Paper Music: A Ciné Concert by Philip Miller and William Kentridge

Performers

• Introduction by William Kentridge
• Joanna Dudley, Voice
• Ann Masina, Voice
• Idith Meshulam, Piano
• Philip Miller, Gramophone DJ

Program

An evening of short-film screenings by William Kentridge with live music by Philip Miller

Event Duration

Bios

• William Kentridge

  
  William Kentridge is one of South Africa's preeminent artists, internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, and theater and opera productions.
  
  Born the son of two anti-Apartheid lawyers in Johannesburg, he studied politics and African studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in the 1970s and later co-founded the Junction Avenue Theatre Company. He went on to study mime and theater at the L'école Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Back in Johannesburg, he worked in various areas of television, film, and theater and collaborated on projects with the Handspring Puppet Company.
  
  Mr. Kentridge's work draws on varied sources, including philosophy, literature, early cinema, theater, and opera to create a complex universe where good and evil are complementary and inseparable forces. Although he moves back and forth between media, his primary activity remains drawing, from which he occasionally expands into his films, theater, and opera productions.
  
  The artist has spent much of his career intensively exploring themes that resonate with his own life experience as well as with the political issues that most concern him. "I am interested in a political art," he has stated, "that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures, and uncertain endings." His work transforms sobering political events into powerful poetic allegories; it has continually evolved as his subject matter has departed from a specifically South African context to confront more general concerns of social injustice, revolutionary politics, and the power of creative expression.
  
  In 2010, Mr. Kentridge received the Kyoto Prize in recognition of his contributions in the field of arts and philosophy. In 2011, he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and awarded the degree of Doctor of Literature honoris causa by the University of London. In 2012, he delivered the prestigious Norton Lectures at Harvard University.
  
  Recently, Mr. Kentridge's work has been seen at Tate Modern in London, Jeu de Paume and the Louvre in Paris, La Scala in Milan, the Albertina in Vienna, the Metropolitan Opera and Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo.

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• Joanna Dudley

  
  Joanna Dudley works internationally as a director, performer, and singer. She studied earlyand contemporary music at the Adelaide Conservatorium and the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam. On scholarships, she has also studied traditional Japanese music in Tokyo, and traditional dance and music in Java, Indonesia.
  
  In Berlin, Ms. Dudley worked as a guest director and performer at the Schaubühne. Works created there include My Dearest, My Fairest with Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola and colours may fade with Mr. Esnaola and Rufus Didwiszus. Other works in collaboration with Mr. Didwiszus include the solo music theater piece The Scorpionfish, Who Killed Cock Robin? with the Flemish vocal ensemble Capilla Flamenca, and most recently LOUIS & BEBE with electro musician Schneider TM.
  
  Ms. Dudley participated in the creation of Refuse the Hour by William Kentridge and Philip Miller, which premiered at the Holland and Avignon festivals, where she was featured as a singer and performer. She also worked with Mr. Kentridge on his direction of Berg's Lulu for the Metropolitan Opera. Other opera work includes the choreography of Eugene Onegin conducted by Seiji Ozawa and directed by Falk Richter for the Vienna State Opera and Tokyo Opera Nomori. With Les Ballets C de la B, she co-created and performed in Foi directed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
  
  Ms. Dudley's sound installation Tom's Song for music boxes and LP players was presented at the 2006 Sonambiente Festival in Berlin, in addition to appearances at other major international art festivals.
  
  Joanna Dudley is presently working as a singer and performer with Indonesian film director Garin Nugroho on his next two feature-length films.

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• Ann Masina

  
  Ann Masina was born in Witbank, Mpumalanga. She started singing in the Africa Sings Choral Society in 1994 as a soloist. In 1999, she joined the Nico Malan Opera House-now known as Cape Town Opera-under Professor Angelo Gobbato, performing operas such as Carmen and Aida to great acclaim. Ms. Masina did her vocal training under the tutelage of Pierre du Toit at the Pretoria Technikon Opera School. She is a co-founder of JOAT Opera Group, a self-supporting company that performs excerpts from different operas and musicals at various social and official events. In 2002, she performed in a musical called Sauer Street at the Wits Theatre. Throughout her career, she has also performed with the likes of Lindelani Buthelezi and Ramolao Makhene with the JMI Orchestra. In 2003, Ms. Masina performed with the Black Tie Ensemble. In 2004, she was a soloist at the Sowetan Nation Building Massed Choir Festival. Four years later, she went on a European tour with the two-time Grammy-winning Soweto Gospel Choir. She performed at the 46664 concert at Hyde Park in London for the late former South African President Nelson Mandela. In 2008 and 2009, she did the Robyn Orlin production called Dressed to Kill … Killed to Dress … and Walking Next to Our Shoes with an extensive tour throughout France.
  
