REVIEW:The Soweto Gospel Choir Michael Fowler Centre 27 February 2024 - New Zealand Aotearoa Festival Of The Arts

 

The Soweto Gospel Choir Michael Fowler Centre 27 February 2024 - New Zealand Aotearoa Festival Of The Arts Formed in Soweto, South Africa, by David Mulovhedzi and Beverly Bryer, and producers Andrew Kay, David Vigo and Cliff Hocking in 2002 The Soweto Gospel Choir is 30 strong ensemble. 

They blend elements of African gospel, Negro spirituals, reggae and a selection of material from the American songbook. 

Their title hints at being a spiritual group. But they are so much more than just a church group. Their albums ‘Blessed’, ‘African Spirit’ and ‘Freedom’ have won Grammies for Best Traditional World Music Album in 2006, 2007 and 2019, respectively. 

They also feature on the Peter Gabriel/Thomas Newman song "Down to Earth", written for Pixar's 2008 feature film WALL-E, which was nominated for the Golden Globe. And they’ve done work for Peter Gabriel's tenth studio album ‘’i/o’, including the tracks, ‘Road to Joy’ and ‘Live and Let Live’. 

They’ve performed for Nelson Mandela, toured internationally multiple times and racked up over 46664 concerts, to date. But they’ve never played in Aotearoa. Until now. 

Tonight’s sell out concert at the Michael Fowler Centre was years in the making. The Festival has been trying to get the Choir here for many years. But international events, COVID and other challenges have thwarted attempts. 

It was an all-ages capacity crowd. At the beginning of the concert, we were reminded of ‘Soweto’ we learn is an acronym for ‘South-Western Townships’ and South Africa’s largest Black urban complex. 

It adjoins the city of Johannesburg and was created in the 1930’s when the white government started separating Blacks from Whites, creating separate townships. Most of us know about Soweto because of the Springbok Tour protest movement in the 1980’s, the rise of the ANC and international condemnation of apartheid policies in South Africa. 

Not quite the usual 30 strong ensemble, tonight’s performers managed 15 plus a keyboardist and a drummer. But they made up for it in energy and sound. The programme, named ‘Hope’, after the Choir’s latest album, was a 2-part programme. 

The first half featured freedom from the years of struggle under apartheid. There are over 8 ‘official languages’ and each song was different – Zulu, Sotho, Tswana and Xosa - culminating in a final celebratory piece about the life of Mandela. 

Each song had a different soloist, sometimes two or three and some incredible choreography to match. Topics ranged from village life, heroes, religious themes and stories about rising up against oppression. 

The opening song, 'Nonkoneyane Ka Ndaba' by Mbongeni Ngema, is a powerful anthem, inspired by the historical figure Nkonyane Ka Ndaba. It emphasizes his strength and bravery in the face of adversity. It’s a David and Goliath theme. A freedom totem against white oppression. The accompanying dance has a tribal unity to it, yet it’s infectious and we all can’t help clapping along. Voices are both separate and together. The song is repetitive and almost like a fairy-tale rhyme, easy to get into. 

 ‘Mbayi Mbayi’ in uplifting number about the 1976 Soweto uprising. They also do a popular Sotho song ‘Joh Lefihi’, which is riotous and joyful, again with a powerful dance which all the choir are involved in. ‘Umandela Uthi Ayihlome’ (Xhosa struggle song) is about Mandela (who was Xhosa, and can trace his lineage back to the Thembu Chief Nxeko). He is preparing his people for the struggle ahead, to fight for freedom. It utilizes all the voices of the choir in an arch of vocal unity, punctuated with bird calls and clicks (which are common elements of Xhosa music). 

The spiritual ‘Judgement Day’ is completely different from what I expected from a Gospel group. This is not the sounds of Harlem or Chicago. If you’ve ever seen an African group play, you’ll know that the music includes a variety of drums and clicks, bird calls, yelps, claps, stomps and calls. Arms and legs are going full on, and the harmonies are just so perfect. 

