Surendran Reddy: 1962-2010

Pianist-composer Surendran Reddy died on 22 January 2010 after a long illness, in Germany. He is survived by his parents Y.G. and Leela Reddy, his brother Rajen, and daughter Leela. After the cremation ceremony in Konstanz on 4th February Surendran’s ashes will be flown back to Durban where his family are holding a private ceremony. Later this month there will be a public celebration of his life and work.

Surendran Reddy was a larger-than-life figure on both the South African and German musical scenes, a passionate exponent of a style of composing and playing (and theorising) that he called “clazz”, that mixes Western classical music, mbaqanga jazz, rock, and Indian classical music. He wanted to create musically a new kind of South African crossover that could not be pigeon-holed but embraced the best of many worlds, a musical aspiration motivated by his strong belief in political equality and artistic freedom.

He was widely known through concerts, broadcasts and CDs, including the two eclectic solo albums Reddy, Steady, Go! (1994) and Rough ’n Reddy (1996), which mix original compositions with arrangements and improvisations. He had a vast knowledge of music and was a great improviser in styles that went way beyond ‘jazz’. He was a brilliant teacher at the University of Durban-Westville in 1983-84, and after he moved to Johannesburg, at the Fuba Centre in the late 1980s to early 1990s, later heading this organisation. He also had many private students in piano, music theory, and composition.

Surendran worked with great musicians such as Sibongile Khumalo, Allen Kwela, and Johnny Fourie in South Africa and internationally Kiri Te Kanawa, and the Harlem Dance Company. His work as a dance composer-pianist began at Napac in the mid-1980s and his works were performed in Russia, Canada, the United States and Germany. Reid Anderson, Artistic Director of the Stuttgart Ballet and the world’s foremost exponent of John Cranko’s ballets choreographed Surendran’s Four Romantic Piano Pieces, which became a hit of the Alberta Ballet.

Surendran was often commissioned to compose pieces for competitions, for example he wrote Mayibuye for organ, for the 2001 SAMRO Overseas Scholarship Competition and Toccata for John Roos for the 11th Unisa International Piano Competition in 2008. In 1996 SAMRO commissioned Surendran to contribute to an oratorio addressing the Human Rights Treaty and intended as a gift from South Africa to the Olympic Games (Atlanta). His movement is entitled Masakane (Let Us Build Together) and the orchestral version was premiered on March 23, 2000 by the KZNPO in Durban. He has a long work-list, which can be seen on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surendran_Reddy#Partial_discography, and a website that can be visited on http://www.surendranreddy.com/.

Surendran was a child prodigy. He was brought up in Zimbabwe where he attended the Academy of Music in Bulawayo and won a scholarship at the age of 15 to study at the Royal College of Music, London. His teachers at RCM were Bernard Roberts and Yonty Solomon (piano), George Malcolm (harpsichord), Virginia Pleasants (forte piano), and

Anthony Milner (harmony and counterpoint). He completed a BMus Hons at the University of London in 1981 and embarked on Masters degree at King’s College that he could not complete because of visa problems. He came back to South Africa in 1983 to take up a Lectureship in music theory at the University of Durban-Westville. Among the many awards he received were 1st prize in the Royal Overseas League International Competition 1979, London, the Raymond Russell Prize for harpsichord (1981), Hilda Andersen Deane Prize for clavichord (1982) and Arthur Bliss Memorial Prize for best all-round musicianship (1982) – all at the Royal College of Music, London. He won 1st prize in the 1985 South African Broadcasting Corporation keyboard competition in piano and harpsichord categories: the first time this had ever occurred.

Surendran performed many piano concertos, including Shostakovich 2 (London, 1981), Frank Martin’s Concerto for Harpsichord (Johannesburg, 1985), Shostakovich 1 (Cape Town, 1986), Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand (Durban, 1987), Bartok 3 (Durban, 1989), Beethoven 4 (Bloemfontein, 1991), Prokofiev 3 (Johannesburg, 1992), Gershwin’s Concerto in F (Johannesburg, 1992), Mozart K466 (Cairo, 1995), and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (Stellenbosch, 1998). He also made regular appearances with NSO for Johannesburg ‘Pops’ concerts. He ran the band Channel 18, performed at inter alia the National Festival of the Arts (Grahamstown), the KKNK (Oudtshoorn), the Dana New Music Festival (Youngstown, USA), the Aachener Kulturtage (Aachen), the ‘Harmonie’ jazz club (Bonn), the Zeltfestival (Konstanz) and on radio for Deutsche Welle (Cologne). In 2005 he toured South Africa with tabla player Florian Schiertz.

Active on the executive committee of the South African Musicians’ Alliance during the apartheid years, Surendran was also a member of SAMRO, the South African Composers’ Guild, and New Music SA, and was an adjudicator at the Roodeport International Eisteddfod, SAMRO Overseas Competition, and UNISA’s piano and organ competitions. His contribution to South African music and musical life will be remembered with affection and admiration, as will his wonderful sense of humour, artistic irony, and that posh upper-class British accent he sported (he liked to called himself Sir Rendran, with a twinkle in his eye). He was a perfectionist, sometimes too big for us to see and too hot to handle, and he lived ten lives in the span of 47.

Christine Lucia