THE BOW PROJECT TOUR 2009

• Induna
  Michael Blake
  
• Assistant Co-ordinator
  Christine Lucia
  

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THE BOW PROJECT TOUR 2009

For the 10th birthday of NewMusicSA, the Bow project will go on a national tour — with Mantombi Matotiyana and a young ensemble from Denmark, the Nightingale String Quartet. The tour is sponsored by Distell and kicks off on 19 July at the Nederburg Estate in Stellenbosch. Thereafter the programme will visit five universities — Unisa, Wits, UKZN, UFS and Rhodes — and the performers and composers will present workshops in Soweto and in Lady Frere, the late Nofinishi Dywili's village in the Eastern Cape and the original source of the uhadi bow songs. At the end of the tour the performers will record the programme for CD release on the commercial label TUTL, based in the Faroe Islands. It should be available in South Africa by early in 2010.

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PRESS RELEASE

NewMusicSA (South African Section of the International Society for Contemporary Music) celebrates its Tenth Anniversary this year, and to mark the occasion the Distell Foundation is sponsoring a national tour of The Bow Project.

The Bow Project was conceived by New Music Indaba founder-director Michael Blake in 2002 as part of the National Arts Festival. The original artistic objective of the project was to encourage South African composers to engage with traditional music as a compositional resource. Each was asked to make a transcription of a uhadi bow song, and use that as the basis for their work, which would then be performed in conjunction with a bow player herself.

The Bow Project has developed over the past six years as a platform for South African composers from many different traditions — classical, choral, jazz, rock, electronic, experimental — to reinterpret or reimagine the uhadi bow songs of the great Nofinishi Dywili, in the medium of the string quartet. Composers whose work will be featured on the Tour are Matteo Fargion, Martin Scherzinger, Robert Fokkens, Sazi Dlamini, Paul Hanmer, Mokale Koapeng, Lloyd Prince, Julia Raynham, Theo Herbst, Aryan Kaganof, and Michael Blake. Also featured will be Danish composers who have written quartets in response to uhadi bow songs: Kristian Blak and Atli Petersen.

Following the presentation of parts of the Bow Project in Europe last year, a national tour of highlights from the project and a CD release was planned. A dazzling young all-female string quartet from Denmark — the Nightingale String Quartet — will join one of South Africa's legendary uhadi perfomers — Montombi Matotiyana — for a two-week tour of concerts and a CD recording in South Africa in July this year. The CD will be recorded in Grahamstown and produced and released in Europe, accompanied by a book containing essays, interviews, photographs and excerpts from the composers' manuscripts.

The Bow Project concerts at the National Arts Festival, with either Mantombi Matotiyana or Madosini singing the original uhadi songs, and the Sontonga Quartet playing the composers reinterpretations, regularly drew full houses. The Bow Project has been hailed as one of the most important South African musical projects ever. As critic Gwen Ansell wrote in Cue, the National Arts Festival newspaper in 2002: "If you want a reason for having national arts festivals, the Bow Project provided it."

Further info: The Bow Project

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SPONSORS

NewMusicSA acknowledges the kind support of:

• Distell Foundation for the Performing Arts
• KOPIFON, Denmark
• Unisa, Dept of Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology
• Wits University, School of Arts
• University of the Free State, Dept of Music
• University of KwaZulu-Natal, School of Music
• Rhodes University, Dept of Music and Musicology
• The National Arts Council

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COMPOSERS & PERFORMERS

Composers and performers featured include:

Composers

• Kristian Blak (FO) info
• Michael Blake (ZA) info
• Jürgen Bräuninger (DE/ZA) info
• Sazi Dlamini (ZA)
• Matteo Fargion (ZA)
• Robert Fokkens (ZA) info
• Paul Hanmer (ZA)
• Theo Herbst (ZA) info
• Aryan Kaganof (ZA) info
• Mokale Koapeng (ZA)
• Atli Petersen (FO)
• Lloyd Prince (ZA)
• Julia Raynham (ZA)
• Martin Scherzinger (ZA) info

Performers

• Mantombi Matotiyana (ZA)
• Nightingale String Quartet (DK) info

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PROGRAMME

WHERE	WHEN	TIME	BOOKINGS
CONCERT 1
Nederburg Concert Series, Manor House, Paarl	Sun 19 July	17h00	021 809 8106
CONCERT 2
Miriam Makeba Theatre, UNISA	Tue 21 July	19h00	FREE 084 020 5465
CONCERT 3
Atrium, Wits University	Wed 22 July	19h00	011 717 1376
CONCERT 4
Howard College Theatre, University of Kwa-Zulu Natal	Fri 24 July	19h30	031 260 3353
CONCERT 5
Odeion, University of the Free State	Sun 26 July	16h00	051 401 2504
CONCERT 6
University of Fort Hare, Alice	Tue 28 July	12h30	FREE 040 602 2379
Recording Sessions for String Quartet
Grahamstown	29-30 July	–	–
CONCERT 7
Beethoven Room, Rhodes University	Fri 31 July	19h30	046 603 8489

Programme lasts about 2 hours 20 minutes with interval and is subject to change. For reasons of programming, not all works will be played at all concerts. Works to be played are indicated in the programme below by numbers that relate to the numbering of concerts on the above itinerary.

Entrance to University of Fort Hare and Unisa concerts is free of charge. At Unisa there will be a charge for buying programmes but it's not 'admission by programme'.

— Interval —

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Presented by NewMusicSA - The International Society for Contemporary Music, South African Section
www.iscm.org