the World in Grahamstown

What an intense, inspiring and exhausting 10 days it was: to name it in full (deep breath): The Standard Bank National Jazz Festival, incorporating the National Youth Jazz Festival. I totally love the Arts Festival at Grahamstown - there are many fond and marvellous memories of each one I have attended (since the first with a Carpenters Show in 1995). With so much theatre, music, ballet, art, all swirling about in one place I am in absolute heaven. (Although whenever I go as part of the Jazz festival there is little time for me to take in all the plays I eagerly mark in my program... this year I saw only one. I am threatening to go next year purely as an audience member... which I haven't managed to do in all my years of festival-going!)

The jazz part of the Festival has grown into an incredible microcosm of International relations interwoven with a vibrant Youth Element. This year was no disappointment - some of the world's best and SA's finest met and made music together.
Musical highlights for me personally: Danilo Perez (Panama) with Hein Van De Geyn (Netherlands) Frode Nymo (Norway) and Kesivan Naidoo (SA) What spontaneous joy, what excitement and breath-catching glee!
Hein van de Geyn (love Hein) playing in duo with delightful singer Paulien Van Schaik, from Holland. Exquisite exquisite exquisite.
The Cape All Stars with the inimitable Robbie Jansen - how lucky I count myself to have caught that concert, 2 weeks before Robbie left this world.

And of course my own concerts. The other two members of my trio from Japan - the a.s.k trio - journeyed across oceans to play together in South Africa for the first time. Seigo Matsunaga (Japan) and Sebastiaan Kaptein (Netherlands, and now Japan) are my wonderful co-collaborators in this project, and I was eager to show them off to my friends, fans and colleagues here in SA. We did two concerts in Grahamstown, and two in Cape Town. And in between there was a whole lot of enthusiastic soccer-watching, some sight-seeing, a little beer-drinking-via-vuvuzela and even a bit of Game viewing at Addo Elephant Park (my thanks to the giraffe for their spectacular late entrance, timing was impeccable, what a finale!)
Our concerts went off really well ( it is always great to play to a capacity audience at the Nassau Centre in Cape Town - thanks to the endeavours of organiser, Cliff Wallis). It was truly gratifying, and humbling, to receive comments like "Your music is healing" and "Your trio is so organic." Although ideally we're all supposed to believe in what we do, disregarding the opinions of others, the truth of the matter is that comments like these help so much to confirm that something is working as it should...

The real highlight of the SBN Jazz festival at Grahamstown, for me, is being involved with the Youth Jazz festival. This year was no exception - hundreds of young, talented musicians from around the country descended upon the Halls and classrooms of the DSG School Campus, bringing with them their energy and enthusiasm, and interacting and teaching them is a true privilege.

This year's festival was alive with many wonderful international singers - how lucky were we to interact with such remarkable people. The singing students' swelled to number around 80, as we were joined by 20 young singers from Germany, who were visiting as part of the Young Voices Of Brandenburg, together with their director, Marc Secara (who is no slouch in the singing department himself). Workshops were often convened under the big tree near the fountain under the wintry sun, as our little room could barely hold the numbers. The workshops included exercises in free vocal expression conducted by French singer Lucia Recio, memory and warm-up games involving physical collages led by Marc, coaching sessions accompanied by a professional (and patient) rhythm section with German singer Natascha Roth and Paulien Van Schaik, and an inspirational talk from Sibongile Khumalo (the students are still in awe...) .

And a very proud teacher was I at this year's festival for numerous reasons (and number them, I shall):
1. 3 out of the four singing students to make it to the final selection of the National Youth Band were UCT students.
2. Sandile Gontsana, one of my post-graduate students was the person the panel selected.
3. Sandile was no less than cooking on his National Youth Band performance! He has not been dubbed the Scatman for nothing!
4. My newly established (6 months old) UCT Jazz Vocal Ensemble was selected as the best Ensemble at UCT, and were sponsored by the UCT College of Music to go to Grahamstown to perform.
5. They worked so very very hard, rehearsing every day for over a month. And it showed - their performance was spectacular! Watch out New York Voices...
6. My 2010 Festival Youth Choir sang so beautifully - not an easy task to master unfamiliar jazz vocal harmonies in just a few days. (The choir comprised only High School Students - I tell you South Africans have the gift of song in abundance)

The Vocal Celebration Concert on the last evening of the Youth Festival was a vibrant affair. So marvellous to witness the excitement of these young singers as they took the stage to swing their stuff. Various soloists, a duet from two talented High School singers, the UCT Ensemble, and we closed the evening with 3 songs from our Festival Youth Choir, who absolutely sang their hearts out. As Paulien said to me afterwards "You are so lucky to be part of this - the joy on their faces is so precious". Precious indeed.