Poverty Requiem Philip Weiss

Sheffield Poverty Requiem in rehearsal

2007-10-07T08:14:00.000-07:00

Catching Up

2007-10-07T08:03:00.000-07:00

Just over one week to go and our rehearsals in Sheffield are getting bigger. Joined this week by some members from choirs resident in Sheffield. Our practised choir are mostly drawn from SOSA-XA! Sounds of Southern Africa but now being supported by members of Zeela (a Liberian choir) and Umdumo We Sizwe a Zimbabwean male voice choir.
We are also being supported by soloists Zoe Jeffryes and Janet Wood. The percussion team are being led by John Weaver, Adam Chevarty and Any Baker who think th poverty requiem is rhythmically challenging- moving from the classic tradition to world music.

The rehearsal led by Mandla Sibanda went very well. later this week we are joined by youth choirs. It has been challenging for the conductor in particular to work from the audio tapes and the master class videos. This is a complex piece rhythmically and there has been some strain bewteen those who read music and those who cannot. It is not easy to teach the music without the scores but many people are rising to the challenge. For many people the music is very different to what they are used to listening to. those who read music are also challenged beacuse they have to listen to the conductor and other members.

You can download photos of our rehhearsal from http://picasaweb.google.com/sheffieldpovertyrequiem. Bring your friends and download our rehearsal location and show information from here: http://www.semea.org.uk/events2.html

First rehearsal

2007-09-10T07:44:00.000-07:00

It was a great relief to launch the first rehearsal in Sheffield on saturday 8 sept. Despite the short notice we had to announce the project we had a good turn out and I can feel the wheels of the publicity machine in motion. It has been a great experiment combining auditory learning with a careful scrutiny of the score and we successfuly got through part one. Everyone seemed to really enjoy the refreshing new music and is getting excited about the performance. Every choir on the " initial known list" in North East Derbyshire, Sheffield and Rotherham have been asked to participate. As most start rehearsals this week for their own personal programmes we should find out soon how mnay individuals are prepared to come and rehearse specially for the Poverty Requiem. I am very positive.

Our saturday rehearsal was conducted by Simon Banda and Mandla Sibanda who could not come to Holland. Mandla is on the top photo, Simon (or Sam and "Dr Mhlaba" as he is known in Bulawayo) is below. Lungani Sibanda will be with us this saturday.

Our team

2007-09-05T03:40:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to so many conductors who flew in from many parts of the world for the conductors meeting. We are just busy in Sheffeld looking at the video of the master classes so our Zimbabwean team can get fully engaged. It will be a new challenge for conductors from Zimbabwe working largely by ear and on a work that is very different to the music they normally work with. Any one wanting to find out more about our team can look at our two web sites. Mandla Sibanda and Simon Banda come from Sunduza Dance Theatre in Bulawayo, visible at http://www.sunduza.org then Mandla has his own choir in the UK that works in the isicathamiya performance style http://www.sosa-xa.org.uk. based in Sheffield and Songololo (a giant millipede) in Leeds. We are also working with Lungani Sibanda who has a gospel choir- Rejoice! whom you will have met in Holland last week- web link to follow.