Apartment House perform 'Femenine' by Julius Eastman
The great contemporary music ensemble, Apartment House, present ‘Femenine’ by the late, great American composer, Julius Eastman, who has undergone a long overdue and much deserved popular and critical reapparaisal nearly three decades after his premature death in 1990.
Femenine is a open instrumental score, existing only as a fragmentary and elusive sketchey score in Eastman’s hand. Lasting over 60 minutes, and propelled by the sound of sleigh bells and an insistent, yet compelling riff, the piece is hypnotic, chaotic, transcendentary, alarming and ecstatic, exemplifying Eastman’s own maximal minimalism. Written in 1974 its ‘luminous ovals of sound’ (New Yorker) has been given new life by Apartment House.