Audio Foundation is pleased to announce a one-off show in Auckland by South African multi-instrumentalist, instrument-maker and visual artist Garth Erasmus.
Garth Erasmus' career has spanned decades of music-making and activism; as an anti-Apartheid activist in the 1980s he was a co-founder of two important Cape Town-based community arts organisations, Vakalisa Artists and Community Reflections.
His musical career started in the mid-1980s when he began to research his Khoisan (South Africa`s First Nation People) ancestry and bringing these influences into his work.
This culminated in the formation of artist activist group Khoi Khonnexion in 1999 that performed in the ritual-ceremonial return of the remains of Sara Baartman in 2002. He creates self-designed musical instruments and sound-objects based on indigenous knowledge systems and experiments with the combination of ancient sounds and contemporary technology in art and theatre performances.
Alongside his art practice, collaboration across genres and disciplines has been vital to Eramus' long-standing career, including with 48Nord, Mongolian vocalist Sainkho Namtchylak, Japanese Taiko master Shuichi Hidano and dancer Jacki Job, Greek double-bassist and ECM recording artist Kostas Theodorou.
He is the co-founder of the Greatmore Street Artists’ Studios in Cape Town (1996). The Smithsonian Museum of African Art (Washington, DC) has more of his work in their collection than any other continental African artist.
For this special show, Eramus will be featured on soprano saxophone and joined by local jazz and experimental heavyweights Phil Dadson (invented instruments - From Scratch), John Bell (vibraphone), Crystal Choi (piano), Isaac Smith (double bass) and Steve Cournane (drums).
Listen:
Garth Erasmus soundtrack to documentary ‘The Khoekhoe Saga’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7oX-BBtwN8
Tickets available at www.undertheradar.co.nz/ticket
More info available at www.audiofoundation.org.nz
