We're proud to use Humanitix — the humane ticketing platform that donates all profits from booking fees to children's charities.
New England
The Carolinas
Virginia & Washington D.C.
Mid-Atlantic & New York
Questions about your tickets? Contact our dedicated support team via tickets@concertsinamerica.com
About the Artist
Derek Gripper (Classical Guitar)
Be transported into the world of West African music with Derek Gripper, the South African guitarist who did what many believed could not be done: translate the intricate, interlocking music of the 21-string Malian kora onto a single six-string guitar. Guitar legend John Williams called the feat "absolutely impossible until I heard Derek Gripper do it."
Born in Cape Town in 1977, Gripper began formal training on the violin at the age of six and studied classical music for thirteen years before turning to the guitar. He then spent the best part of a decade transcribing the repertoire of Malian masters such as Toumani Diabaté, Ballaké Sissoko and Ali Farka Touré — note by note, from recordings — and rebuilding it for the classical guitar without losing the cyclical forms and contrapuntal weave of the original.
Across a discography of nearly thirty albums, his work has ranged from Diabaté to Bach to Arvo Pärt to free improvisation. He has collaborated with Diabaté himself, with classical guitar legend John Williams, and most recently with kora master Ballaké Sissoko; his string-quartet arrangements of Diabaté's music were premiered by the Kronos Quartet. Along the way he has won a Songlines Music Award for Best Africa & Middle East Album and played concert stages across Africa, Europe and North America.
About the Program
Music from the Strings of Mali
Fifteen years ago, Derek Gripper did what everyone said was impossible: he recorded the works of Mali's greatest virtuoso, Toumani Diabaté, on solo classical guitar.
The point, at first, was an argument. Classical audiences had long accepted African rhythmic ideas as raw material for European and American composers, while the complete works of the African oral tradition stayed outside the canon. Transcribing Diabaté was a way of insisting that the word classical belongs to Mali as readily as it belongs to Europe. But somewhere along the way — performing this music, teaching it, writing it down — Derek became a first-language speaker of it.
This tour focuses on kumbengo: the cyclical variations at the heart of the West African tradition. Small, ancient kernels of music that focus the mind, soar, move the body and ache the heart. Toumani Diabaté showed the world that the virtuosity of Bach and modern jazz could live inside the Malian kora tradition. Here that same richness arrives on a single guitar — one that has travelled from the recital hall into the open field of spontaneous creation. The sources are still credited, but the playing now enters the spirit of provisionality that was always inherent in this music, and perhaps in all music before writing fixes it.
Essential Info
Presented by:
