Angelique Kidjo
(Francois Zuidberg)
“The power of
Kidjo’s unflappable voice, the range of her emotional expression, the
stellar, genre-bending musicians who back her and the infectious,
activist energy that courses through her songs all transcend any native
tongue.”—NPR Music
“Village
traditions, cosmopolitan transformations, female solidarity, African
pride and perpetual energy have been constants in Ms. Kidjo’s recording
career.”—The New York Times
“The African
freedom-soul singer Angélique Kidjo is a sensual firebrand who moves
freely between luxuriant detail and exultant minimalism in her music and
agenda.”—Rolling Stone
“…when
[Angélique] sees wrong in the world, she works hard, dedicatedly, to
change it, with words, with action, and of course with music.”—PRI’s “Afropop Worldwide”
The highly anticipated U.S. premiere of Angélique Kidjo and Philip Glass’s orchestral collaboration, Ifé: Three Yorùbá Songs for Orchestra, is set to take place July 10 with the San Francisco Symphony
at San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, conducted by Edwin Outwater. A
short excerpt of the work’s world premiere with the Luxembourg
Philharmonic may be found here, and a clip of Glass discussing the work on the eve of its premiere may be found here. Tickets and full information on the program, which also includes selections from Kidjo’s recent orchestral album, Sings (out now on 429 Records and winning raves around the world) may be found here.
The piece, about which Glass says,
“Together Angélique and I have built a bridge that no one has walked on
before,” pays tribute to Ifé, the most important Yorùbá kingdom,
believed to be the place where the world was created. “The god Olodumare
sent his Orishas Obatala and Oduduwa to the world in order to create
the land,” Kidjo says. “Yemandja ran away and joined the ocean.
Oshumare, the rainbow snake, encircles the earth and prevents it from
falling.”
ABOUT ANGELIQUE KIDJO
Angelique Kidjo is a beloved
two-time Grammy Award winner, longtime UNICEF goodwill ambassador and a
recipient of this year’s Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum.
Her accolades span a 20-year discography and thousands of concerts
around the world. She has enjoyed a long history of notable
collaborations with greats from the jazz and pop worlds including Carlos
Santana, Bono, John Legend, Josh Groban, Peter Gabriel, Branford
Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Roy Hargrove and Alicia Keys. In an expansive
career marked as much by extraordinary musical achievement as passionate
advocacy and philanthropy for her African homeland, Kidjo has found
many ways to celebrate the rich, enlightening truth about the
continent’s women beyond the media spotlight.
ABOUT PHILIP GLASS
For more than five decades, Philip
Glass continues to be at the forefront of contemporary music and art. In
the early 1960s, Glass spent two years of intensive study in Paris with
Nadia Boulanger and, while there, earned money by transcribing Ravi
Shankar’s Indian music into Western notation. By 1974 Glass had a number
of innovative projects, creating a large collection of new music for
The Philip Glass Ensemble and for the Mabou Mines Theater Company. This
period culminated in Music in Twelve Parts and the landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, for which he collaborated with Robert Wilson. Since Einstein,
Glass has expanded his repertoire to include music for opera, dance,
theater, chamber ensemble, orchestra and film. His scores have received
Academy Award nominations (Kundun, The Hours, Notes on a Scandal) and a Golden Globe (The Truman Show). Several new works have been unveiled, including two operas in 2013 (The Lost, for the opening of the new opera house in Linz Austria, and The Perfect American, about the death of Walt Disney). Glass’s newest opera, based on Kafka’s The Trial,
premiered at London’s Covent Garden in October 2014. The Los Angeles
Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel with Katia and Marielle Labeque will
premiere his Concerto for Two Pianos & Orchestra in May 2015.
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