Wouter Kellerman via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from Wouter Kellerman:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Matrix
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Wouter Kellerman
- City: Johannesburg
- Country: South Africa
My Life & Work
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Bio:
Globe-trotting flutist and composer Wouter Kellerman received a 2015 Grammy® Award at the 57th Annual Grammy® Awards for his album Winds of Samsara, a collaboration with Indian composer and producer Ricky Kej. Winds Of Samsara reached #1 on the US Billboard New Age Albums Chart and also peaked at #1 on the Zone Music Reporter Top 100 International Radio Airplay Chart in the month of July 2014, winning both the ZMR ‘Album of the Year’ and ‘Best World Album’ awards.
Kellerman’s newest album LOVE LANGUAGE was released in August 2015 and debuted at number 1 on the World Music Billboard charts in its first week. Love Language draws influence from Senegal and Spain, Cuba and India, Greece and the United States. The album encapsulates the myriad ways that people connect on the topics of life and love — and the countless languages with which people speak of the universal connection that binds them one to another. In the spirit of Love Language, all proceeds from album sales go to the SOS Children’s Villages in South Africa.
Kellerman has also been recognised at home, most recently winning three SAMA’s (South African Music Award, equivalent to the American Grammy®) in 2015 to add to his previous wins in 2010 and 2011, reinforcing his status as one of South Africa’s foremost musicians. A true crossover artist, Kellerman thrives on experimenting with the shades, textures and colours that his magic flute is capable of painting, and creatively blending them with other instrumentation and vocal sounds.
Wouter has travelled extensively over the last few years, performing around the globe in places like Berlin, Shanghai, New York and Sydney, including sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York City and the Grammy Museum in LA in 2014. His 2012 U.S. tour included appearances at the prestigious Kennedy Centre in Washington DC, at Summerstage and Joe’s Pub in New York City, and at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Kellerman performed his composition 'The Long Road' - a flute solo for Nelson Mandela, - on Nelson Mandela Day in South Africa for a stadium of 80,000 people and a television audience in August 2013. He has also performed at the opening of MIDEM in Cannes, France; MIDEM is the world’s largest music conference and festival and Kellerman was part of a Department of Arts and Culture delegation, representing South Africa. Kellerman's 2013 album Mzansi spent 6 months in the Top 40 of the international ZMR charts, (peaking at number 4) as well as 18 weeks in the Top 40 of the CMJ New World charts. It won the 2014 IMA (Independent Music Award) Vox Pop award in the USA for 'Best World Beat Album'. Kellerman's debut album, Colour, enjoyed rave reviews, topped the charts and was nominated for a 2008 South African Music Award for ‘Best Instrumental Album’. Three of his albums - Colour, Two Voices and Mzansi - were mixed in Los Angeles by Grammy-winning engineer Husky Hoskulds. In 2010 his show ‘Kellerman Colour Live’ won the 2010 SAMA for ‘Best Jazz/Instrumental/Popular Classical DVD’. He followed his performance at the FIFA Soccer World Cup Closing Ceremony with concerts at the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz festival in Johannesburg and two performances at the Shanghai World Expo in China.
Passionate about teaching and empowering young people, Kellerman has sponsored the living expenses of ten children in the SOS Children’s Village in Ennerdale, South Africa for the past 14 years. He has also financed the building of a house in the SOS Children’s Village in Rustenburg, South Africa. For his continued efforts in helping give these children a better life, Kellerman was nominated by the SOS Children’s Villages for the Inyathelo Special Recognition Award for Philanthropy. He continues to also facilitate the teaching of young dance and music students in his country.
Wouter Kellerman started playing the flute at the age of ten, and in 1981 appeared as a soloist with the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra. He went on to feature in several South African orchestras, garnering numerous musical accolades along the way. Among these was winning the Perrenoud Foundation Prize during the 1997 Vienna International Music Competition.
Using his classical training as a foundation, Kellerman focused his attention on world music, exploring the versatility of the flute and fusing classical and contemporary sounds, resulting in a potent and thrilling musical encounter. He is taking his crossover world music to a global audience, having gained a solid following in his native South Africa.
His albums have been released in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, North America and in Australia, where he combined his release with a nationwide tour, including an opening slot on Johnny Clegg’s Down Under tour. Kellerman’s strikingly original flute-playing can be heard on the soundtrack of the Emmy Award-winning film, Eye of the Leopard.
Contact Information
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Management/Booking:
Manager: Tholsi Pillay
+27 (0)78 458 9090
tholsipillay@gmail.com
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Buy My Music (downloads/CDs/DVDs): http://www.wouterkellerman.net/store/
- ▶ Twitter: wouterkellerman
- ▶ Instagram: wouterkellerman
- ▶ Website: http://www.wouterkellerman.net
- ▶ YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/wkellerman
- ▶ YouTube Music: http://music.youtube.com/channel/UCbU2nGxzKA9SlkvUhZLUCNw
- ▶ Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/24uEWbIkkKQZwwld2s5crb
- ▶ Spotify 2: http://open.spotify.com/album/3bTjzitaB8C6riE6VrLFMr
- ▶ Spotify 3: http://open.spotify.com/album/0GGh40b4RJMZVpyZdbryLU
- ▶ Spotify 4: http://open.spotify.com/album/4P4rR06zS6ejDVhdmV5KRh
- ▶ Spotify 5: http://open.spotify.com/album/3thD8ds72ZUuiAxeJiEVtd
- ▶ Spotify 6: http://open.spotify.com/album/0YQWhJAoLIs6MMNDKJyQ2d
The world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging through New Orleans and Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... and Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
