Words by Justin Turford
‘It is all about the breath’
Back at the Barbican Centre for, sadly, my final show of this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival but what a show to end on. A solo piano performance by the greatest living South African jazz musician Abdullah Ibrahim is a musical history lesson, a diary of his long life and a gift to those who witnessed it. The award-winning Jazz and International music writer Jane Cornwell introduced with tales of previous encounters with the Cape Town legend and a revealing line told to her by Abdullah about how he plays - “It is all about the breath”. This would become a line we would recall throughout the performance as we watched and listened in near total hush and intense concentration as the maestro’s extraordinarily long fingers drew achingly beautiful melodies and imagery from his piano.
Abdullah had listened to the sound of the room and had decided that he would play with no amplification at all. Again, Jane Cornwell had told us this. We wouldn’t hear the artist’s voice until the final number and that would be through song. As it should be, Abdullah walked onto the stage to a standing ovation, one of three or four of the evening. At 88 years old, he is still a strikingly tall and rangy man. Slow to walk and accompanied by his helper, he sat gently down to the piano. The stage was stark and empty except for the man and his beautifully polished instrument. He then played without break for a whole hour. A singular, searching piece that held within it, the pages of his life. My friend Francesco, who sat next to me, suggested afterwards that Abdullah’s playing was reminiscent of his own attempts to do meditation. Sometimes present and focussed, at other moments wandering away in his thoughts. I saw his point. The music circulated like a mandala. A beginning, be it a recognisable riff from Abdullah’s memorable canon of work, would dissolve into a new shape, then another. His lifelong love of Duke Ellington and Monk shone through, as did his deep knowledge of classical music, his fingers pushed and pulled phrases of heavy emotional punch out of the keys. Then a breath. He would sit back from the piano, placing his hands on his legs to allow the reverb to whisper away before starting again. Back to the beginning. Or a new beginning, a variation on the motif that began it all. The pace was slow, funereal at times but interspersed with dramatic flourishes and tumbles of notes. The serene followed the storm and back again. Heavy tranquility perhaps.
The atmosphere of the great hall was quietly electric. There’s a reason I have only one photograph taken right at the end of the show. The sold out room wasn’t moving, nobody dared to shuffle or whisper. Occasionally a cough but no more. The sound of a master musician without amplification in the perfectly constructed wooden hall is something that will stay long with me.
And then he finished. I checked my watch and this frail looking gentle man had played solidly for an hour with unbelievable intensity and expression. Like Glenn Gould playing his beloved Bach compositions, the singular playing of Abdullah was like a master painter. Colours and emotions, broad strokes and the most disciplined of tiny marks placed next to and on top of each other to create a rare atmosphere. Had he finished? Not quite. A final short piece on the piano and then seemingly exhausted, the great man stopped. His helper walked onto the stage as the standing audience roared their devotion as he stood there, hands clasped in gratitude and prayer. As the applause subsided, he waved his support away and began to sing. Firstly in (I think) isiXhosa, a plaintive and fragile chorus that, like his free-flowing piano playing, fell into a gospel-blues sung in English, then back again. It felt like a prayer or a spiritual benefaction to those who had attended. He left slowly and carefully to more standing ovations. Many in this audience had seen him before but somehow, this was even more special. Magnificent.