The upcoming Co/Missions concert will express Radiohead’s music in a new form,– through real strings. Together with a fresh composer and the team at Biblioteek Productions, the show promises something unusual and stirring. MARIE-CLAIRE DE VILLIERS talks to Louisa Theart (producer) and Matthijs van Dijk (composer and arranger) to find out more.
What is Biblioteek Productions?
Biblioteek is a production company that focuses mainly on producing classical music and opera.
Magdalane Minnaar started the company about five years ago and her vision is to reinvent genres and to be as adventurous as possible with our productions. She is known in the industry as a “go-getter” and makes unbelievable things happen on stage thanks to her extraordinary imagination. This is definitely what attracted me to Biblioteek and I joined about a year ago after a meeting with her at Youngblood.
I wanted to start a series where we play contemporary South African Art Music in a space outside of the traditional concert hall.
Marie Voigts from Youngblood recognised that Magdalene and I have similar ideas for new music and organised for us to meet.
We worked at launching Co/Mission at the beginning of this year, an endeavour that initially failed miserably.
We realised that contemporary music is so divided by genre that it is near impossible to convince music lovers to come to a concert if they are not familiar with the genre. This division is somewhat artificial and deeply entrenched as I am of the view that many young people of my age who enjoy sophisticated rock or electronic music would naturally enjoy contemporary art music – it’s just music after all! So we realised we need to bridge the two worlds and that’s when we had a meeting with several composers and people in the industry.
Matthijs van Dijk had compelling ideas about taking art music out of the unfortunately stuffy concert hall and bringing it to audiences. He had been working for years on arranging excellent popular music for classically trained musicians.
It was really a great moment because we realised that we had exactly the right people in the room at the right time.
We decided to start a series where we play both arrangements of the best bands from the 1980s and 1990s, and then also showcase the original music of the composers who do the arranging. In this way we give our audiences something they know they love as well as something novel that they can explore in the future. We chose Radiohead because it is a band we all love for their excellent music and we knew it would appeal to a very large audience. Matthijs had also already done quite a lot of work with their music, so it was a natural starting point.
Tell us about the musicians involved in the project.
Minnaar is one of South Africa’s most versatile opera singers. She regularly appears in major productions while also being one half of the electronic music act ‘Minnaar’. She heads up Biblioteek productions which has produced ground breaking works at local arts festivals and has won several awards.
Co-producer Theart is a classically trained flautist with a special interest in contemporary music. She plays regularly as an ad hoc musician in the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra and also produces concerts and operas with Biblioteek Music Productions.
Van Dijk is an established young composer in South Africa who has had his work performed in diverse settings both here and abroad. His music is regularly performed in concert halls and he also writes for film, silent film and is a violinist in the Shh... Art! Ensemble
Timon Wapenaar is a South African composer who lives in Spain. He is regularly commissioned to write for theatre productions in the UK, He has also worked with Die Antwoord for a performance of theirs with the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra.
Galina Juritz is a versatile performer who has regularly appeared as a classical, pop and rock musician. She is also the lead violinist in the Shh... Art! Ensemble. As composer her work was recently performed during this year’s Infecting the City festival.
The Shh... Art! Ensemble are a dynamic group of players who revel in performing great music in uncoventional spaces. Juritz is on first violin, Van Dijk on second violin, Sarah Evens on Viola and Nicola du Toit is on Cello.
Do a lot of people cry when they watch concerts at the Youngblood? Why do you think it is that classical music provides such an extraordinary space to tap into the non-physical or “other”?
I wouldn’t say that people necessarily cry a lot, although I have seen that happen. I agree with Van Dijk that any music can be equally touching, but perhaps our audiences at Youngblood, because they aren’t necessarily regular classical listeners, aren’t expecting the music to be so rich and meaningful. They might be curious, but still have some preconceived notions about the genre that are really outdated.
Many people assume classical music is boring without really having the foggiest idea about the depth of the genre. I also think that the fact that our generation has grown up with recorded music affects the way we perceive live music.
Recorded music is really very sterile and edited, when we hear raw live performance with a performer who is taking risks and making themselves vulnerable to the audience, it is truly a touching experience.
What would you like to achieve with the new series?
With Co/Mission we would like to establish a great new musical experience for audiences in Cape Town.
We want to create a platform for our young composers to showcase their work and at the same time create a space for audiences to explore genres and enjoy some of the best music of the last 30 odd years in a completely different way. It is also a creative outlet for us as musicians who want to explore other ways of making music.
Our next concert on October 28 will feature the music of Nirvana as well as original compositions by the composers involved. How awesome to be able to play such incredible music!
l Co/Mission: Radiohead Reworked is on August 12 at 7.30pm at the Youngblood Gallery, [email protected]