Derek Gripper Live in Greyton

ABOUT

Derek will play at High Hopes in Greyton on Saturday the 24th of April. High Hopes chef Sharon Peddie’s Spinach and potato curry served in rooties and with the best sambals! All included in the ticket.

1 May 6pm 

250 includes meal. Bring your own drinks. 

HIGH HOPES RETREAT CENTRE & GUEST HOUSE

89 Main Road

Greyton

7233

www.highhopes.co.za

060 82 80 884

Find out more about Derek here: www.derekgripper.com or listen to his music on all streaming sites.

It took Derek Gripper untold hours of painstaking work to transcribe note-for-note the complex compositions of Malian kora player Toumani Diabaté and find a way of playing them on six-string guitar. The results appeared on his ninth album, “One Night on Earth.” The album created an unprecedented meeting point between the written tradition of Western classical music and the oral tradition of the West African griots.

Critical acclaim was quick to follow. Classical guitar legend John Williams said he thought it was “absolutely impossible until I heard Derek Gripper do it.” Toumani Diabaté himself asked for confirmation that it was indeed just one person playing one guitar. Both invited Derek to collaborate with them: Derek performed with Williams in London’s Shakespeare’s Globe and King’s Place, and with Diabaté and his Symmetric Orchestra at the Acoustik Festival Bamako, Mali. He also played with Trio da Kali at Carnegie Hall and won a Songlines Award for the best album in Africa and the Middle East. Derek tours regularly in the USA, Canada, Britain, Europe, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Namibia, Australia, Malaysia, India and Mali. 

“Five stars… Gripper has brilliantly transferred [the kora] repertoire onto a regular six string guitar. He sees [Toumani] Diabaté as the Segovia, or indeed John Williams, of the kora, championing it as a solo instrument. And Gripper brilliantly takes it back to the guitar. He’s opening a whole new repertoire of classical guitar music… bringing African guitar into the classical mainstream.”

— SIMON BROUGHTON

“Gripper has cracked it… his playing has a depthless beauty, which does full justice to the complexity of Toumani’s compositions. To do so without any hint of the music being dumbed down is a staggering achievement on solo guitar.”

— NIGEL WILLIAMSON, SONGLINES MAGAZINE

“More than a labour of love, Gripper has brought a new purity to the dream-like improvisatory nature of these compositions. My recording of the year, so far!”

— TIM PANTING, CLASSICAL GUITAR MAGAZINE

“The result is astounding, not just for its technical brilliance, but its musicality. Gripper executes these pieces with the precision and attention to detail one might expect from a great classical musician… It’s hard to imagine a more impressive and passionate rendering of Malian music on classical guitar.”

— BANNING EYRE, AFROPOP WORLDWIDE

“A true synthesis and a great album.”

— IAN KEAREY, FROOTS

DIRECTIONS