An Evening With Dr. Thokozani Ndumiso Mhlambi

Thokozani Mhlambi, Phd is a musician, performer, inventor and community builder whose work has a reverence for the past and the future. Playing on a custom-designed, handmade Baroque cello with gut strings, Mhlambi creates innovative work, both for himself as a solo musician and for ensembles. He regularly plays with ensembles in South Africa and North America. He has held fellowships at the University of Bayreuth (Germany) and Cité International des Arts (France). Currently he is involved in the Microtonal Music Studios research and study program in Helsinki (Finland). In his album Zulu Song Cycle (2019), Mhlambi explores the limits of creative expression by blurring the distinction between European early classical music and African ancient sounds, this is in ways that defy the orthodoxy of his own classical education. Contending with orthodoxies and the rules they impose is what Mhlambi does best, by inverting, subverting what (to some) might be the norm. For a decade, Mhlambi has dedicated his time to retrieving historical sounds from archives, based on collections in Africa and elsewhere. The result has been compositions that reflects different epochs, different time zones in human evolution He has an interest in the relationship between art and technology, an interest he has explored in his research on African traditions of metallurgy. This has allowed Mhlambi to think about the nature of artistic expertise in correlation with metallurgical expertise, in his musical compositions. Chief amongst Mhlambi’s theoretical concerns is about thinking beyond the colonial sound archive, in imagining a sonic past and future. In 2023, Mhlambi was invited to be part of the Reimagining America Program 2023, where he worked with youth string-players from the city of Providence (Rhode Island). In 2024, Mhlambi’s performed in Atlanta. His show was rated as the best-gig-of-the-week by Arts Atlanta news. He has also been a visiting lecturer at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver (Canada), where he performed at the World Arts Centre. He has performed at the venues such as Elastic Arts in Chicago, Prachtwerk in Berlin, Minneapolis, New Orleans (Tulane), São Paulo, Maputo (Mozambique) and New York.

Host or Publisher Kuali Studio Gallery