MOYA TROMBONE QUARTET FOR FOM

Four gifted trombonists show there is no end to musical ingenuity and enterprise in Friends of Music concert. (Review by Michael Green)

The trombone is nothing if not assertive, as anybody who has heard it in action in an orchestra will confirm. It is the brassiest of brass instruments and the last thing I would associate with chamber music, but in this concert four gifted trombonists showed that there is really no end to musical ingenuity and enterprise.

The players are from South Africa (Ross Butcher and Anthony Boorer, who comes from England but is now the principal trombone in the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra) and France (Christophe Legrand and Maxime Chevrot). They call themselves the Moya Trombone Quartet and they presented a programme ranging from Verdi and Gershwin to, wait for it, Debussy, with a lavish helping of modern music and jazz. All of which was much to the taste of the Friends of Music audience at the Durban Jewish Centre.

The Moya Quartet was established four years ago and is based at Geneva in Switzerland. The name Moya comes from the Zulu word for the wind and spirit, highly appropriate for this group (some of you may remember a beautiful lady named Moya, and the name was appropriate for her, too).

For this concert both the composition of the quartet and their programme were changed considerably from the advertised details. An Italian and a French member of the usual quartet were not present, and their places were taken (very effectively) by Anthony Boorer and Maxime Chevrot. Perhaps this was why the programme was altered. Anthony Boorer stood in at two days’ notice and played with distinction.

The evening had an informal atmosphere. The players were dressed casually, and breezy announcements were made from the stage.

The trombone is not a very nimble or soulful instrument, and, in spite of skilful performance, I did not think it was well suited to arrangements of Verdi’s La forza del destina overture, Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana intermezzo or songs by Debussy. But the players seem to come into their own in an interesting, three-movement suite called Wars by the American composer Joey Sellers and in popular pieces by Gershwin, Thelonious Monk, Christian Lindberg and Queen (the British rock band).

I would guess that about 60 members of the audience of about 80 had seldom before attended a Friends of Music concert, and they obviously enjoyed themselves. Different strokes for different folks, as the rather peculiar saying goes. This concert was a success. Would this audience return for an evening of Bach or Mozart? I wonder.

The evening’s prelude performer, funded by the National Lottery, was the 15-year-old violinist Yea Kyung Kim, a pupil at Durban Girls’ College. She is taught music by Isaac Melamed. Accompanied by David Smith, she played the chaconne attributed to the Italian composer Vitali (1663-1745), and she played it with confidence and competence. - Michael Green