Tickets: $40 | $50 | $65 – Member benefits apply – Member prices – $32 | $40 | $52
Co-presented with 92NY
Abdullah Ibrahim is South Africa’s most distinguished pianist and a world-respected master musician. Born in 1934 in Cape Town, Dollar Brand, as he became known, was exposed to a melting pot of cultural influences: African Khoi-san songs, Christian hymns, gospel tunes, and spirituals, as well as American jazz, township jive, and classical music. Out of this blend of the secular and religious, and the traditional and the modern, Abdullah Ibrahim’s distinctive sound and musical vocabulary was born.
Abdullah Ibrahim’s reputation began in local Cape Town groups and his Dollar Brand Trio in 1958. He formed the Jazz Epistles Septet in 1959, recording the first South African jazz album, and left due to apartheid laws. Of this historical recording, Ibrahim explains that the ensemble’s work was ”inspired by American jazz musicians and popular songs but most importantly the legitimacy and vibrancy of our own African tradition”. He memorably performed at Nelson Mandela’s inauguration in 1994, where Mandela dubbed him “our Mozart.”
The COUNTERPOINT series focuses on contemporary artists who push the boundaries of what “world music” can mean in the 21st Century.
