“IT’S HELL TO try and get a concert ready in such a short period of time, but it’s important that we are a part of the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival,” says Rosemary Nalden, the founder and conductor of Buskaid Soweto String Ensemble, arguably South Africa’s most important musical […]
AS SOON AS most gallery visitors and those who boast an interest in the creative industries announce that there’s a William Kentridge exhibition in town, a sense of respectful silence embraces the conversation. It’s like a declaration that God has landed in Johannesburg and may be seen on Tuesdays […]
Having seen the play again last night, I stand by my critical opinion, but had something more to say about the rest of the cast.
He laughs at the idea of being the “darling” of the Johannesburg International Mozart Festival, the eighth edition of which started last Saturday, but classical guitarist James Grace has been an important festival drawcard, performing during the last three years of the festival to capacity-packed venues. This year […]
How do you blend jazz – an abstract but very specific musical genre – with visual art? On one level, it seems natural – the idea of some cool riff being translated into a glorious autographic line – but when you think of an art audience, will this […]
Jewish identity is one of those things so thick with potholes and heavy humourless traps that you know you will be standing on toes, whatever you say. From Israeli politics to Holocaust history, levels of ritual observance to over protective mothers, it’s also a modern day culture totally […]
Quite often, in the arts, you find yourself experiencing something that trails a long history of film and stage musicals, of iconic dance moves and schmaltzy narrative that has irrevocably slipped into cliché. Mostly, this kind of candy floss cuteness that is passed down from generation to generation […]
It’s odd how the conjured image of a fruit can be such a potent conveyor of horror and sadness. Think of Mark Behr’s The Smell of Apples (1993) or Renos Spanoudes’s The Apple Tree (2002). Jan Groenewald’s Die Pruimboom (the plum tree), an Afrikaans play, fits in […]
What is it that makes a theatre director muddy his own clarity of thought and compromise something utterly wise and moving, with quick and nasty literal gimmicks? Matsemela Manaka’s Egoli, first published in 1980, is a powerful paean to manhood and the collective challenges it faces, but this […]
As you walk into the majestic space of the Edwin Lutyens-wing of the Johannesburg Art Gallery – through the entrance that faces the railway lines – you are confronted with two utterly superb Dumile Feni drawings. They tower over you as they reach, in their characteristic brutal charcoal […]
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