

0 Comments

RSS for comments on this post.

sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. | Arie Altena