Miagi Orchestra - Searching the African Footprint

MIAGI Orchestra

'South African orchestra MIAGI gets the Concertgebouw dancing,' wrote NRC after a convincing concert in 2018. MIAGI stands for 'Music is a great investment'. The youth orchestra is part of a community project in Soweto in Johannesburg that introduces children to music through play and offers high-quality music education to talented players from all over South Africa. This summer, the twenty-year-old orchestra is celebrating thirty years of democracy in South Africa with a European tour, expanding the classical symphony orchestra with a jazz band and an impressive rhythm section.

Searching the African Footprint

In Searching the African Footprint the MIAGI Orchestra presents music from the African diaspora. The swinging program features new arrangements of jazz classics in combination with African folk music from all over the world; music by Africans who ended up in countries such as Mexico, Cuba and North America through the slave trade from the sixteenth century. Sixty young musicians from the MIAGI Orchestra play a diverse program, with compelling music from Salif Keita to Miles Davis. Work by three young South African composers who participate in the MIAGI Orchestra's composition program will also be performed.