Karl Lobi (b. 1998)
List of Works
Instrumentation: Alto saxophone, euphonium and tuba
Duration: 02:07
Premier information: Premiered by The Phax Trio at the Stellenbosch Konservatorium for KOMPOS.
Instrumentation:
2 B-flat clarinets, bassoon, tenor saxophone and piano
Programme notes:
Programme notes provided by composer:
A contemplative chamber work written in 2020 for
reed and piano quintet, based on a short melodic
fragment written by myself in late December 2019.
This melodic fragment along with its surrounding,
inspired by singer/songwriter Caroline Polachek from
her song “Hit Me Where it Hurts”, features syncopated
harmonies to create the sense of stumbling, falling.
This theme of being off-kilter is what drives the piece.
Instrumentation: Tenor saxophone and piano
Duration: 3:58
Premier information: First performance to take place on the 14th of July, Erin Hall, Cape Town. Performed by Josie McClure (tenor saxophone) and Seung-Ree Lee (piano).
Programmatic information:
Programme note provided by composer:
A work written for solo tenor saxophone and
piano, “Phambili” is an exploration of syncopation
and agility. Through a flurry of notes, the work is
written to invoke a sense of forward momentum,
hence the title of the composition: “phambili” is
the Xhosa word for “forward”.
With that in mind, the subtitle “ingoma ya ngomso” is a phrase which simply means ” a song for tomorrow”.
About the composer...
Born in the township of Gugulethu just on the outskirts of Cape Town, Karl Lobi is an emerging African non-binary composer. They grew up with music around them, having even been a part of the Orff Orchestra at their primary school, they officially began their trajectory into musical studies in 2010 with piano lessons in the suburbs of Kuils River. Although they had almost no exposure to a piano prior to their lessons in 2010, they managed to play their first official piano exam – ABRSM Grade 4 – in September of that year and pass.
Despite this jolting start, Lobi’s strengths always remained in music theory and thus decided to concentrate their abilities into composing, with ambitions of becoming a film composer and scoring for visual media. Going by they/he pronouns, Karl studied music at Stellenbosch University’s Konservatorium under the tutelage of Arthur Feder, completing their studies in 2021 with distinctions in both Orchestration and Composition.
During their undergraduate studies at the institution, they switched instruments from playing piano to pipe organ after their first year, something which the composer believes to have been instrumental in shaping their creative insight.
They also achieved recognition from music communities locally and abroad for their compositions. In 2017, their work “Gupti Aga”, which was a collaboration to help grow the repertoire of South African brass and saxophone music, was premiered by the Phax Trio at the university’s infamous Endler Hall.
They then went on to have their composition “False starts.” (2020) achieve second in California Baptist University’s 2021 Graduate Fellowship in Composition competition. Later in the same year, Lobi’s solo piano work “Ndahamba Ndabuya” was selected to be a part of the New Music Workshop curated by the South African Society for Research in Music.
Since graduating from Stellenbosch University, Lobi went on to obtain a sound engineering qualification at Cape Audio College in 2022, and graduated at the top of their class. It was during this time that the aforementioned
“Ndahamba Ndabuya” was performed by world-renown pianist Megan-Geoffrey Prins in virtual concert at the University of Pretoria’s School of the Arts in May 2022.
Currently Lobi is a freelance composer and sound engineer based in Cape Town, still pursuing their ambitions of working in film composition and audio production.