Review Text
Africa Sings is a probing celebration into African music, through classical music and jazz, through legacy and tradition. The recital begins with Angélique Kidjo singing Bella Bellow's Senye, segueing into the premiere recording of Philip Glass's orchestral song-cycle Three Ifé Songs, composed for Kidjo in 2014. The focus goes then to American music with Duke Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige in Maurice Peress orchestral arrangement, before shifting to Europe and Alexander Zemlinsky's Symphonic Songs sung by Martin Achrainer which set, in translation into German, the poems of the great Harlem Renaissance poets Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and Frank Horne. Kidjo joins the venerable Bruckner Orchester Linz and conductor Dennis Russell Davies who cruise through the Ellington before digging deep into the Zemlinsky with baritone Martin Achrainer in tour-de-force performances from beginning to end.