The vocalists are spine-tingling, every one of them. From the dark velvet rich bass of the men to the mature ochre of the altos, and the shrillness of the female sopranos and male tenors. They perform their songs with such fluid yet poignant movements. Rhythm just oozes out from every pour. The energy on stage is so vibrant. Such an intense rich rainbow of sound and colour. 

After a break, the second act starts up with tunes more familiar to my ears – ‘Song and Dance’ and ‘Amen’. The men line up, Temptations style, and deliver an absolutely beautiful version of Stevie Wonder’s classic ‘Love’s In Need Of Love Today’. This is one of many goose bump moments. 

They also do a Dylan number, ‘You Gotta Serve Somebody’. 

And because of their longstanding connection to Peter Gabriel, it’s compulsory to do ‘Don’t Give Up’, the duet he did with Kate Bush back in the 1980’s. 

No set of American Soul Freedom songs would be complete without a Staple’s number and this time it was ‘I Take You There’ that got their choir’s special treatment. And with multiple soloists and yet more tingling honey-harmonies this was yet another highlight. 

We finish on a long and jubilant version of Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ which becomes a massive sing-a-long. I think the choir was genuinely moved by our response as we all sung back, stating in ovation towads the end. There were tears of joy in the eyes all around. The was a lot of aroha in the whare tonight. 

This was what festivals are about, celebrating diversity and uniqueness, music and culture, no matter where it’s from. 

Who knew I’d be won over by a choir? But this group really is special. They remain true to their multi-African roots and wear their hearts on their sleeves when performing. It’s hard to capture the absolute joy and abundant energy that flowed from the stage tonight. 

My final recommendation: if Soweto Gospel Choir ever comes to town, make sure you get a ticket. Missing out is not an option. 

1st Act 

Nonkonyane Ka Ndaba 

Bawo Xa Ndilahlekayo 

uMandela uth'aihlome (Xhosa struggle song) 

Judgement Day

Litshonile Li Langa 

Pasopa Verwoerd 

Joh Lefihi

Sechaba 

Mbai Mbai (or Mbayi Mbayi) 

Freedom Medley 

2nd Act

Song and Dance

Amen 

Love’s In Need Of Love Today 

Today You Will Be Moved 

You Gotta Serve Somebody 

Don’t Give Up 

I’ll Take You There 

Stand Up 

Hallelujah

For more Festival events go to https://www.festival.nz/

Review: Ambrose Akinmusire Quartet – Wellington Jazz Festival, Michael Fowler Centre 6 June 2019

Photo:Tim Gruar

CoffeeBar Kid at the Wellington Jazz Festival 2019

Born and raised in Oakland, California, intrepid trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire was as a member of the Berkeley High School Jazz Ensemble, where he caught the attention of saxophonist Steve Coleman who hired him as a member of his Five Elements band for a European tour. From there Akinmusire went from strength to strength, playing in the Monterey Jazz Festival's Next Generation Jazz Orchestra. Studying at the famous Manhattan School of Music before returning to the West Coast to take a master's degree at the University of Southern California and the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in LA.

He’s racked up a stash of industry awards and released a bunch of very ambitious discs starting in 2007 with his debut recording Prelude... to Cora. He’s a man to hire having worked with Vijay Iyer, Aaron Parks, Esperanza Spalding, and Jason Moran. In 2011 Blue Note snapped him up and released his ground breaking album When the Heart Emerges Glistening. Four years ago he dropped The Imagined Savior is Far Easier to Paint, followed by appearances on Kendrick Lamar's 2015 big effort To Pimp a Butterfly.

Critics agree, when last year he pulled off something of a small miracle of synthesis with Origami Harvest combining state-of-the-art improvisation with stylish, sophisticated pieces for string quartet, experimental electronics, and a dialogue of politically charged spoken word ‘beat poetry‘ performances. With a wind up like that I was fully charged with anticipation.

