London-based Nigerian pianist, Rebeca Omordia, has said it took her five years to do research for her first album.
In a recent interview with Okay Africa, she discussed the prospects of classical music in Nigeria and how long it took her to work on her album. Rebeca who is also the Artistic Director of African Concert Series and the history of classical music across Africa also commented on Nigeria’s rich history of classical music which she embodies in her debut album ‘Ekele: Piano Music by African Composers’.
“Ekele is a result of a five-year research into the works of pioneering Nigerian composers Ayo Bankole, Fred Onovwerosuoke and Christian Onyeji. Most of the works were composed pre-independence in 1960 and in the years after, at a time when the country was shaking off the shackles of British colonialism while defining its own cultural identity,” Rebeca shared
A fluent pianist, Rebeca who is of Nigerian/Romanian descent, is classical trained in Eastern Europe and has a certain technical facility and a rythymical flexibility.
“It’s a great project that Rebeca has started and I commend her. There’s something else about playing music by someone that comes from the country of your fatherland. Sometimes there’s a familiar feeling that you aren’t even aware that you’ve got, until you’ve discovered it,” commented Chi-Chi Nwanoku OBE, the British-Nigerian double bassist who founded Chineke Orchestra.
Omordia is an alumnus of Trinity College of Music and Royal Birmingham Conservatory, where she has taught for the past ten years, Omordia has collaborated with a range of celebrated international musicians that include Julian Lloyd Webber, double bassist Leon Bosch, pianist Mark Bebbington, cellist Raphael Wallfisch and Chineke! Orchestra, the first professional orchestra consisting of majority black and ethnic minorities in Europe.
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