Newport Live Presents Amandla Freedom Ensemble - Jazz From South Africa

Come join us as Newport Live presents The Amandla Freedom Ensemble from South Africa on Saturday, October 26, 7:30 PM at the Barker Theater, 400 Benefit Street in Providence, RI . Call Newport Live at (401)400-2774. Newport Live Celebrates the 30th Anniversary of South African Independence with the Amandla Freedom Ensemble.

Led by South African trumpeter Mandla Mlangeni, The Amandla Freedom Ensemble is an urban arts music collective of young musicians dedicated to the advancement and preservation of the South African music legacy.

The group participates in artistic dialogue and collaborations with many living legends of South African music, particularly jazz and indigenous music.

The Amandla Freedom Ensemble highlights the compositional material of bandleader Mandla Mlangeni(trumpet) and executed by an impeccable dynamism by the ensemble in the form of Tumi Mogorosi (drums), Ariel Zamonsky (bass) Oscar Rachabane and Nhlanhla Mahlangu (tenor saxophones).

The Amandla Freedom Ensemble is a cultural movement founded on the pillar of promoting opportunities for everyone to experience live music. As an ensemble the ensemble it is committed to promoting quality and artistic renewal through collaborations with established musicians, workshops with composers/arrangers with the mission of contributing to the canon of its dynamic musical heritage in South Africa.Mandla Mlangeni is a Johannesburg-based trumpeter, composer and bandleader. A superbly talented player, Manda is a member of the SAMA-nominated group Amandla Freedom Ensemble and has toured extensively as a member of the Cape Town Opera. Recently, his musical production Oratorio Of A Forgotten Youth was premiered by the Artscape Opera House.

Newport Live will be presenting the U.S. premier of Mandla's "Oratorio Of a Forgotten Youth" with 20 musicians, jazz and indigenous, from South Africa, with the cooperation of the South African government and Lincoln Center Jazz, who will also be presenting workshops in cooperation with Newport Live.

Mandla is also highly active with Tune Recreation committee, a group which he founded to teach music workshops and provide healing to disenfranchised communities. In 2020, Mandla received a OneBeat Accelerator grant for his project ‘Afrikan Freedom Principle’, an online platform for a wide community of musicians and arts practitioners to share insights on current developments in the industry, including a podcast, panel discussions, archives, and workshops on everything from music theory to marketing to performance to preservation.

Trumpet-player, composer and bandleader of exceptional originality and craft, Mandla Mlangeni has demonstrated his talent on many a local and international stage. He was recognised in 2019 as the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year for Jazz, one of SA’s highest accolades.

Mlangeni leads various creative and critically acclaimed projects. The Tune Recreation Committee made their debut appearance at the Cape Town International Jazz Festival and then had their album 'Voices of Our Vision' listed as on the New York Times’ Best Albums for 2017. The Amandla Freedom Ensemble has released two albums including the SAMA nominated ‘Bhekisizwe’, named after Mlangeni's activist and lawyer father who was assassinated by apartheid forces. Mlangeni also leads the Swiss-based Birdsong Ensemble, and has played or collaborated with legends such as David Murray (US), Evan Parker (UK), Feya Faku, Hugh Masekela and Shabaka Hutchings (UK).

Many of Mlangeni’s compositions are rooted deeply in a consciousness of social discourse, a sense of pride and a celebration of being black, being African. On stage though, Mlangeni has a vibrant energy, an infectious smile and an irrepressible sense of fun that has the audience with him from the first to the last note. His trumpet playing stretches from the wistful melancholia of rainy day jazz, through to foot tapping, hip-swinging tunes that evoke the best of South African jazz, and onto musical experimentations that add dashes of influence from Balkan and Electro to Free Jazz.

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