WINDHOEK– To celebrate the arrival of summer, Frames for Africa is hosting a unique exhibition of drawings with oil paintings by artist Susan Mitchinson at Frames for Africa tomorrow at Maerua Mall.
The exhibition is comprises a series of drawings taken from the artist’s numerous art notebooks over the years. The paintings show how Mitchinson takes a drawing and through visual poetry creates a unique universe on canvas. The colours are vibrant and celebrate the energy of inner life. The lion is a symbol of power and strength and this is evoked through the use of colour and is at the heart of this exhibition.
The exhibition is also an opportunity for people to gather and share a moment together and find a fleeting moment of inner peace. It is a celebration of both domestic and wild animals which are the living pulse of Namibia The exhibition opens daily from ten O’clock in the morning (10h00) until two O’clock in the afternoon (14h00) and will run until October 31.
Randy Weston, the living
“Spirit of our ancestors”
By Richard S. Ginell
Placing Randy Weston into narrow, bop-derived categories only tells part of the story of this restless musician.
Starting with the gospel of bop according to Thelonious Monk, Weston has gradually absorbed the letter and spirit of African and Caribbean rhythms and tunes, welding everything together into a searching, energising, often celebratory blend. His piano work ranges across a profusion of styles from boogie-woogie through bop into dissonance, marking by a stabbing quality reminiscent of, but not totally indebted to, Monk.
Growing up in Brooklyn, Weston was surrounded by a rich musical community: he knew Max Roach, Cecil Payne, and Duke Jordan; Eddie Heywood lived across the street; Wynton Kelly was a cousin. Most influential of all was Monk, who tutored Weston upon visits to his apartment. Weston began working professionally in R&B bands in the late 1940s before playing in the bebop outfits of Payne and Kenny Dorham. After signing with Riverside in 1954, Weston led his own trios and quartets and attained a prominent reputation as a composer, contributing jazz standards like Hi-Fly and Little Niles to the repertoire. He also met arranger Melba Liston, who has collaborated with Weston off and on into the ’90s. Weston‘s interest in his roots was stimulated by extended stays in Africa; he visited Nigeria in 1961 and 1963, lived in Morocco from 1968 to 1973 following a tour, and has remained fascinated with the music and spiritual values of the continent ever since. In the 1970s, Weston made recordings for Arista-Freedom, Polydor, and CTI while maintaining a peripatetic touring existence — mostly in Europe — returning to Morocco in the mid-1980s.
However, starting in the late 1980s, after a long recording drought, Weston‘s visibility in the U.S. skyrocketed with an extraordinarily productive period in the studios for Antilles and Verve. Among his highly eclectic recording projects were a trilogy of “Portrait” albums depicting Ellington, Monk, and himself, an ambitious two-CD work rooted in African music called The Spirits of Our Ancestors, a blues album, and a collaboration with the Gnawa Musicians of Morocco. Weston‘s fascination with the music of Africa continued on such works as 2003’s Spirit! The Power of Music, 2004’s Nuit Africaine and 2006’s Zep Tepi, The Randy Weston African Rhythms Trio. In 2010, Weston released the live album The Storyteller which featured the then 84-year-old pianist in concert at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, as part of Jazz at the Lincoln Center. (Allmusic.com)