| LIVE: | 2023, 45’, world premiere |
|---|---|
| Concept: | JJJJJerome Ellis |
| SHAFTS OF SUNLIGHT: | 2023, 60’, world premiere |
| Concept: | Lamin Fofana |
| JULIUS EASTMAN MEMORIAL DINNER: | 2023, 60’, Italian premiere |
| Concept, arrangement, electronics: | Jace Clayton |
| Piano: | David Friend, Emily Manzo |
| Hosted by: | Pino Saulo |
| Light and set design: | Theresa Baumgartner |
| In collaboration with: | Rai Radio 3 - Battiti |
| Production: | La Biennale di Venezia |
Music
La Notte di Battiti - JJJJJerome Ellis / Lamin Fofana / Jace Clayton aka Dj/Rupture
Description
JJJJJerome Ellis is an animal, artist, and proud stutterer. Through music, literature, performance, and video he researches relationships among blackness, disabled speech, divinity, nature, sound, and time.
Shafts of Sunlight is an open-ended improvisatory performance-installation with fragments and debris from extended studio sessions. It is a disruption of the linearity of historical time, what historian Robin Kelley refers to as blues time; it is simultaneously in the moment, the past, the future, and the timeless space of the imagination.
Conceived for twin pianos, live electronics, and voice, this exhilarating sonic exploration led by Jace Clayton, a.k.a. DJ/rupture, brings fresh insight to the artistic legacy of Julius Eastman, the mercurial gay African American composer who mixed canny minimalist innovation with head-on political provocation. The Julius Eastman Memorial Dinner is built around new arrangements of Evil Nigger (1979) and Gay Guerrilla (1980) by Eastman.