Young jazz muso Kyle Shepherd and composer Phillip Miller share the spotlight this week.
- ‘In A Portrait of Home we are painting a picture of ourselves, in our lives, thoughts and emotions. With this offering we are also acknowledging the home of our spirit, the home of our people, our musical masters, the legacy of our country’s past, our present and the promise of our future”.
This is Kyle Shepherd, the young pianist and composer who guides the South African jazz songbook in beguiling directions when he performs compositions off his Sama-nominated album A Portrait of Home this Saturday. Expect an intimate performance that pays homage to the musical, spiritual and creative influence of pianists Abdullah Ibrahim, Keith Jarrett and Jason Moran, as well as saxophonists Zim Ngqawana and Robbie Jansen by re-imagining traditional Cape rhythms, melodies and harmonies, Afro-American jazz idioms and global roots music. ‘My music is a direct representation of my traditions and the lineage of artists that came before me, and I am merely a portrait of their mastery,” says Shepherd.
UCT College of Music, Baxter Street off Woolsack Drive, Rondebosch, May 7, 8pm. Entrance is R50 to R80. Advanced booking recommended. Email: [email protected] Tel: 079 256 9030. Online: www.kyleshepherd.co.za/concert_bookings.html. Website: www.kyleshepherd.co.za
- When composer Philip Miller set about creating a work to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) back in 2006 he faced a monumental challenge. ‘A Greek drama, a melodrama, a spectacle, a farce” were just some of the ways in which commentators had described the hearings that began in East London a decade earlier. How could anyone make sense of a public spectacle where, as Miller puts it ‘the good guys and bad guys, priests and peasants, whites and blacks, cadres and cowards, women and children, heroes and informants, Hindus, heathens, Muslims and Methodists all told their personal lives to the country”? REwind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony is his extraordinary answer.
The compositions which blend operatic styles, traditional gospel and protest anthems are built around actual shards of recorded audio testimonies from the TRC hearings which Miller ‘remixes’ into the very fabric of his libretto and music. Gerhard Marx’s visual design adds haunting resonances to the cantata’s power through ingeniously animated projections of video, photographs and text. Internationally-celebrated soprano Sibongile Khumalo shares the soloist spotlight with Otto Maidi, Stéfan Louw and Nozuko Teto. The Cape Town Opera Voice of the Nation and the Heavenly Voices choruses are accompanied by a string octet led by Marian Lewin.
Baxter Theatre, Main Road, Rondebosch, May 12 to 14, 8pm. Entrance is from R180. Book at Computicket.