Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Samuel Akpabot & Leo Brouwer Among 400 Composers for American Wind Symphony in 50 Years


[Leo Brouwer; Samuel Akpabot: The Odyssey of a Nigerian Composer-Ethnomusicologist  by Godwin Sadoh]

AfriClassical appreciates the link in this post from Bob Shingleton's highly influential blog On An Overgrown Path to the AfriClassical.com page on Samuel Ekpe Akpabot (1932-2000). The original post features photos of floating performance stages used by the American Wind Symphony Orchestra:
On An Overgrown Path

Tuesday, February 03, 2009
The search for new ways of bringing people to the music is quite rightly under the spotlight elsewhere. In these difficult times finding new ways of taking music out of conventional performance spaces, and to the people is equally, if not more important. The photos here show one innovative solution which has attracted remarkably little attention. In the early 1970s maverick architect Louis Kahn designed a floating stage, in the form of a 195 foot long ocean-going boat named Point Counterpoint II, for Robert Austin Boudreau's American Wind Symphony Orchestra.”

Over 50 years the orchestra has commissioned more than 400 works from composers including Georges Auric, Leo Brouwer, William Bolcom, Alan Hovhaness, Colin McPhee, Krzysztof Penderecki, Joaquin Rogrigo, Ned Rorem and the black Nigerian composer Samuel Ekpe Akpabot. Point Counterpoint II features in the documentary film My Architect made by Nathaniel Kahn, the architect's illegitimate son.” [Full Post]

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