Photo: Tim Gruar

But first up NZ School of Music Big band, conducted by Roger Fox, gave us a short set played by 15 students, mainly horns. They blasted through a rapid paced selection from Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and a couple of other standards. Sadly, Fox’s break neck speed interpretation of Cheek To Cheek completely ran over it’s fledgling vocalist, leaving her in dishevelled heap on the side of the road. Ambrose Akinmusire has been up at the school teaching and mentoring the trumpeters today. Many in the band were clearly looking well pleased with their day. He'd graciously given some stage time for the students to get a bit of large hall experience. While it’s clear these kids were nervous they had potential and it showed. It was great to see our musical future is in good hands.

After a quick reset, we're underway with the main act. Tonight's audience was smaller and more intimate than last night with Herbie Hancock but still enthusiastic and engaging. A younger set but that's no surprise given that his latest album is such a wide ranging selection incorporating everything from chamber music to rap and hip hop. I’d hoped the night would include some of the material from Origami Harvest but that wasn’t on the agenda. Instead, the show drew inspiration from When the Heart Emerges Glistening and The Imagined Savior is Far Easier to Paint. I say ‘inspiration” because none of these loose, free jazz approximations were announced. Even the most ardent fan would have trouble deciphering what belonged on wax and from which record it came from.

The first thing that strikes you is how incredibly coherent and tight this quartet is. No surprise, given that they’ve been operating as a working unit for nearly seven years. Individually, any one of these players could hold their own. But working together with this alchemist, Ambrose, Sam Harris (piano), Harish Raghavan (bass) and Kweku Sumbry (drums) reach a considerably higher plain. Watching this team at work, it seems to me more logical to describe how they operate rather than how they are lead.

Photo: Tim Gruar

In fact, it’s not really clear who’s in charge. Raghavan and Sumbry are a uniquely potent force and constantly show their singular ability to design and deliver the structure and the shape of each a piece. Over that there are textures of light and rough, delicacy and harshness from Harris’s piano and Akinmusire’s trumpet.

At just 21 and only recently graduated, Sumbry proved himself to be the real the star tonight. He gave us a relentless onslaught of multi cadenced rhythms and counter rhythms. There were times when his left and right hand, left foot and right foot were all travelling in different directions that made no sense but were perfectly aligned to navigate this twisted landscape designed and laid down by the other three.

I’d heard that Akinmusire is the future of trumpet playing in the jazz world, so tonight I was expecting great things. But somehow I felt a little bit let down. He seemed to be leading an the unremitting search for contrast, for tonal texture, to take the listener somewhere unexpected. Yet at the same time, he seemed to get a bit lost. His unstructured playing sometimes fell a bit flat to these ears. And a bit pointless. Still I’m not a player. Sometimes abstract playing is about the sculptures they create in your ears, rather than a simple melody abstracted and manipulated. Perhaps it was the odd, tuneless squeaks and blasts that didn’t go with the rest of the composition.

Occasionally, I thought he was playing bad, unintentional notes, as if his trumpet was malfunctioning. Only once did we get a proper solo section, which was simply a selection of random arpeggios, a re-imagining of a Bach prelude, or something like that. Other times he teased us into more conventional rich atonal moments that were more familiar to conventional jazz playing. It was only then that I really saw the skill bubble up. Yet playing this was seemed like a cop out. Where was the brash experimentation of his recorded albums? Ultimately I felt dissatisfied.

I’d like to say our attention was fully held through out the night but this wasn’t entirely true. I don’t want to write off the night as mediocre but I did come away feeling like there was more to this than I’d received. Akinmusire is clearly a musician’s musician and there were several mesmerising solos, especially from young Kweku Sumbry who is definitely one to watch, but beyond there seemed to be little more than a sustained intention to preserve a level of the Avant Guard within the confines of conventional modern jazz.

Live Review: Rhian Sheehan - A Quiet Divide - Wellington (Michael Fowler Centre) October 12th 2018

I will confess up front that I’ve always been a champion of Sheehan’s work.  That goes back to the time he gave me a copy of his first album, Paradigm Shift, which he made in his little dingy Newtown flat on a computer and guitars.  I was impressed then and always have been by his experimental approach and continued scientific ‘bent’ to his music.  No doubt commissions with big hitters like NASA's 3D Planetarium shows and creating for exhibits and rollercoaster theme park rides and Weta workshop projects have influenced his compositional viewpoint, as have travel, especially to India a few years back.  And his work has always been revolved around space, and alternatively, more grounded themes like ecology and humankind’s exploitation of our planet. 

