Internationally renowned performer, conductor and teacher, Leon Bosch leads Trinity Laban String Ensemble in a programme of music by three South African composers, marking 50 years since the Soweto Uprising.
On 16 June, 1976, more than 10,000 students from Soweto took to the streets in a peaceful protest against the apartheid regime. Police answered with shots. It was a spark that kindled into months of conflict, a turning-point in South African history.
Trinity Laban double bass professor Leon Bosch is the son of an activist father, and he himself was arrested in 1976 – an event that derailed his ambitions to study law, steering him instead towards music. Tonight, he conducts Red Ink, Shane Woodborne’s elegiac Soweto-inspired concerto which was written for his childhood friend Bosch in 2019, alongside Mokale Koapeng’s Malatsi A Bosha (Days of Thy Youth) and Gideon Fagan’s Suite for Strings.
