This is what the Festival feels like, I told my uninitiated companion as we walked home late at night from one of the several performances in Grahamstown this week. And it was.
This is what the Festival feels like, I told my uninitiated companion as we walked home late at night from one of the several performances in Grahamstown this week. And it was.
The situational theatre piece Ukuphuthelwa at the Rhodes Theatre beginning its run on Thursday night started the mood, boosted by Vivaldi’s Gloria, sung by a 250-strong choir plus orchestra for the past two nights.
Put Festival CEO Tony Lankester on stage at Saturday night’s Alive! at the Monument variety concert – which he was, as MC – and you’d be forgiven for thinking it was time to dig out your winter woollies, start queueing at the box office and looking for late-night jazz.
The Amaphiko dance group could turn a boring political speech into a full-on party. But the MC-ing at Alive! at the Monument on Saturday night was neither boring nor political. Amaphiko punctuated the Rotary Club of Grahamstown Sunset’s annual variety showcase of local musical and dance talent with the kind of energy that could just about power a medium-sized town – an energy and conviction carried through by the 10 other acts on the programme too.
Opening the show with Thelonius Monk’s Blue Monk, the Gareth, Troy and Emmanuel jazz trio set the tone for a mellow, joyful night in a two-thirds full Monument Theatre. Their version of Dan Heymann’s iconic 80s anti-apartheid protest song Weeping was followed by a polished, professional Kingswood College Jazz band – hot off their tour to Zimbabwe – where they performed at the Harare International Festival of the Arts.
Last year The Footnotes – three women, a guitar and a flute – were interesting and different. This year they were also funky, funny and musically much tighter and more polished. They sang an original called Our Rotten Orange Tree (“a little existential song for you”), some Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin’s Gimme Whiskey.
Saxophonist Paul Richards had the challenging task of trying to get an audience hyped by a string of high-energy acts to tone down and tune in to an extraordinary display of musical control and technique in Pequena Czarda by Pedro Hurralde.
Another group that has matured musically is the Graeme College six-voice a capella act, G6 – also more coherent, with the occasional wobbles in intonation of their early days just about ironed out. Another, a four-voice a capella group from Rhodes called Fusion in Sound, singing originals, gave us a beautifully taut rendering of Do You Well
An Indian dance group led by Prarochna Rama and a four-piece band Nia enriched the show. The Victoria Girls’ High School choir, led by Sbu Mkhize, and the VG senior marimba band, raised the roof. But then they must be used to that by now.
A surprise package was PJ Olivier pupil Carla Nel, who sang Alannah Myles’s Black Velvet with a voice beyond her years and then, with fellow pupil Melissa van der Nest, the Chess duet, Know Him So Well.
Thank goodness Grahamstown didn’t guess how good the two-and-a-half hour show was going to be. If they had, we would never have got tickets without queueing for hours. It was money well spent – and not only because the proceeds go to Rotary’s community, health and education projects.
Unlike two days before, there wasn’t a power failure. Oh – and Tony… sorry we didn’t get all your jokes.
