William Kentridge (Video)

William Kentridge is one of South Africa’s pre-eminent artists, internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre and opera productions.

Born in Johannesburg, the son of two anti-apartheid lawyers, he studied Politics and African Studies at the University of Witwatersrand in the 1970s, and later co-founded the Junction Avenue Theatre Company. He went on to study Mime and Theatre at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Back in Johannesburg he worked in various areas of television, film and theatre and collaborated on projects with the Handspring Puppet Company.

Kentridge’s work draws on varied sources, including philosophy, literature, early cinema, theatre and opera to create a complex universe where good and evil are complementary and inseparable forces. Although he moves back and forth between media, his primary activity remains drawing and he sometimes conceives of his films, theatre and opera productions as an expanded form of drawing.

The artist has spent much of his career intensively exploring themes that resonate with his own life experience as well as with the political issues that most concern him. ‘I am interested in a political art,’ he has stated, ‘that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures and uncertain endings.’ His work transforms sobering political events into powerful poetic allegories and it has continually evolved as his subject matter has departed from a specifically South African context to confront more general concerns of social injustice, revolutionary politics and the power of creative expression.

In 2010 Kentridge received the Kyoto Prize in recognition of his contributions in the field of arts and philosophy. In 2011 he was elected a Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature honoris causa by the University of London. In 2012 he delivered the prestigious Norton Lectures at Harvard University.

Recently his work has been seen at Tate Modern in London, Jeu de Paume and Louvre in Paris, La Scala in Milan, Albertina in Vienna, Metropolitan Opera and Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo.

www.mariangoodman.com/artists/william-kentridge/

Philip Miller (Music)

Philip Miller is a composer and sound artist from South Africa who works in many different media from live performance to film, video and sound installations.

After making a leap from a career in law into the world of music, he studied in the UK with the composer Joseph Horowitz, and completed a postgraduate degree in electro-acoustic music composition. He returned to South Africa to begin working full time in music.

His long time collaboration with the artist, William Kentridge composing music for many of his films and installations, has gained him international recognition, especially for recent projects including Five Themes at the Tate Modern, London, the lecture-opera production: Refuse the Hour, which is currently on tour in theatres across Europe as well as the multimedia installation Refusal of Time at Dokumenta 13, Kassel, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and currently at the Whitechapel Gallery, London.

His own sound works have been exhibited at The Venice Biennale (2013) Spier Contemporary (2011) (South Africa) and The Kaunas Biennial (2009) (Lithuania). His live performance of the award- winning, choral composition, Rewind, a cantata for voice, tape and testimony has been performed in London, at the Royal Festival Hall, Celebrate Brooklyn, New York, The 62 Centre Williams College, Massachusetts, as well as The Baxter and Market theatres in South Africa. He has scored numerous soundtracks to film and television programs including more recently his Emmy-nominated soundtrack to HBO’s The Girl. More recent scores include: The Emmy-award winner, Miner’s Shot Down, The Bang Bang Club, and Roots, the TV series, directed by Philip Noyce.

Miller’s new video and sound installation, Bikohausen, was premiered in Germany’s Darmstadt Summer Music Festival in August 2016. In September, he presented another new sound installation, The African Choir of 1891 Re-imagined, together with his collaborator, Thuthuka Sibisi at the Autograph Gallery in London. They will develop this into a live production in 2017.

http://www.philipmiller.info/

Ann Masina (Voice)

Ann Masina was born in the late 70’s in Witbank, Mpumalanga and started singing in Africa Sings Choral Society in 1994 as a Soloist. She participated in numerous choir competitions such as the Old Mutual/ Telkom Competition and the Ikwekwezi Choral Competition.

In 1999, she joined the Nico Malan Opera House, which is known as Cape Town Opera House presently under Professor Angelo Gobbato. She performed operas such as Carmen and Aida with great acclaim. Masina did her vocal training under the tutelage of Pierre du Toit from the Pretoria Technikon OperaSchool. She is a co-founder of JOAT Opera Group, a self-supporting Company performing extracts from different operas and musical at various social and official evens. In 2002 she perfomed in a musical called Sauer Street at the Wits Theatre. Performing with the likes of the late Lindelani Buthelezi and the late Ramolao Makhene with the JMI Ochestra.

In 2003 she performed with the Black tie Ensemble. In 2004 she was a Soloist at the Sowetan Nation Building Mass Choir Festival. In 2008 she did a Europen Tour with the 2 Grammy Award Winners Soweto Gospel Choir (SGC). She did the 46664 Concert at Hyde Park in London with the Ambassadors (SGC) for the late former South African President Nelson Mandela. In 2008 and 2009, she did the Robyn Orlin procutions called “Dressed to kill, killed to dress” and “Walking next to our shoes” with an extensive France Tour.

In 2009 she performed with the Bala Brothers at Gold Reef City, did the Tokyo/ Japan/Singapore Tour with the Soweto Gospel Choir (SGC) and performed at the FIFA FINAL DRAW in Cape Town. In 2011 she renews her collaboration with Robyn Orlin in the production Venus/ have u hugged, kissed and respected your brown venus today. Since 2012, she was part of the William Kentridge Refusal of Time workshop and Refuse The Hour performance as singer which toured Europe (Festival Avignon, RomaEuropa, Holland Festival…).

Masina is a versatile, talented and formidably large woman with an even bigger voice who handles opera, classical, gospel, jazz and pop with great aplomb.

Joanna Dudley (Voice)

Joanna Dudley works internationally as a director, performer and singer creating music theatre, choreography and installation.

Joanna studied early and contemporary music at the Adelaide Conservatorium, Australia and the Sweelinck Conservatorium, The Netherlands. On scholarships she has also studied traditional Japanese music in Tokyo and traditional dance and music in Java.

In Berlin, Joanna worked as a guest director and performer at the Schaubuehne. Works created there include My Dearest, My Fairest with Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola and colours may fade with Esnaola and Rufus Didwiszus. Other works in collaboration with Didwiszus include the solo music theatre piece, The Scorpionfish, Who Killed Cock Robin? with the Flemish vocal ensemble Capilla Flamenca and most recently LOUIS & BEBE with the electronic noise musician Schneider^TM. Her work has toured extensively throughout the world.

In collaboration with William Kentridge and Philip Miller, Joanna features as a singer and performer in Refuse the Hour and Paper Music. William Kentridge invited Joanna to create a solo role for his production of Lulu for the Metropolitan Opera New York. Together they co-created and Joanna performed The Guided Tour of the Exhibition: for Soprano and Handbag for the Foreign Affairs Festival in Berlin and the museum of the Martin Gropius Bau.

Other collaborators include Seiji Ozawa, Les Ballets C de la B, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Sasha Waltz, Heiner Goebbels, Thomas Ostermeier and Falk Richter.

Joanna’s sound installation Tom’s Song for 32 music boxes and 16 LP players has given regular appearances at major international art festivals.

She has lectured in performance at the ECAV Academy for Arts Sierre and the F+F School for Art and Media Design Zurich Switzerland, the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore, Adelaide University, Australia and the Academy for Arts in Berlin.

http://www.joannadudley.com/

Vincenzo Pasquariello (Piano)

Born in Milan, Vincenzo began his musical studies at an early age under the guidance of his father, then at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan, where he graduated with M° Bruno Canino, and recently attended the Master’s degree with Mo Mario Borciani.

He played in Italy and abroad both as a soloist and in various chamber music ensembles in major theatres and museums, performing his own compositions, among other things. Vincenzo is a long-time member of the theatre company Moni Ovadia where he has participated as a musician, a composer, and an actor.