Pianists Perform To Support Durban COVID-19 Efforts

On Wednesday 27 May the Piano Passion Project is organizing a Thanksgiving Concert inspired by Darius Brubeck in aid of the Denis Hurley Centre featuring 20 amazing pianists from South Africa, UK, USA, and the Netherlands.

The concert will feature Melvin Peters; Burton Naidoo; Debbie Mari; Nishlyn Ramanna (UK); Andile Yenana; Neil Gonsalves; Mark Kilian (USA); Shemual Mahabeer; Sibusiso Mashiloane; Lungelo Ngcobo; John Edwards; Nduduzo Makhathini; Lindi Ngonelo; Zwelihle Kunene; Siyanqoba Mthetwa; Zoe Molelekwa; Susan Barry; Roland Moses; Vincent Mthethwa; Khabelo Witness Matlou (USA); Obakeng Thamage and Mike del Ferro (Netherlands).

The event forms part of the weekly UKZN Centre for Jazz and Popular Music and iSupport Creative Business’ Music Unlocked Sessions. Tickets are R80 each and available on Webtickets, with the option for patrons to donate more.

The human story of volunteers and organizations mobilizing and working together to take care of the most vulnerable in our communities is truly inspiring. The concert’s beneficiary is the Denis Hurley Centre which feeds and cares for the city’s homeless and has been at the forefront of ensuring that they have been cared for over lockdown. With enormous job losses being experienced, a great deal more people will be needing support, relief, and care in the near future. The Denis Hurley is an engaged community facility which has always supported the arts and works closely with artists and performers as an integrated part of what they do. Many of the performers in the Piano Passion Project have worked together with the DHC on previous events and want to give back to the organization in their time of financial need.

The COVID-19 virus became all too real for the pianists in the Piano Passion Project recently, when their former teacher, friend, mentor and colleague in the Project, Prof Darius Brubeck became afflicted with the virus, and found himself on a ventilator in intensive care, with doctors giving him a 50/50 chance of survival. For his wife Cathy, the experience was understandably traumatic and exacerbated by then having to quarantine herself. But thankfully, Darius continues to make a steady recovery, is now back home, and happily reunited with his family.

Given Darius’ miraculous recovery and the obvious financial need in our communities, the Piano Passions Project found a fund-raising thanksgiving concert was in order. The obvious restriction is the current social distancing measures. So, they opted for an online concert, of prerecorded piano performances created especially for the event. The concert will be two hours in duration, featuring the wealth of piano talent that is in some way, part of Darius’ legacy here in KZN. The pianists will each present a set of around five minutes each.

“Darius is a member of the Piano Passion Project which is an open collective of pianists mainly with piano lineage to Darius himself. The older pianists would have been students of Darius’ and the younger pianists are students of mine or Burton’s. Sibusiso Mashiloane was a piano student of mine many years ago and the youngest pianists on the bill would have been taught by him as well. So, it’s a multi-generational piano performance and teaching culture. Darius is central to this story and we are enormously relieved and grateful that he is recovering. We pay tribute to his astonishing legacy through this concert,” explained UKZN’s Neil Gonsalves.


Author: Durban TV



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