Classical music meets African percussions

It is hard to imagine that classical music can be presented with an improvisation of the violin and the West African drum, the djembe. This unique combination of European classical music and African percussions will take place at a performance in Nairobi next Wednesday 6th May.

French violinist Virginie Robilliard and master percussionist Thomas Guei from the Ivory Coast are bringing a show called “Choc et Fusion” (Shock and Fusion) to Nairobi. Though the two musicians are of very different musical orientation, they play a seamless rendition of compositions for the violin by composer Johann Bach.

Their performance at the Alliance Francaise in Nairobi next Wednesday from7 pm is part of an East Africa tour, which also takes the duo to Bujumbura, Kigali, Kampala.

Both musicians have a strong commitment to teaching and sharing their talents and will therefore also hold a workshop with Ghetto Classics next Tuesday, 5th May. This is a community music education programme that was started in 2009, based in Korogocho, and now involves 300 children in the slums.

Maestro

Robilliard, who has been described by France’s Le Monde newspaper as “a serious talent and an uncompromising understanding of musical style” grew up in a family of musicians and by the age of five, was already on stage giving her first public concert.

She graduated from the Juilliard School, one of the leading music schools for Performing Arts in New York. The list of orchestras she has performed with around the world includes such distinguished ensembles like the St. Petersburg Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Radio France, the Simon Bolivar Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, and Bogota Symphony Orchestra.

Her international career has included appearances in Asia, South America, Europe, Canada and the United States and she is regularly invited to give master classes all over the world.

Contemporary music

Due to her interest in contemporary music, Robillard commissioned Venezuelan composer, Paul Desenne to compose a Sonata for a violin solo in 1999. Her first CD, also featured her brother, the pianist and composer Bruno Robilliard on recordings of Sonatas by composers like Gabriel Faure and Robert Schumann.

Between 2001 and 2008, she was running a violin school in Caracas, Venezuela and several of her young students have been admitted to conservatories in European cities. Robilliard plays on a top model violin, a 1869 model designed by Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume.

Reputation

Her musical partner, Thomas Guei has developed a reputation as one of the leading experts of technique, stamina and speed of the West African drum known as the djembe. Born to a family of traditional musicians and dancers in Cote d’Ivoire, Guei played his first instrument when he was just four as he accompanied his father who was a traditional dancer to performances.

He learned a range of instruments including the gloe, tamanois balafon, dounouba, attoungblan and his favourite, the djembe.

Guei is on the vanguard of a new generation of percussionists trained in West African music traditions. The graduate of the School of Dance and Cultural Exchange in Abidjan, the same institution where he later taught drumming, is also a dancer, choreographer and actor.

His work is constantly evolving with new influences and he has held drumming workshops in France and worked with dancers and musicians from around the world. His ambition is to create a group that mixes traditional and modern influences in which instruments like attoungblan, balafon and djembe are side-by-side with saxophone and bass guitar.

It is therefore no surprise that Guei and Robilliard have found harmony in their two instruments, the contrast notwithstanding. “Choc et Fusion” promises to be an exciting meeting of cultures.