WeekendSpecial. Q&A with Philip Miller

- via WeekendSpecial

Kalk Bay based Philip Miller (pictured left) is an international composer and sound artist with an extraordinary body of work. His output is multi-faceted, often developing from collaborative projects in theatre, film, video and sound installations. He frequently works with artist William Kentridge, has won awards for film scores including Miners Shot Down, and his work is performed around the world.

Miller’s newest musical composition is a contemporary African take on the score for the South African choreographer Dada Masilo’s Giselle, which is currently touring Europe. We spoke to him about the project, and his upcoming work:

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Park Avenue Armory 2018 Review: The Head and The Load

- via Operawire

William Kentridge’s ”The Head and The Load,” currently playing in a two-week season at the Park Avenue Armory, opens with a still portrait. 

Three people – two African women and an Italian man frame a stripped upright, teak-colored piano. The man seated on the floor wears a maroon Fez – the headdress of the Turkish military until 1927. The two women are both costumed in complimentary hues of teal and cream. Their hats attract architectural curiosity. The subtle color scheme of the tableau redolent of a Vermeer composition is a poignant alignment of symmetry, asymmetry and light. It is a congruent image of beauty and harmony presaging the aesthetic directives of Kentridge’s multi-media theatrical collage paying homage to the ignored contributions of Africans during the First World War. With his assembly of virtuosic co-creators and artists, Kentridge enlists our sympathies for the fallen African men and women through exquisite and disturbing tableaus of beauty.  It is an achievement of a lifetime.

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Leora Maltz-Leca on The Head & The Load

Wiliam Kentridge, The Head & The Load. Performance view, Park Avenue Armory, 2018. Photo: Stephanie Berger.

Wiliam Kentridge, The Head & The Load. Performance view, Park Avenue Armory, 2018. Photo: Stephanie Berger.

- via Artforum

THE SIREN RISES IN A LONG WAIL. It climbs through the darkness, sounding the alarm that The Head & The Load has begun. At first, the tinny signal of distress seems to emanate from a machine, but as it swells, it modulates into a multitude of voices of varying timbres, and vocalist Ann Masina, her mouth open in full-throated song, is spotlighted. The noise subsides, a pause to register that it is humans who summon us: not a machine. And from that small correction of understanding—the invitation to distinguish between a person and a tool—we are called to remember the difference between a human and an instrument of capital.

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Haunting melody drawn from mining sounds

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Featured in The Star | Thursday 28 July 2011

IT SOUNDS like a bird tweeting, only it’s not. That’s because there are no birds 3km underground. Deep, in caverns, blasted into the earth, the sound is more likely a whistle escaping someone’s lips. Or maybe it’s the twang of metal against metal, or a draft catching the miners’ cage as it drops to dark depths.

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William Kentridge: Slow Music for Fast Action, and Other Conundrums

A scene from Alban Berg’s Lulu, which Kentridge directed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, 2015.

A scene from Alban Berg’s Lulu, which Kentridge directed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, 2015.

via Art News

Last year, Carnegie Hall audiences experienced a heavy dose of South African wonder man William Kentridge, plying his tricks and talents, mind and matter, as part of “Ubuntu, the Music and Arts of South Africa,” his homeland. Turning Carnegie Hall into a warm and cozy setting, he began his performance by demurring that he felt somewhat out of place there since he’s an artist and not a composer and the production was billed as an opera—sort of. Which led him to a recollection of a New Yorker cartoon in which an elephant sits down at a piano and tells how uncomfortable he feels performing, because, as he explains, “I’m not a pianist“ (pause) “I’m a flautist.”

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