Blood Orange – aka Devonté Hynes – has released the live recording of a piano improvisation he performed last month for a live-streamed benefit concert.
The improvisation was based on a piano composition by Julius Eastmann titled ‘Evil N****’, which Hynes performed in late June for the Black Power Live Broadcast in Los Angeles.
Listen to the recording below:
In addition to Hynes, the Black Power Live concert featured a lineup including Doja Cat, Kamasi Washington, Vagabon, Denzel Curry, Robert Glasper, Jessie Reyez and Ne-Yo, among others.
‘Evil N****r’ was composed by Eastman in 1979 and is known to be performed with multiple pianos at a time.
This isn’t Blood Orange’s first classical recording; last year, Hynes also teamed up Third Coast Percussion to release a 13-track classical album, ‘Fields’, which was described as “non-essential, luxury ambient sounds” in a three-star review by NME.
Blood Orange’s last full release was his mixtape, Angel’s Pulse, released in July last year. It was a follow-up to 2018’s studio album, ‘Negro Swan’, which NME gave five stars, saying “pop polymath Dev Hynes cherry picks jazz piano, unstructured guitar and A-class collaborators to create an introspective masterwork about the desire to be loved”.
- READ MORE: Blood Orange – ‘Negro Swan’ review
Earlier this year, Blood Orange featured on The Avalanche’s track ‘We Will Always Love You‘.