kagablog

If the two main trends in 20th century music could be defined by the conceptualists on the one hand and the materialists on the other, then I would probably fall under the latter. Whereas conceptualists start with the idea, and are primarily concerned with the way the music is put together, materialists concentrate on the nature of material itself and try to let the material determine the piece. “Intuitive” may be another way to describe the latter, or Adorno’s phrase “musique informelle” which South African musicologist Stephanus Muller has used to describe some of my pieces. My music takes as its starting point the American and English experimental traditions and frequently fuses this with an African aesthetic, using elements of traditional African music and weaving.

PROGRAMME

1. 38a Hill Street Blues (2000)

Magdalena de Vries marimba
Frank Mallows vibraphone

38a Hill Street Blues owes something to the ‘uhadi’ bow music of the Xhosa in the Eastern Cape where I used to live. It probably owes something to ‘stride’ piano playing (in particular Meade Lux Lewis’ Honky Tonk Train Blues) which I listened to a lot in my teens. The title possibly owes something to an American television series, but was in fact my home address. I wrote the piece, in the desert in Namibia during January 2000, at the request of Marcel Worms for his ongoing “New Blues for Piano” project. He gave the first performance in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam on 25 March 2000. I made this transcription for marimba and vibraphone in 2003 and it was premiered at the Brighton Festival in 2004. It lasts about 4 minutes.

2. Ways of the Dance (2003)

Jill Richards piano
Magdalena de Vries marimba/vibraphone

“When you track an animal you must become the animal. Tracking is like dancing; because your body is happy you can feel it in the dance and then you know that the hunting will be good.”

This description of hunting by !Nqate Xqamxebe of the !Xo San (Bushmen) in the central Kalahari was the initial inspiration for Ways of the Dance, after I saw the Foster Brothers’ film The Great Dance (beautiful images, lousy music). I tried to evoke something of the fragility of life for this sadly vanishing group of Southern African inhabitants.

Ways of the Dance was written for Ancuza Aprodu and Thierry Miroglio who gave the first performance on 24 May 2003 at Tage der Neuen Musik, Bamberg, Germany. It lasts about 15 minutes.