Long-time friends, collaborators and leading exponents of the acoustic guitar scene in South Africa, Derek Gripper and Guy Buttery are coming to the KZN Midlands for a one off concert. After their last concert together at the legendary Freight & Salvage in San Francisco, California, this will be their first official performance together as a duo in KwaZulu-Natal.
Derek Gripper is known for his groundbreaking technique for evoking the West African kora on the guitar. He has transcribed the complex music of Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté and infuses his interpretations of Bach’s music with lessons from the oral traditions of Africa. He has performed with Toumani Diabaté’s Symmetric Orchestra and classical guitar legend John Williams, and tours worldwide.It took Derek Gripper untold hours of painstaking work to transcribe note-for-note the complex compositions of Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté and find a way of playing them on six-string guitar. The results appeared on his ninth album, “One Night on Earth”. The album created an unprecedented meeting point between the written tradition of Western classical music and the oral tradition of the West African griots.
“Guy Buttery is something of a National treasure”, says South Africa’s leading newspaper The Mercury. As an internationally recognised musician, this multi-instrumentalist enjoys invitations to play sell-out performances all over the globe. The USA, UK, Australia, France, Brazil, and Italy have all welcomed him back year after year. However, to simply label Guy Buttery as one of South Africa’s musical phenoms would be an injustice. His international role has surpassed merely performing concerts to foreign audiences. It has evolved into one as an ambassador of South African music, inspiring people across the world with his homegrown style at the very heart of his talent and tenacity. Guy’s distinct unification of South African guitar music is the musical advocate for everything positive and beautiful about the place he calls home.
The duo came together in an official recording for what was their first release in a live improvised concert captured in Cape Town. First heard as an exclusive premiere on NPR's "New Sounds" radio show in New York, the SAMA nominated album “Live in Cape Town” is something of a melting pot of South African and Eastern influences crafted by two of the finest visionaries to emerge from the tip of the continent in decades.
Get your pre-sale tickets here.
Photo credit: Dimitri Otis