REwind: A Cantata for Voice, Tape and Testimony

Conceived and composed by Philip Miller with additional vocal arrangements by Mduduzi Mofokeng

Designed and directed by Gerhard Marx

Conductor/Musical Director Brad Wells

Inspired by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, REwind: A Cantata for Voice,Tape & Testimony celebrates the human spirit that rose above the atrocities of apartheid. This extraordinary international collaboration, initiated by Professor of Theatre David Eppel and with music direction by Williams Choral Director Brad Wells, features some of South Africa’s leading opera soloists and a chorus composed of Williams Concert Choir, Brooklyn’s Total Praise Choir of Emmanuel Baptist Church, and South African singers. Composer Philip Miller has built songs around audio samples of testimony from the actual TRC hearings. Designer Gerhard Marx illuminates the full power of the cantata with projected text and images through which the testimonies literally take form, enveloping the performers and erasing the space between victim and transgressor, between those who deliver testimony and those who listen.The result is a theatrical experience of unmatched beauty and power.

Commissioned by the ’62 Center for Theater and Dance at Williams College, Spier Arts Trust (South Africa), MASS MoCA, and the Celebrate Brooklyn Performing Arts Festival.