Bongani ndodana-breen biography channel

BONGANI NDODANA-BREEN

Composer Bongani Ndodana-Breen has written a wide range of music encompassing symphonic work, opera, chamber music and vocal music. 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.”

Performers around the world have performed his music including the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, Vancouver Opera Orchestra, Symphony Nova Scotia, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, Belgian National Orchestra, Kwa Zulu-Natal Philharmonic, Johannesburg Festival Orchestra, , Johannesburg Philharmonic,  Cape Town Philharmonic, New York City’s Vox Vocal Ensemble, Ensemble Noir, Chicago’s Cube Ensemble, Avalon String Quartet of Chicago and Ossia.

Dr. Ndodana-Breen has received commissions from Wigmore Hall, Vancouver Recital Society, Madam Walker Theatre Indianapolis, SAMRO, University of South Africa, Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival, Cape Town Opera, the Emancipation Festival of Trinidad & Tobago, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Luminato Festival  Toronto, Haydn Festspiele Eisenstadt (Haydn 200th anniversary) and the 2013 Johannesburg International Mozart Festival.

He is the composer of Winnie, The Opera based on the life of Mrs Winnie Mandela, which premiered in 2011 to great acclaim at the State Theatre in Pretoria. On this opera Die Beeld wrote: “Ndodana-Breen is a composer of stature. This is confirmed by the outstanding portraiture of Winnie.” Other operas include the children’s chamber opera Themba & Seliba, the chamber monodrama Umuntu –Threnody  (commissioned by the National Arts Council) and the short opera Hani (commissioned by UCT & Cape Town Opera) premiered at the Baxter Theatre, Cape Town in 2010.

In 2012 he was commissioned to write Mzilikazi: Emhlabeni (a sinfonia concertante for piano and or

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Bongani Ndodana-Breen’s research and creative output as a composer engages with diversity and inclusion in classical music. His compositions draw heavily from African music techniques and aesthetics in a quest to broaden cultural dialogue in classical music beyond its historic Eurocentricity.

At Radcliffe, Ndodana-Breen is completing a book that challenges entrenched notions on the value of indigenous African culture in the discourse on South African classical music and its historic lack of representation of black composers. His research offers a rarely explored Afrocentric view on South African composition during apartheid to the dawn of democracy with a reflection on the impact of the current decolonization debate stemming from the #RhodesMustFall movement. Alongside the book, Ndodana-Breen will complete a new orchestral work exploring the indigenous African techniques and practices explored in his research, offering a creative context to some of the commentary by such scholars as V. Kofi Agawu, Akin Euba, J.H. Kwabena Nketia, and Martin Scherzinger.

Ndodana-Breen has a PhD in music composition from Rhodes University. He has received commissions from the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra, the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Haydn Festspiele Burgenland, Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra, Luminato Festival, the Madam Walker Theatre Center, the Minnesota Orchestra, SAMRO, the University of South Africa, the Vancouver Recital Society, and Wigmore Hall. He is the composer of Winnie, an opera based on the life of Winnie Mandela. He was awarded a Standard Bank Young Artist Award and included in the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans list.

Released on Lontano Records, the album features five chamber music works by Black composers

The Boston-based collective Castle of Our Skins (COOS) recently released its new album, "HOMAGE."

Featuring the COOS Quartet (violinists Gabriela Diaz and Matthew Vera, violist Ashleigh Gordon, and cellist Francesca McNeeley) alongside pianist and musicologist Dr. Samantha Ege, the album presents the work of composers of the African diaspora.

The album's central work is Homage, by Zenobia Powell Perry which draws on inspiration from both African and European soundworlds, and is dedicated to Perry's teacher, the Harlem Renaissance composer William L. Dawson.

Accompanying this, two composers' works reflect on the horrifying consequences of apartheid. Bongani Ndodana-Breen's 2011 work Safika: Three Tales of African Migration expresses the plight of Black South Africans, while Undine Smith Moore's piano trio Soweto traverses her upbringing in the Jim Crow South of America.

Other tracks include Frederick C. Tillis's Spiritual Fantasy No 12, as well as the 1904 work Moorish Dance by the Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.

"Though many of the pieces on Homage will be unfamiliar to the majority of classical music lovers, the themes of fortitude, resistance, and hope will resonate deeply," said Samantha Ege. "We are excited for listeners to immerse themselves in the music and take this journey with us."

"I reminded the artists of the storytelling power in these works," said  Ashleigh Gordon of the recording process. "It pushed them to new levels of expressivity and communications as chamber musicians."

To purchase the album, click here.