2010 is the inaugural year of the Song Company Young Artists Program and we are thrilled to be working with the next wave of Australian talent. This month, we talk to Jehan Kanga … a man of science, music and commerce and very much a man after our own musical heart.
Jehan is doing his honours year at university, completing a combined degree – not in music but science and commerce. His focus is “investigating new ruthenium based metal-organic frameworks with the purpose of finding new crystals which may store hydrogen gas safely and efficiently”. And here lies a whole other story. What is his passion? All of the above and music, music, music – old, new and helping everyone else who shares this passion. Last year Jehan co-directed the Sydney University Verge Arts Festival, helped various ensemble groups create business models and was a founding member of the Australian Youth Music Council. This year finds him at home in the Song Company and assistant to our own Artistic Director Roland Peelman.
So, why the Song Company you may ask? There’s the fact that he likes early music. Jehan performed with the Renaissance Players in 2007 under Winsome Evans and studied the baroque violin. There’s also a touch of California dreaming involved from a year where Jehan trained as a violinist with Janos Negyesy at the University of California San Diego. At the time, San Diego was fertile territory for new music compositions and no other violinist was quite as willing as Jehan to take these on -he tells us. Perhaps his scientific hat was also on, because he could see the evidence that these works had legs – something needed to be done. What did he do? “I formed my own chamber orchestra – Ensemble Con Brio, which was the first orchestra at the University in its 50 year history.” And so the leap from musician to artistic direction and organization began. Jehan returned to Sydney in late 2008 with “renewed ambition” and contacted Neal Peres Da Costa who ran the Sydney Conservatorium Early Music Ensemble. Although not a student of the Con., Jehan was invited to join the ensemble and here he dived back into the delights of early music. Of course he also found time to found his own ensemble group Barefoot Musica Antigua which had its inaugural performance in March 2009.
Like Roland Peelman, this young Artistic Director likes to keep many competing creative projects on the boil. In 2010, Jehan’s projects include a Dowland concert with a new group formed with the specific intent of giving budding professional singers an opportunity to sing chamber works. There are also two Renaissance Players concerts in the pipeline and a project where he will investigate some early French Baroque repertoire which has never been performed in Australia just before Christmas. All of these projects, an honours degree in science and a year with the Song Company. When asked why the Song Company, Jehan simply says:
“I have been a great admirer of the Song Company for many years after seeing part one of their three part Gesualdo Tenebrae project in the Sydney Town Hall. The mix of early and new music means you get the best of both worlds – with audiences constantly introduced to new sounds. Working with Roland is an absolute honour and privilege. To claim that he is one of the best conductors in Australia would be an understatement.”
Feel like following Jehan’s journey this year? Sign up to the Song Company Twitter and hear him tweet for you.