Tonight’s show was once again a very ambitious project.  Like his previous shows, it involved a mix of music and projections, combining a dream-like montage of visuals with challenging and highly charged thematic music.


The last show I saw was pretty ‘out there’, literally suspending images over the band.  That show was back in 2013, and a mix of music and images from his last two albums, Standing In Silence and Stories From Elsewhere – both impressive studies in ambient electronica with a smouldering cinematic undertow. 

Tonight we arrived at a room full of dry ice ‘smoke’ lit in greasy, gloomy tones like the marshlands before the ascent of Mount Doom.  On stage were three huge screens, running floor to ceiling and angled in a loose triangle, encasing some of the band.  In perfect symmetry, a large inverted triangular prism hung in the centre of this pseudo-pagan construction.  During the show, a vast array of different imagery would be projected across these curtains and through the prism which was made of a number of smaller mirrored triangles to diffract the light around the room.  This part reminds one instantly of early Pink Floyd shows and was perhaps a nod to that era by the designers from Weta Workshops, who created all this. 

Sheehan has brought back old collaborators including guitarist Jeff Boyle (Jakob), Ed Zuccollo on keys, pianist and partner Raashi Malik (Rhombus), bassist Marika Hodgson (Hollie Smith), vocalist Anna Edgington (EDIE), and percussionists Steve Bremner (The Adults) and Grant Myhill, who all were vital to bringing this elaborate recorded vision to life on the big stage.  

Flanked on stage right was a string section, provided by experimental jazz-classical ensemble Stroma, and led by conductor, Ewan Clark.  Stroma did a fair amount of the heavy lifting for this show, especially in the first half. Their treatment of the soaring piece We Danced Under A Broken Sky. Musically, this album was probably as close to a classical experience as Sheehan has gotten so far in his career.  The show opens with a yawning soundscape Elegy For The Past, reminiscent of German industrialists or early British electronica but then folds into more melancholic themes such as The Absence Of You and the delicious and lush Lost Letters, which was accompanied by visuals of dancing, watery figures.  On other tunes, there are themes lifted from Baroque themes, some Eno, Boards of Canada, hints of Jack Body’s Wellington scenes, perhaps, and Douglas Lilburn, pastoral connections, and even some Vaughan Williams.  It was suggested to me that the piano parts intentionally emphasised a number of ‘kiwi-tinged notes’.  I thought that was very apt, with themes and motifs that drew back through popular local soundtracks from television and movies like The Piano.

Photo : Grant McLean

Thematically, A Quiet Divide deals with our relationship with the past. “We understand our time is limited,” Sheehan says of this work, “and that every poignant moment we experience is fleeting, tinged with a little sadness, because we know every moment is ephemeral; every experience immediately evaporating into a memory, slowly fading, gone.”  No stronger is that sentiment than on Last Time We Spoke, which gravitates around a motif built around a simple wind up music box ditty, a recurring device in Sheehan’s music.  The music reflects the sadness of the loss of relationships and moments. Time is slipping away, like sands washing out to sea.  Much of this mostly downbeat set dwell on reflection and sorrow.  But, here and there, is optimism and a general feeling of hopefulness, especially in the closers (of the album and firsts half) on the swelling forces in April and 1982.

aka Tim Gruar

The second half revisits a material from Standing In Silence (2009) and Stories From Elsewhere (2013) which saw Sheehan start the journey away from his earlier electronica roots, stepping deeper into ambient orchestral soundscapes.  So it natural, given the themes of time and reflection to revisit some moments from these albums again. It was also satisfying to hear the orchestral elements on some of this earlier music come to life on the stage. 

Overall, the mix of old, new and the incredible visuals made this a great night - perhaps tinged with some sadness and reflection on the slipping of time.  I am still in awe of Sheehan’s ambitiousness! 

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