Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winners all fired up for the National Arts Festival.Grahamstown is now abuzz with the opening of this year’s National Arts Festival and a promised spectacular 15 days of Amaz!ng from June 20 to July 4.
Samson Diamond, the 2010 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 also 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 bring to the Festival, 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,” says Diamond.
Melanie Scholtz, 2010 SBYAA Jazz winner, is recently returned from being 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. “I am 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,” she adds “... so very exciting, lots of development from day to day and shifting around and rethinking some musical combinations of colour, timbre and texture.”
Mlu Zondi, 2010 SBYAA winner for Dance, has been in Cape Town working on a new work called Inferno which was exhibited at the Cape Town City Hall as part of the Spier Contemporary Awards Exhibition. In March, his video installation Despotica was screened in Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of ScreenMoves, DanseHallerne. His new production, Cinema will première at the National Arts Festival.
Michael MacGarry, 2010 SBYAA winner for Visual Art, has also been busy in the run-up to the Festival, and was 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 was seen at Brodie/Stevenson, Johannesburg as well as at the Brodie/Stevenson's booth at the Joburg Art Fair in the Sandton Convention Centre and at VOLTA6 in Basel, Switzerland earlier this month. One of his films, LHR-JHB, was screened in Cape Town as part of the Spier Contemporary Awards 2010. A selection of his photographic works were 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 was 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 which will be screened alongside her retrospective at the National Arts Festival. She also 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. 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, will present her puppet theatre production, Ouroboros at the National Arts Festival. “The piece moves through time and space,” she explains, “weaving together the lives of its two main characters as they meet themselves and encounter each other.” Younge also directed Out The Box in March at the Baxter Theatre and The Little Theatre Complex in Cape Town which she described as “…the largest and most exciting puppetry and visual performance festival in Africa” and featured, amongst others, Handspring puppet co. and eight international productions.
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.
“This year’s six Standard Bank Young Artists are exceptionally talented individuals whose work intersects across various genres,” says National Arts Festival Director Ismail Mahomed. “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.”
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