kagablog

Mozart and more for music lovers at this year’s Grahamstown festival
March 29, 2006
By Jane Mayne
Bass player Concord Nkabinde will headline the local jazz contingent at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival, which runs from June 29 to July 8.

In addition to Nkabinde, who is Winner of the 2006 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music, the Standard Bank Jazz Festival will also feature the likes of trumpeter Feya Faku, saxophonist McCoy Mrubata and guitarist Jimmy Dludlu in a showcase of local rhythms.

International acts on the bill will include American Chris Collins and the Dutch Paul van Kemenade Quintet, as well as selected musicians from Switzerland, Sweden, Canada and Argentina.

On the classical music side, there’ll be an all-Mozart programme with the Johannesburg Festival Orchestra under the baton of Richard Cock. In honour of Mozart’s birthday 250 years ago, the orchestra will present his first and last symphonies and the Concerto in C major K 487 with pianist Catherine Foxcroft as the soloist.

Two choirs, The Chanticleer Singers and the Sdasa Chorale, will perform Mozart’s Requiem Mass along with a new work by Mokale Koapeng commissioned by the Festival to commemorate the events of 1976.

In another concert, The Chanticleer Singers have included a second Mozart mass in a programme with works by Baroque court musician Heinrich Schötz and twentieth century English composer Gerald Finzi.

The Sontonga Quartet have dedicated one of their two concerts to Mozart. They will perform with Matthew Reid on clarinet. Their second concert is a late-night event and includes Henryk Gorecki’s String Quartet No. 2 Quasi una Fantasia.

The New Music Indaba programme re-imagines Amadeus with the South African premiére of John Cage’s 1969 audiovisual masterpiece HPSCHD and presents new realisations of the same work with commissions from Carlo Mombelli, Paul Hanmer, Martin Scherzinger, Nishlyn Ramanna, Mokale Koapeng, David Kosviner, Surendran Reddy and Aryan Kaganof.

The main festival music programme offers festinos the chance to hear all of Bach’s six Suites for Violoncello Solo in two recitals by Peter Martens, principal cellist of the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra.

For a baroque treat, André Campra’s opera ballet L’Europe Galante (Gentle Europa) will be performed by Durban’s Baroque 2000 orchestra with musical direction by Chiara Banchini and original choreography by Boyzie Cekwana. Three singers and two dancers will perform.

Elena Kerimova (violin), Boris Kerimov (cello) and Christopher Duigan (piano) are joined by baritone Federico Freschi for a feast of tangos, gypsy melodies and classical gems.

Freschi and Duigan also celebrate French song with much-loved works by Fauré, Debussy and Ravel and opera arias from Gounod’s Faust and Bizet’s Carmen.

The Sdasa Chorale under the leadership of Mokale Koapeng features a repertoire of close harmony gospel arrangements, African-American spirituals, rhythm-and-blues numbers and indigenous vocal music.

Some of the finest voices in the Eastern Cape come together to perform Christian Ngqobe’s Ibali Lomculo-Jesus: Life and Crucifixion with an indigenous orchestra.

A Choral Jazz Spectacular showcases the talents of three choirs from Mthatha, Queenstown and East London, who join forces with a group of jazz musicians to present indigenous pieces.

Along with the experimental Mozart component, the New Music Indaba 2006 honours the Shostakovich centenary in two concerts by the world-renowned Fitzwilliam Quartet.

A full programme also features some of Europe’s finest performers, including the Stockholm Sax Quartet, Ensemble Acrobat (Salzburg Mozarteum), Trio Rothko (Eire), Fitzwilliam Quartet (UK) and Daan Vandewalle (Belgium).

Michael Blake, Nishlynn Ramanna, Benjamin Fourie, Jill Richards and the Egoli Wind Quintet, the Kerimov Trio and the Gauteng Choristers are among the South African performers.

For more information see www.nafest.co.za, or call the festival office on 046 603 1103.

Bookings open in May.

this article originally appeared in the cape times