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##### CONCERT CANCELLED ######
Concert within Festival Métis. 3rd October 2020.
Programme : around the piece "20th Meridian"
For this exceptional concert, the Ensemble Nouvelles Portées is working with the trio Chesaba, formed by the cellist Abel Selaocoe, the percussionnist Sidiki Dembele and the bassist Alan Keary to perform the French premiere of Barak Schmool's concerto 20th Meridian. This piece relates, through its seven mouvements, a journey along the Meridian 20 from the North to the South of the African continent. Each country gives the opportunity to express themes, rhythms and influences from traditional music usually played by string instruments, such as the oud, the riti, the xalam or even the logombe.
Note:
20th Meridian for Cello, Percussion and Strings (or chamber orchestra) is currently a work in progress. Abel and Barak have planned a suite of 8 interlinked movements giving a musical journey through Africa from North to South. Starting in Benghazi, Libya and taking an imaginary path along the 20th Meridian, the journey ends with the celebratory grand finale (at home) in Cape Town, South Africa. The piece is really an African concerto (viewing Africa through the 'cello), inspired by, paying homage to, and involving traditional instrumental techniques, structure, musical procedure and deepest grooves from the collected wealth of native string instruments across the continent.
Influences include, but are not limited to:
- basic fiddles such as the riti of Sene-Gambia, the gonje of Ghana and the endigidi of Uganda.
- lutes such as the Arab oud, the West African xalam, the Moroccan guembri
- harps such a the kora and ngoni of Mali, the kundi of Central Africa, the bolon of Guinea
- zithers such as the inanga of Rwanda, the Mvet of Cameroon and the valiha of Madagascar
- bows such as the chitende of Mozambique, uhadi of South Africa and the obubra of Nigeria
- pluriarcs such as the Congolese longombe and the zhombe of Botswana
The music of 20th Meridian takes us from the early morning muezzin calling across the mosque-laden cityscape of the Mediterranean coast, through the desert blues of the Sahara, the polyphonic pygmy encampments of the rainforest, the traditional healing ceremonies of the Zimbabwean bira, to the foot-stomping churches of Abel's homeland upbringing on the cape. With a proposed length of c. 25 mins, the work links African and Western culture in a new, personal and direct way. Forever with one foot in each hemisphere, Abel will be ideally singing and playing alongside Dembele Sidiki, Ivorian master drummer and surely the grooviest of accompanists.
This concerto will have an American Premier with the Cape Cod Orchestra in January 2020 and later in the year at Nicolas Alstaidt's (Gidon Kremer's Festival) Lockenhaus Festival in Austria.