WINDHOEK– Grabbing the camera with frosted fingers, while shifting around on the white high chairs in the Exclusive Lounge in the Zoo Park, I prayed softly, “Lord, let him be good my, let him be very good”, and indeed Blaike Walsh was a beautiful success.
There was no way I could sit and listen to dreadful music and pretend to enjoy every sound of it, but Walsh’s proved not only a qualified but most specifically a more than capable pianist. It is always a pleasure to listen to real instruments, to music that takes you out of the door down along the misted leaves into the bends of rough trees, down there where all the tiny and goodhearted fairies live.And if you are not yet in fairyland, then your fingers would be prompting the space behind you to find a chair to sit on so that you can drink in this mystical noise.
It is so profound, you cannot stop listening to it and would chase the ‘too frequently enquiring’ waitress away with a once-off wave of the hand, and when she rubs the glasses behind the counter, Blaike’s music breaks into a crescendo making you gasp for air-reeling in wonder. His music is like dewdrops, subtle however it can trigger a magnitude of thoughts and memories, the majority of which may leave you either with flustered cheeks, or if you have been living under a rock your adolescent years, you’d be thinking of David’s harp I suppose.
Blaike is an adult contemporary singer and songwriter and started playing the piano at the age of 14 years. He has in a very short span of time accomplished things that most musicians can only dream about. In 2011, Blaike participated in the South African Championships of Performing Arts in which he bagged two gold medals, two silver and one bronze. The gold medals were also his tickets to the World Championships of Performing Arts that was in Hollywood, Los Angeles, the same year. Blaike was also crowned champion of the world in the jazz category at the same event.
He studied music at the Campus of Performing Arts in Cape Town , South Africa, and majored in vocals.