Harmonic

Luke Daniels (right) has appeared in this journal at least a couple of times before as he’s one of my favourite folk musicians. A master of the melodeon and purveyor of traditional English folk tunes, he’s also an accomplished singer, songwriter and guitarist who’s always pushing musical boundaries and taking on fascinating projects and collaborations.

He’s currently co-ordinating the cross-cultural Kaleidoscope project which involves him working with world-class musicians from South Africa, Syria and China. Over the next few weeks he’ll be in town on a regular basis to perform as a duo with each of the other 3 musicians, culminating in a quartet concert towards the end of next month. All the musicians are contributing tunes and songs to the project as well as improvising together and creating new music.

You can find out more, and also get involved in creating your own contribution to their repertoire by downloading their Musicmeme App and making your own remix of their work via www.lukedanielsmusic.com/musicmeme

Tonight the Philharmonic Music Room hosted the first of the project’s duo performances, featuring Luke and the astonishing South African cellist, Abel Selaocoe (left). It was an inspired collaboration!

Abel spoke about how he uses the cello to help him explore his complex cultural heritage as someone with ties to Botswana, Lesotho and the Zulu people, as well as to the classical western musical canon in which he has trained and to which he remains a devotee. I’ve certainly never heard Bach performed quite as Abel performs him!

You can see Abel and Luke playing together at https://youtube.com/watch?v=Cbm39W-VkTA

Here’s Abel performing one of tonight’s highlights, his own arrangement of ‘Lamentatio’ by Giovanni Sollima https://youtube.com/watch?v=5FSofJ4r4bg

And here’s one of my favourite of Luke’s songs, ‘In Our Hearts’ https://youtube.com/watch?v=u5CHy97lOuI

Top stuff!