"All who work/Thula Sizwe" - except from Credo by Bongani Ndodana-Breen. Performed by Cape Town Opera Chorus, Cape Town Philharmonic, Jonas Alber (conductor). Artscape Opera House, Cape Town, April 17, 2014.

Credo Cape Town Freedom day

All who work/Thula Sizwe (except from Credo) Bongani Ndodana-Breen

Mfundi Vundla presents: WINNIE, THE OPERA
Music by Bongani Ndodana-Breen, Libretto by Warren Wilensky & Mfundi Vundla. Directed by ShirleJo Finney, KZN Philharmonic conducted by Jonas Alber. Featuring Tsakane Maswanganyi as Winnie. State Theatre, Pretoria April 28 - May 6 www.winnietheopera.com 

Winnie The Opera, Radio Promo

"Spirit of Sharpeville" From the chamber monodrama "Threnody & Dances" by Bongani Ndodana-Breen (scored for: Sop,4 vc,perc) sung by Linda Bukhosini, 

Spirit Of Sharpeville frm "Threnody & Dances" by Bongani Ndodana-Breen

Mthi'mkhulu: Sons of the Great Tree (2001) is part of a larger cycle of African-inspired pieces for ensemble by South African composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen. 
www.ndodanabreen.com 



Mthi'mkhulu: Sons of the Great Tree

APOLOGIA AT UMZIMVUBU By Bongani Ndodana-Breen: This piece stems from the composer's fascination with certain aspects of Xhosa culture and the cultural landmarks that are part of everyday life in the heartland of the former Transkei, now the Eastern Cape in South Africa. Umzimvubu (literally “house of the hippopotamus”) is a river. The music is full of dance. It begins with an animated dance (Vivace. Metronome mark is dotted quarter note at 105). This section is inspired by recollections of various dances and how the Xhosa young people move to music. A transformation occurs with tempo and time signature change at letter D (Metronome mark: dotted half note now at 52). Here elderly Xhosa matrons appear. Their dance is less animated and inspired by the Xhosa dance umxhenstso.  (c) 2003 Bongani Ndodana-Breen www.ndodanabreen.com


Apologia at Umzimvubu

Hymn from the chamber opera "Umuntu: Threnody & Dances" by Bongani Ndodana-Breen
www.ndodanabreen.com

Hymn (Threnody)

Excerpt from the chamber music cycle "Rituals For Forgotten Faces" - This is movement 4b for string quartet composed in 1999.

Ndodana-Breen Music 

Rituals For Forgotten Faces No. 4b (string quartet)

Finale of "Credo" - an oratorio based on South Africa's Freedom Charter. Sibongile Khumalo (alto), Monica Voysey (mezzo sop), Otto Maidi (bass)Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra conductor Jonas Alber. Music by Bongani Ndodana-Breen with libretto by Brent Meersman. Commissioned by UNISA 2012.

"Credo" Finale: "We Stand Together, South Africans!"

Hintsa's Dances for ensemble  by Bongani Ndodana-Breen

HIntsa's Dances

Untitled - 02-16-06

Hintsa's Dances

Interlude for solo cello from the chamber opera, "Threnody & Dances" by Bongani Ndodana-Breen

Threnody interlude for solo cello

South African National Youth Orchestra, Bernhard Gueller conductor. Commissioned by SAMRO for the South African National Youth Orchestra in 2000.

The genesis of "African Kaddish" was a radio report the composer heard on NPR in Chicago about a preventabile calamity, the mother-to-child transmission of HIV in South Africa at the height of the AIDS crisis in that country.  This tragedy affecting many innocents led the composer to recall the Kaddish, a Jewish prayer traditionally recited in memory of the dead although it makes no mention of death. It is a doxology praising the Creator ending with an invocation for "abundant peace"  and life. The government of South Africa at that time was resistant to making generic antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) freely available despite global pharmaceutical companies not being opposed to such an intervention. Fortunately, ARVs are now available for free at all public hospitals.

Ndodana-Breen 1

African Kaddish

Piano quintet (2 violins, viola, cello and piano). Third movement. 
Performers: Frank Stadler (violin 1), Hrachya Avadesyan (violin 2), Tobias Breider (viola), Michael Peternek (cello), Pieter Grobler (piano). 2012 Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival, Endler Hall. 
Programme Note
Safika: Three Tales on African Migration
By Bongani Ndodana-Breen

Migration and translocation have always been key themes in the historical narrative of the Black experience in South Africa.   These three pieces are personal responses/reflections to the various journeys that affected and shaped many of our people.  It can be argued that to some extent, we continue to live with the sociopolitical consequences of this history of migration. 

The shifting and uprooting took three basic forms. The journey from the village to be cheap labour in the grueling mines of Johannesburg, tearing families apart as men could not bring their families to live with them in all-male hostels. The journey of dispossession, forced removal and displacement of urban Black families bundled up by the authorities to some reservation or “homeland” they had no connection to. Finally, the journeys of political dissenters into exile over the border in Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia and beyond.  

The unifying factor in all those who were touched by these journeys is memory. Remembering the lives left behind, the people, the songs, the dances, the connection to the land. Time might wear away the detail and new experiences splinter entire memories to fragments but nothing is completely erased.  A certain driving rhythm, a flash of timbre, a fragment of melody, a cadence, a turn of musical phrase, even a few dance steps. These stay within as faint echoes, repeated sequences sometimes layered over each other, stuttering, staggering or sometimes as clear lyrical songs and dances, vibrant as the day first experienced. “Safika” means we arrived in Xhosa and in the context of these pieces, is an allegorical terminus of these journeys where reflection, affirmation and restoration begins.

Safika 3rd Movement

MIniatures On Motherhood (Movs I & III) for String quartet and Soprano. Music by Bongani Ndodana-Breen.

MIniatures On Motherhood (Movs I & III)

But There Went Up A Mist... (Organ) by Bongani Ndodana-Breen

But There Went Up a Mist (Bongani Ndodana-Breen)

Bongani Ndodana-Breen has written a wide range of music encompassing symphonic work and opera. According to The New York Times his “delicately made music - airy, spacious, terribly complex but never convoluted - has a lot to teach the Western wizards of metric modulation and layered rhythms about grace and balance.”  He has received commissions from Wigmore Hall, Vancouver Recital Society, Madam Walker Theatre, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Luminato Festival, UNISA and Haydn Festival. He is the composer of Winnie, The Opera based on the life of Winnie Mandela and the oratorio Credo based on South Africa’s historic Freedom Charter. He was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1998 and was one of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans of 2011.  More info www.ndodanabreen.com

Ndodanabreen

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