Michael Blake Ensemble at UNISA
Jill Richards piano Magda de Vries marimba
Frank Mallows vibraphone Michael Blake piano
“Michael Blake se werk sing onder musici se hande.” (Review of their CT concert, Burger, Sept 2007)
Sunday 18 November at 11h00
ZK Matthews Hall, Pretoria
Programme
Michael Blake 38a Hill Street Blues (vibes & marimba)
Ways of the Dance (piano & percussion)
Sonata for Two Pianos (Homage to Schumann)
Four Piano Pieces
Shoowa Panel (vibes & marimba)
Michael Blake’s music takes as its starting point the American and English experimental traditions and fuses this with an African aesthetic, using elements of traditional African music and weaving. 38a Hill Street Blues draws on uhadi bow music and stride piano; Ways of the Dance was inspired by !Nqate Xqamxebe’s description of hunting by the the !Xo Bushmen; the Sonata for Two Pianos pays homage to Schumann’s ‘Piano Quintet Op 44’ and to the creative impulse to break away from tradition; the Four Piano Pieces from a larger collection of short ‘workbench’ pieces, all have a connection with other composers (Bach, Stravinsky, Ives, Schoenberg and Cole Porter); and Shoowa Panel was inspired by a cloth woven by the Shoowa, a northern group of the Kuba, in the Congo, who decorate their skirts and panels with cut-pile details: each geometric design – whether rectilinear, crosses and crotchets, chevrons or squares – is embroidered on a raphia panel and grows, almost organically, across the fabric.
www.michaelblake.co.za
www.jillrichards.com
Information and Bookings: UNISA Music Foundation 012 429 3344
May 25th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
hi
anisa
hoe are you
you willcome
are you relly ok
goodbyei am gonig to amrna pert she is gonig to the bech on MONDAY is fun are you gonimg