“TREE OF LIFE”

Notes about the music

• The first piece, by local composer Grant McLachlan (who joined us on the Sunday evening), was a greeting to Mother Earth and also to each other, highlighting our musical (and ecological) interconnectedness, as independent voices parts eventually merged into a single triumphant chord. Molweni was written for the 2018 Eco-Logic Awards, a competition that identifies individuals, organisations and communities that contribute positively towards a sustainable world. We then travelled back 500 years to a gentle setting ofPsalm 42 (Sicut cervus) by the Italina Renaissance composer Palestrina: “As the deer longs for the flowing waters, so longs my soul for you.”
• The next three pieces were inspired by creatures that sing and fly. In the first piece, The Blue Bird, guests were invited to imagine a very still, serene lake (perhaps the Silvermine Dam) disturbed only by the flight of a blue bird catching – for a moment – its own reflection as it flies over the watery expanse. That was followed by a setting of a beautiful poem by Maya Angelou called Caged Bird, written by local jazz composer Nicky Schrire, which poignantly contrasts the freedom of a wild bird with the sad existence of a caged bird who “sings with a fearful trill, for things unknown but longed for still”. The final piece in the tryptich was a song from Finland called Butterfly that reflects on the fragility and transience of life and love.
• One of our sustainability goals as a choral ensemble is to champion the choral music of local composers, and in this concert we featured no fewer than four South African composers. The next two pieces, composed by Hans Huyssen (who is celebrating his 60th birthday this year, and who joined us on the Sunday afternoon), were settings of two Afrikaans poems by WEG Louw from a cycle Hans wrote for us called Weggewerp. (One of our singers, Dirk Binneman, powerfully recited the poems to emphasise the meaning of the texts.)
• Then we had The Seal Lullaby, a piece of music based on a story by Rudyard Kipling (who of course wrote The Jungle Book) and who was a frequent visitor to the Cape. We are all familiar with seals frolicking in our coastal waters, just metres from the Olympia Bakery! During the lockdown, we presented this piece as a virtual choir performance with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra – a world premiere – but in this performance we relished the piano accompaniment by Anthea van Wieringen.
• The music in this programme was grouped according to the four classical elements. Air was embodied by the flying songs, water was highlighted by the previous two pieces, and then we moved to fire for a very special piece by the Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds, as we looked heavenwards and considered the Stars…
• Following that, we savoured an instrumental interlude played by one of our singers, Fran Laenen – a mash-up of some of the songs we presented (see if you can guess which ones!).
• Finally, we performed two pieces to represent earth; first, Pula, Pula! by another local composer Franco Prinsloo, a prayer for cleansing rain to heal our land (metaphorically as well as physically) and, finally, Cloudburst – a beautiful setting of a poem by Mexican poet Octavio Paz, that also asks for rain to come and sustain “roots, trunks, branches…”
• Although we very seldom sing encores, we prepared something special for the audience as a cherry on top! Entitled Earth, it brought full-circle the programme that started with our greeting to Mother Earth. In Earth, the lyrics are written from the perspective of Mother Earth herself highlighting how we, as humans, are putting an immense burden on our planet. It was originally written and performed by Imogen Heap who, incidentally, sang this piece when she visited Cape Town in 2011.