The 2008 New Music Indaba is a combination of concerts by high-level professional ensembles including music especially commissioned from South African composers and masterclasses for young composers.
This year the Indaba features specialist new music group The Chamber Music Company from London, directed by Mark Troop and we are also delighted to have several esteemed international composers in residence for the workshops including Robert Fokkens (South Africa/UK), Ramon Anthin (Sweden) and Kristian Blak (Faroe Islands).
On Saturday 6th September the Chamber Music Company will give a concert at Wits celebrating Olivier Messiaen's centenary in a uniquely South African way — Quartet for the End of Time will be brought into relief by the première of a series of South African pieces written in response to the work and which follow the changing instrumentation of its eight movements. Jill Richards and Waldo Alexander also pay a concert tribute to Messiaen in the Indaba.
We mark not only Messiaen's centenary this year but also that of South African choral composer Joshua Mohapeloa with a concert of choral music directed by Mokale Koapeng on Sunday 7th September at Holy Trinity Church in Johannesburg. This concert is preceded by a lecture and forum on the composer led by Christine Lucia at Wits.
The Kemus Ensemble of Stellenbosch team up with pianists Jill Richards and Liza Joubert at ZK Matthews Hall, Unisa on Sunday 7th September to provide us with a rare chance to hear Mantra live. This concert celebrates the life of Karlheinz Stockhausen who died recently and who would have been 80 this year.
The Indaba also has a Nordic flavour due to NewMusicSA's exchange project with the ISCM section of the Faroe Islands. Faroese guitarist Ólavur Jakobsen will play a lunchtime concert in Pretoria featuring works by Sunlief Rasmusan, Indaba composer in residence Kristian Blak and a host of other Nordic pieces.
Please watch this space for more details of the exciting New Music Indaba programme over the coming weeks.
NewMusicSA New Music Indaba 2008, Capital Arts Festival and the Johannesburg Musical Society Welcomes Trio Fibonacci
Canada's Trio Fibonacci (named after the celebrated thirteenth century mathematician whose theories and discoveries so much influenced artistic creation over the centuries) was formed in 1998 and is today recognised as one of the only piano trios that can perform cutting edge contemporary music alongside masterpieces of earlier eras with equal brilliance.
Recently the trio has performed at the Ars Musica Festival in Brussels where they gave the world première of Trauben by Enno Poppe, at the Transit Festival in Belgium where they premiered Silver Silence by Nicolaus Huber, and at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival where they gave the première of Possession du condamné by Michael Finnissy. Continuing their commitment to the next generation of musicians and composers the Trio Fibonacci has given workshops and master classes at the Royal Academy of Music in London, at Oxford University, at National Conservatories in China, at the Hanns Eisler Academy in Berlin, and at universities in Japan, Brazil, Canada and Sweden. For further information, see www.triofibonacci.com.
For its first tour in South Africa the Trio Fibonacci will be presenting a selection of its repertoire, featuring several masterpieces for piano trio of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as works dedicated to the group by living Canadian composers.
Reviews:
"The Trio Fibonacci interpreted the very long opus 8 by Brahms with the romantic passion and internal depth of a long-standing ensemble. Playing alone, the prodigious violinist Julie-Anne Derome multiplied the effects in In Nomine by Pascal Dusapin."
- Claude Gingras, La Presse (Montreal)
"There aren't many permanent piano trios who make a speciality of contemporary music, but the Fibonacci have already carved out their own niche, and shown their sympathy for a wide range of contemporary composers ... The Fibonacci's performance was muscular and appropriately dramatic"
- Andrew Clements, The Guardian
"The Beethoven [Archduke Trio] received an energetic reading full of contrasts ..."
- Claude Gingras, La Presse (Montreal)
"The interpretation was of the highest level ... what immense structural understanding they have ... The Trio Fibonacci played these pieces with precision and was gripping"
- Jürgen Otten, Frankfurter Allgemeine
"The fiercely committed performances of Trio Fibonacci were recorded in the presence of the composer. It would be hard to imagine more authoritative or virtuosic accounts of these works"
- Steve Lomas, The Classical Source (UK)
You can see Trio Fibonacci in concert at the following events:
NewMusicSA New Music Indaba 2008
Wednesday, 3 September at 09h30 - 11h30: Masterclass
Venue: UNISA, Department of Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology (off Walker St), Sunnyside, Pretoria
Wednesday 3 September at 18h00: New music from Canada, South Africa and Argentina
Venue: UNISA, Department of Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology (off Walker St), Sunnyside, Pretoria
Friday 5 September at 12h30: New Canadian classics
Venue: UNISA, Department of Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology (off Walker St), Sunnyside, Pretoria
Tickets available at the door or call 084 020-5465 for advance booking
Capital Arts Festival
Thursday 4 September at 20:00
Venue: Rendezvous Theatre, State Theatre, 320 Pretorius St, Pretoria
Saturday 6 September at 20:00
Venue: Rendezvous Theatre, State Theatre, 320 Pretorius St, Pretoria
Sunday 7 September at 11:00
Venue: Rendezvous Theatre, State Theatre, 320 Pretorius St, Pretoria
Repertoire: Ludwig von Beethoven: Trio in B Flat Major, Opus 97 ('Archduke'); Jean Lesage: The Mozart Project; Dmitry Shostakovich: Piano Trio No 2 in E Minor, Opus 67
Saturday 13 September at 20:00
Venue: Linder Auditorium, St Andrews Road, Parktown, Johannesburg
Repertoire: Ludwig von Beethoven: Trio in B Flat Major, Opus 97 ('Archduke'); Jean Lesage: The Mozart Project; Dmitry Shostakovich: Piano Trio No 2 in E Minor, Opus 67
For more information and booking for the Indaba concerts, or if you would like to participate in the masterclasses/workshops, please contact Cameron Harris: