AlbumRelease date:
28.08.2020
Kai Schumacher, Patricia Martin, Mirela Zhulali, Benedikt Ter Braak
Eastman: Evil Nigger / Gay Guerrilla
He may have been an awkward fit, but he was one who had all the more to say for it. Born in 1940, composer Julius Eastman broke with convention time and time again. A gay African-American, he was not afraid to speak of his roots and his sexuality, as is clear from work titles such as “Evil Nigger” or “Gay Guerrilla”. At the same time, integrity and a clear, honest acknowledgement of his identity were at the heart of Eastman’s idealistic message. His music may best be filed under minimalism, even if he is strikingly different to composers such as Philip Glass or Steve Reich. Just like his personal background, Eastman’s music is radical in many ways, and with his highly confrontational nature, he himself was never really part of the contemporary music establishment. To this day, Eastman’s music has lost none of its unorthodoxy, its power, or its message, and to celebrate it, four pianists – Patricia Martin, Mirela Zhulali, Benedikt ter Braak, and Kai Schumacher – got together to perform “Evil Nigger” and “Gay Guerrilla” on four pianos at the Moers Festival on 31 May 2020. The recording of this concert is now set to be released as an album on the german label Neue Meister.
Kai Schumacher
Since then, like a musical mad scientist, he has been constantly experimenting and combining seemingly incompatible elements with surprising results. His solo performances are acts of pure musical - and stylistic - alchemy, serving up heady mixes of Dadaism and Dancefloor, Avantgarde and Pop culture – sometimes all at once!
When not engaged in genre-defying pursuits, Kai Schumacher‘s repertoire focuses on American piano music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His debut recording of Frederic Rzewski‘s monumental "The People United Will Never Be Defeated" (2009) was hailed by Fono Forum magazine as a "pianistic sensation" and voted recording of the month.
On his second album, "Transcriptions" (2012), he bravely turned to the musical heroes of his youth - Rage Against the Machine, Nirvana, Slayer and others – remixing them and transforming the concert grand into a foursquare-meter sound monster, a mechanical sound-effects board, complete with prepared percussion.
His third album "Insomnia" (2015) is the story of a nocturnal odyssey, at once soothing and disturbing. It´s five restless "hymns" to the night feature the works of five American composers written over the past 80 years.
On his current album "Beauty in simplicity" Kai Schumacher is combining original piano compositions with his own arrangements for "enhanced piano" to create a repetitive set between meditation und mania. Including works from three centuries ranging from Erik Satie through Steve Reich to Moderat Minimal Music meets its classical pioneers and descendants in Ambient, Techno and Post-Rock.More releases
