Through a different lens:

Abstract

ABSTRACT Bongani Ndodana-Breen, born in Queenstown in the Eastern Cape in 1975, was educated at St Andrew's College in Grahamstown, Rhodes University (where he studied Music as an undergraduate), and the University of Stellenbosch (where he studied composition). He started composing in his late teens, and by 1998, aged only twenty-one, had won a Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year Award for Music. Acclaimed early work included the chamber opera Themba and Seliba (libretto by Gwyneth Lloyd; premiered in 1996), Uhambo – the pilgrimage, an opera-oratorio based on South African poet Guy Butler's long poem, Pilgrimage to Dias Cross, performed at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 1998 (Ndodana-Breen was Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year in the same year), and several orchestral and chamber works. He migrated to North America in 1997, and is currently Artistic Director of the Toronto-based contemporary music ensemble, MusicaNoir, which he co-founded in 2000, and which has developed a reputation for multimedia projects engaging with issues of cultural diversity and identity, with an emphasis on exploring cultural expressions of the African diaspora. For a comparatively young composer – thirty-two at the time of this interview – Ndodana-Breen has produced a large body of richly suggestive work, and worked with or had his work performed by an impressive selection of leading orchestras and ensembles – including the Belgian National Orchestra, Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, Natal Philharmonic, New York City's Vox Vocal Ensemble, Cape Town City Ballet, and Chicago's Cube Ensemble.