Concert review: Abel Selaocoe (cello) and Seattle Symphony/Giancarlo Guerrero

No attempt to describe a live performance by Abel Selaocoe can adequately capture the South African artist’s unique combination of musical imagination, spontaneity, charisma and generosity. His latest appearance at Benaroya Hall with Seattle Symphony involved more than a display of virtuosity – though that was in impressive supply. It also underscored the versatility of this multifaceted phenomenon as a cellist, vocalist, composer and sonic alchemist. For Selaocoe, to make music is not merely to perform: it is to invite, to elevate, to connect.

Selaocoe began with two pieces from his 2022 debut album, Where Is Home (Hae Ke Kae): Qhawe (Hero) and Lerato (Love). The pairing juxtaposes South African traditions such as overtone or throat singing with a serene, hymnal idiom he noted was adopted from Western European music. ‘Colonialism in those lands led to the collision of cultures’, Selaocoe said between numbers, ‘and we’ve been trying to live with it ever since – and to make it beautiful ever since’. 

A third number, Kea Morata (I Love Them So), offered a taste of Selaocoe’s forthcoming album, Hymns of Bantu, to be released later this month. Thrilling in its driving percussive energy, the piece complemented the first two with the more communal sensibility that defines the new album overall – which I highly recommend.

Throughout, he wielded his cello with what felt like expressive superpowers, transforming wood and strings into a drum, a voice and an extension of his own energy – interwoven with that of the ensemble.

Selaocoe was joined by percussionist John Hadfield, while the Seattle Symphony strings enthusiastically embraced the role usually played by his ongoing partners, the Manchester Collective. The joy they found in this musical dialogue was palpable, contributing to the jubilantly liberating atmosphere of the evening. 

The opening set had the aura of a ceremony, after which Selaocoe returned to share the front of the stage with Seattle Symphony associate principal cello Meeka Quan DiLorenzo for selections from the duo cello suite When We Were Trees by Sicilian cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima, a formative influence who has helped fuel his appetite for musical experimentation. DiLorenzo’s beautifully calibrated vibrato traded off with Abel’s relentless intensity and vivid musical gestures in Sollima’s exploration of a kaleidoscopic panoply of styles. 

Giancarlo Guerrero, nearing the end of his tenure helming the Nashville Symphony, was the guest conductor guiding the Sollima. He opened the programme with a luminous, movingly spacious account of Jennifer Higdon’s early breakthrough orchestral work, blue cathedral, her homage to a brother who had passed away.

Such was the resonance of Selaocoe’s contribution that a work as familiar as Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, which occupied the evening’s second half, seemed to invite new ways of listening. Guerrero’s interpretation was electrifying yet always proportionate and attentive to the composer’s rich palette of colours.

THOMAS MAY

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