At last year’s TEDxAmsterdam Alban Wesly shared a short history of his unique all reed instrument ensemble. The Calefax Quintet musically materialised on stage as they assembled their instruments while playing them. Alban joked that it’s a matter of good time management. The five-piece made up of an oboe, a clarinet, a saxophone, a bass clarinet and Alban Wesly’s own bassoon blew the day to another level. At this moment Calefax is on tour in South Africa. But the night before they left, while Alban was disassembling his bassoon and packing his suitcase, Andrew phoned up for a follow-up.
Although the Calefax Quintet plays classical music, it is anything but traditional. In their performances they nearly always address the audience. It is one of the ways Calefax distinguishes itself from other musical groups. Alban says that it breaks down that little barrier people sometimes have towards classical music.
In preparation of his talk people kept asking Alban if he was nervous. Being the experienced musician that he is, he wasn’t. He is used to this kind of thing. He even declined the offered speakers’ training as he realised that it’s different when the talking bit is the main part of your performance. But the bassoonist had played the Stadsschouwburg before and like those other times it all came about beautifully. See for yourself:
Alban only saw the talks that followed his own. Lucky for him, one of those was Jorne Langelaan’s talk about the new age of sail, which made a big impression on him. “His facts and numbers about transatlantic shipping were very compelling. And his solution of building huge vessels with sails is a great idea.”
Currently Calefax is on a ten-day musical safari in South Africa playing many different venues in Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Johannesburgh, Pretoria and Durban. As you can imagine there isn’t much time left for sightseeing. But all the members of the quintet will get their taste of the wild. Alban explains: “We’re hosting a couple of workshops at local schools. Those will probably turn out to be very wild, because there will be over one hundred and fifty children attending them. The teacher has warned us that all the kids have brass instruments… because wooden instruments would not survive a week!” Let’s hope that they do.
Ending the interview with who he would like to see at TEDxAmsterdam 2011, Alban suggests Sieuwert Verster, the director of the Eighteeth Century Orchestra. “He is a great storyteller. I have witnessed him making speeches at dinners: just marvelous.”
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