Enjoy a night of jazz and discussions at leading Joburg jazz club The Orbit’s Sonic Bridges evening. Featuring leading art historians, jazz musicians and artists alike, the evening takes a retrospective journey through South Africa’s art and music history. 

Composers in Conversation
South African composers Thuthuka Sibisi and Philip Miller talk about their recent work for The African Choir 1891 Re-Imagined, a global touring exhibition focusing on 16 South African singers who travelled to England in 1891 to raise money for a technical college. Over the course of two years, Sibisi and Miller revisited the choir’s original repertoire, reimaging five of their songs with 15 contemporary singers. From 18:30-19:30.

Sonic Bridges
Art historian and artist Thembinkosi Goniwe teams up with acclaimed South African pianist Andile Yenana, trumpeter Feya Faku and rising-star jazz vocalist Titi Luzipo, to interpret a selection of photographs from renowned photographer Andrew Tshabangu’s seminal Bridges series. Tshabangu gained fame for his portrayal of the daily rituals of black community life in urban Africa and Sonic Bridges aims to evoke the spirituality found in these stirring images. From 20:00.
 
Pungwe Sound Trails
Zimbabwean multi-disciplinary artist Robert Machiri reinvents cowbells as a precolonial sonic archive of knowledge in his collaborative piece with sound artist and musician Elsa M’bala. Exploring how sound performance can re-map spaces and histories, Machiri also draws on archival audio from the International Library of African Music to “portray a frenzied state of mind” in which he interrogates the colonial framings of African music. From 21:00.