Sesotho comes to Southbank

 On 12 April we booked in to the Melbourne Recital Centre for a concert by Abel Selaocoe, a cellist, singer and all-round performer who was raised in Sotho country in South Africa (but made a comment suggesting affinity with Lesotho.  Much of his performance involved the Sesotho language including occasional clicks. 

We took the tram to Grant Street and walked down Southbank Boulevard ... 

... to the Melbourne Recital Centre where the performance was to take place in the Elizabeth Murdoch Hall.  It really is a great space.  We were well up the back (having cheap tickets) but had excellent views and sounds.  Compared to Carnegie Hall (or the G) it wasn't close to nosebleed territory!

Before the event commenced we went to a talk by Kym Dillon, who explained a great deal about the performance to come, illustrating her points with sound clips.  A great help!  When she commented that due to timing issues the programmed Stravinsky work had been dropped I was reminded of the start of the performance by Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo which we saw in New York and began with a long list of the performers who had dropped out.  She did comment that audience participation may be encouraged at some points.  The only thing she didn't mention was the addition of a kora solo to a work by Sollima.

Here is the ACO contingent: Selaocoe was not on stage at that point and I didn't feel I could take another photo as things kicked off.  His Malian griot percussionist (and kora player) Sidiki Dembele is on the far right in purple.

Here is a bit of an idea of Selaocoe at work.  The concert was marvelous with him having a very good singing voice producing an astonishing variety of sounds and a wide octave range.  In some of the works the ACO players sang rather than played (and did a good job thereof).  Dembele did an amazing job on a wide range of drums and other percussive implements.

It was not hard to see why the Stravinsky word had to be dropped.  The programme suggested 5 minutes for each of Selaocoe's works and I'd guess that each went for 10 minutes.  The new work by Nigel Westlake (ACO only) went on time and was unexciting.

It was a tribute to the ACO's professionalism that they went along with all this flexibility: welcome to a performance African style.  I think the audience did a little handclapping in one work in the first half.  In the first work in the second half there was more clapping and then he got the audience chanting which was very good.  

That was followed by a modern Chamber work by Giovanni Sollima, where Dembele vanished and the lead ACO cellist came to the front and almost did a duelling banjos number.  I had noted in an early piece that the audience clapped at the end of a movement, a but naughty in a classical concert.  In this work they clapped at the end of every bit of fancy playing: I realised they were reacting like an audience at a jazz concert.

Leading in to the final work Selaocoe described it using a long sentence in Sesotho and invited the audience to repeat it, which raised a laugh.  He commented that in one of his Sydney concerts someone did repeat back to him!   This work was astonishing with much clapping and chanting by the audience.  The general vibe - and noise level - reminded me of Cab Calloway doing Minnie the Moocher at the end of The Blues Brothers.

We thought he had structured the concert so that he wouldn't do an encore and got in front of the rush by leaving during the standing ovation offered by the audience.  When we got to ground level it turned out he did do an encore which we watched on monitors: a very different feel to being in the room and justified being there. 

I think this, on the ABC listen app. is a recording of his Sydney concert.

The spire at the Arts Precinct lit our way back to the tram.