Vitambo vya moyo

Anyone who has ever heard records by Dumisani Maraire or Abdullah Ibrahim knows that no other music can convey pure happiness like black African music. This pure happiness is also the subject of this fourth African suite. The special feature of this music is that it both describes the feeling of happiness and also brings it to life. But there’s another peculiarity: the feeling of happiness can change to sadness at any time.

Just like sadness can be transformed back into happiness. Which is why we sometimes find ourselves crying with happiness. This music lives off its simplicity and clarity, off the absolute restriction to pure major keys, and similarly off its metric and rhythmic liveliness and untamability. The clarity and simplicity of the music itself corresponds with the clear and simple sound characteristic of the recorder.

I have loved this sound ever since childhood. It was one of the best surprises of my life to find that this sound I adored so much went well with the music I adored so much. Like its predecessors, this suite is very European in terms of its dynamics, development and polyphony. When examined closely, it is a European piece on African music. I would like to thank the Ensemble Pipelife for commissioning me with the suite in 2008 and for wonderfully incorporating it into its Suit(e)case CD that same year. I really enjoyed writing the piece. Vitambo vya moyo is Swahili for „moments of the heart“.

This Version of Vitambo replaces the Great Bass Recorder with a second Bass Recorder - for those Ensembles who do not have a Great Bass Recorder.