YOUNG ARTISTS PREPARE FOR NAF

YOUNG ARTISTS PREPARE FOR NAF

Grahamstown on track to host World Cup spectators and festival audiences.

Grahamstown is preparing to host World Cup spectators and loyal festival audiences at the National Arts Festival for a spectacular 15 days of Amaz!ng. With less than 100 days to kick-off, the 2010 Standard Bank Young Artists Award (SBYAA) winners are keeping in creative shape to be on top of their art-game at South Africa’s biggest arts celebration, from June 20 to July 4.

Samson Diamond, the 2010 Standard Bank Young Artist Award (SBYAA) Music winner started his year with a tour of Germany, Austria and Turkey, with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner. “I also went to Manchester to play for the Halle orchestra working on monumental repertory such as Mahler's Resurrection symphony,” he said. Diamond was invited by the Wits University School of Arts to join their faculty as a sessional violin tutor in February. He currently freelances with his newly-formed string trio, and has been invited to perform in Nigeria in April with American violinist Tai Murray and the British Freedom 200 Orchestra, of which he is a founding member.

The newly formed Diamond Quartet will be appearing at the Holy Trinity Church in Braamfontein on March 26 with a performance of Haydn’s Seven Last Words prior to their Grahamstown premiere of an exciting new work. Diamond described Seven Last Words as “immensely spiritual. “For the Festival,” he adds, “we are bringing a hugely ambitious unconventional score of American composer George Crumb’s Black Angels. It will include four amplified string players, 2 tam-tams, 18 crystal glasses, double bass bows, glass rods, thimbles, maracas and shouting numbers in Russian, Japanese and German”.

Melanie Scholtz, 2010 SBYAA Jazz winner, is currently on tour in Russia and Norway. Her focus over the past few months has been on the launch of her latest album Connected, with her band Melanie Scholtz and the Love Apples. She said that a lot of hard work has been invested to translate the CD recording into a live performance. They will be performing at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, as well as at the National Arts Festival and Joy of Jazz in Johannesburg. She indicated that she is currently learning new repertoire and developing new concepts for the National Arts Festival “...as we have more than one programme to showcase”. She has also been collaborating with other current and previous Young Artist winners. “I feel like a painter preparing an exhibition that has to be unveiled... so very exciting, lots of development from day to day and shifting around and rethinking some musical combinations of colour, timbre and texture,” she added.

Mlu Zondi, 2010 SBYAA winner for Dance, is currently in Cape Town working on a new work called Inferno. The work will be exhibited at the Cape Town City Hall as part of the Spier Contemporary Awards Exhibition, for which he is a finalist. The exhibition opens on March 13, to run until mid May, after which it moves to Johannesburg. “I will be performing live most weekends during the run of the exhibition, both in Cape Town and Johannesburg,” said Zondi. On March 18 Zondi’s video installation Despotica will be screened in Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of ScreenMoves, DanseHallerne. He will start rehearsals in April for Cinema, the new production that will première at the National Arts Festival.

Michael MacGarry, 2010 SBYAA winner for Visual Art, is also busy in the run-up to the Festival, and is part of various national and international exhibitions. His solo exhibition, This is your world in which we grow, and we will grow to hate you, is at Brodie/Stevenson, until March 19. One of his films, LHR-JHB, will be screened in Cape Town as part of the Spier Contemporary Awards 2010, for which he is also a finalist. Over the weekend of March 26, a selection of his works will be displayed at the Brodie/Stevenson's booth at the Joburg Art Fair in the Sandton Convention Centre. More works will also be on display at Brodie/Stevenson's booth at VOLTA6 in Basel, Switzerland in June. From April to June, a selection of his photographic works will be included in A Life Less Ordinary, a touring group exhibition curated by Anna Douglas at ffotogallery in Cardiff, U.K. His exhibition for the National Arts Festival is titled End Game. He is also in the process of producing a new 15 minute film titled Will to Power, specifically for the Festival. The cast of three will be filmed on location in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Messina, and Zimbabwe with a Steadicam operator.

Claire Angelique, 2010 SBYAA winner for Film, has a new feature film Palace of Bone that goes into production end of March. It will be screened alongside her retrospective at the National Arts Festival. She has also recently signed her first book deal for The Last Initiation. Angelique reveals herself and her journey over the past few years in the form of a collection of personal journals produced over the past few years. Limited editions will include a multi media DVD featuring some of her music videos, short films and web-links. The journal will be reproduced as authentically as possible, mostly in her own handwriting. The content includes her poems, movie ideas, collages, song lyrics, sketches, photos and engrossing daily insights and musings. “We are looking to launch this at the Festival and I am also prepping my art exhibition of stills,” said Angelique.

Janni Younge, 2010 SBYAA winner for Drama, is currently working on her puppet theatre production, Ouroboros. “The piece moves through time and space, weaving together the lives of its two main characters as they meet themselves and encounter each other,” said Younge who is also director of Out The Box, taking place from March 20 to 28 at the Baxter Theatre and The Little Theatre Complex in Cape Town. “It’s the largest and most exciting puppetry and visual performance festival in Africa,” she said. The festival will feature, amongst others, Handspring Puppet Co. and eight international productions, with a full line-up for adults as well as shows and events for children, a film festival of stop-motion and puppetry films. “It is a massive creative event,” she added.

“Over the years, the Standard Bank Young Artists have firmly established a strong reputation for creating work that vibrantly pushes the boundaries of innovation and creativity,” said National Arts Festival Director Ismail Mahomed. “This year’s six Standard Bank Young Artists are exceptionally talented individuals whose work intersects across various genres. It is guaranteed to inspire, challenge, provoke and entertain our audiences; and thereby reinforce the tradition that making a date to attend a Standard Bank Young Artist production or exhibition is a must for any arts enthusiast,” he added.