US orchestra is headed to SA
THIS month the Grammy Award-winning Minnesota Orchestra embarks on a 14 000km journey to our shores for a tour, marking the first visit to South Africa by a professional US orchestra.
This massive undertaking will see the 90-member orchestra, led by music director Osmo Vänska, perform. It launches on August 10 at the Cape Town City Hall and will tour to Johannesburg, Soweto, Durban and Pretoria.
The pioneering Minnesota Orchestra partners with Classical Movements for the Music for Mandela tour, which is the realisation of a 25-year-old dream.
In honour of this and the Mandela centenary year, Cape Town composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen was commissioned to write a tribute, Harmonia Ubuntu, which is sung by soprano Goitsemang Lehobye. Local audiences are in for a treat as the piece was performed in the US during Mandela Week last month.
The Minnesota Chorale will join the tour for performances of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Johannesburg and Soweto, singing beside local Gauteng choristers. Along with Lehobye, mezzo sporano Minette du Toit-Pearce, tenor Siyabonga Maqungo and bass-baritone Njabulo Madlala will also perform.
Logan Young, marketing manager of Classical Movements, said: “The tour will collaborate with over 20 leading South African musical organisations, including the top orchestral and educational programmes in all five cities we are touring.
“More than 750 South African musicians will share their music or will have one-on-one lessons and group workshops with the Minnesota musicians. Eleven South African composers and arrangers will ha ve their music performed by the Minnesotans.
Born in the 1970s, composer Ndodana-Breen said that when Mandela was released, he met him on two occasions, so the music also has a personal significance for him, coupled with the fact that he knows Mandela’s grandchildren.
He is the composer of Winnie the Opera, which launched to a standing ovation at the State Theatre in Pretoria in 2011, and back in 1998, Ndodana-Breen was the first black classical composer to be awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music by the National Arts Festival.
“Mandela was beyond a statesman; his message of ubuntu is an examplar of what that concept is – ‘My humanity is tied to your humanity’,” he said, adding, “It’s really an extraordinary message that he not only lived but embodied it. He walked the talk.”
Ndodana-Breen said the piece he was commissioned to write was 12 minutes long. Using material from Madiba’s speeches, he said, “The words are just so incredibly inspiring, and the orchestra really loved it.”
Ndodana-Breen was in Minneapolis on Mandela Day, and he said there was a wonderful response from the people there.
“They closed off streets and performed music including some of my chamber music, and there was just such a wonderful sense of community.”
The prospect of the 300 people who will be flying to South Africa to perform is exciting for the composer.
“The significance of appearing at Regina Mundi in Soweto for example is amazing, as it is such an icon of historical resistance and there will be a live streaming there. The extent of planning that has gone on has been remarkable.
His notes on Harmonia Ubuntu show there’ll be a diverse mix of sounds from home-grown Xhosa musical practice of ukuhlabela,a short musical introduction by a lead singer before everyone else joins in.
“The musical ideas that frame this work are largely derived from the musical universe of Southern Africa. Aspects of the interlocking patterns in Harmonia Ubuntu looked beyond South Africa’s political borders, to the traditional mbira (African thumb piano) an instrument prevalent among the Shona people of what is now Zimbabwe.”
Classical Movements President Neeta Helms said: “(We) are very grateful that one of the top orchestras in the US will make this historic tour to South Africa.
“It is an enormous undertaking and a statement of the importance of Africa, and the growth of orchestral music in this most choral of countries. This dynamic and visionary orchestra is exactly the right musical ambassador to pave the way for others to follow.”
Ticket prices range from R100 to R600. Bookings through Computicket at www.computicket.com/ music. For more information, visit minnesotaorchestra.org/satour
For tickets to the Cape Town concert, email tickets@classicalmovements.com