  In 2009, Ms. Masina performed with the Bala Brothers at Gold Reef City, toured Tokyo and Singapore with the Soweto Gospel Choir, and performed at the FIFA Final Draw in Cape Town. In 2011, she renewed her collaboration with Robyn Orlin in the production Venus / have u hugged, kissed and respected your brown venus today. Since 2012, she has been part of William Kentridge's Refusal of Time workshop and Refuse the Hour, touring Europe to the Festival d'Avignon, Romaeuropa, and Holland Festival.
  
  Ms. Masina is a versatile, talented, and formidably large woman with an even bigger voice who handles opera, classical, gospel, jazz, and pop with great aplomb.

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• Idith Meshulam

  
  Born in Israel, Idith Meshulam first studied piano with her mother, Shelly Asher-Meshulam. At the age of nine, she performed with the Tel Aviv Chamber Orchestra, and for several years with the Kibbutz Orchestra, all while giving solo recitals and broadcast concerts throughout Israel. After receiving her bachelor's degree from the Rubin Academy in Tel Aviv, she focused on playing the works of contemporary composers, among them Olivier Messiaen, for whom she has played in person.
  
  Ms. Meshulam received her doctorate from New York University, where she taught for 10 years. While a student at NYU, she researched the unpublished piano music of Stefan Wolpe for her doctoral dissertation. She began championing the works of Greek composer Nikos Skalkottas in 1999, when she organized the first all-Skalkottas concert in New York, honoring him on the 50th anniversary of his death. This work led Ms. Meshulam to her collaboration with composer and conductor Gunther Schuller, with whom she recorded Skalkottas's 32 Piano Pieces for GM Recording.
  
  Ms. Meshulam is the founder and director of Ensembleπ, which plays a vital role in the programming and performance of livingcomposers. Every year since its inception in 2001, the ensemble presents its Peace Project, a multimedia concert of commissioned and new works in collaboration with visual artists, writers, actors, and journalists. A multi-year collaboration with composer Elias Tanenbaum resulted in a CD of his chamber music, Keep Going. Ms. Meshulam and Ensembleπhave also been longtime supporters of the work of South African artist William Kentridge and composer Philip Miller, a collaboration that has culminated in several multimedia chamber concerts.

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• Philip Miller

  
  Philip Miller is a composer and sound artist from South Africa who works in many different media, from live performance to film, video, and sound installations. After making a leap from a career in law into the world of music, he completed a postgraduate degree in electro-acoustic music composition in England at Bournemouth University and then returned to South Africa to begin working full time in music. His longtime collaboration with artist William Kentridge, composing music for many of his films and installations, has gained Mr. Miller international recognition, especially for recent projects, including Five Themes at the Tate Modern in London; the lecture-opera production Refuse the Hour, which is currently on tour in theaters across Europe; as well as the multimedia installation The Refusal of Time at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
  
  Mr. Miller's own sound works have been exhibited at the Venice Bienale 2013, Spier Contemporary 2011 (South Africa), and Kaunas Biennial 2009 (Lithuania). His live award-winning choral composition REwind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape, and Testimony has been performed at Royal Festival Hall in London, Celebrate Brooklyn!, the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance at Williams College, as well as the Baxter and Market theaters in South Africa. He has scored numerous soundtracks to film and television programs, including his Emmy-nominated soundtrack to HBO's The Girl. Other recent scores include Miners Shot Down, The Bang Bang Club, Black Butterflies, and Phillip Noyce's Mary and Martha.
  
  Mr. Miller is currently an honorary fellow at ARC (the Archive and Public Culture research initiative) at the University of Cape Town. He is currently completing his new opera, Extracts from theUnderground, in which he explores the subterranean sound world of miners in South Africa.

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