Abel Selaocoe

Abel Selaocoe is a South African cellist who performs classical repertoire and his own music, often singing while he plays and drawing on the vocal traditions of southern Africa, including a low, rasping throat singing. He works with orchestras, with his own bands, and with musicians from West African and other traditions. In the coming season he appears with The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra alongside percussionist Sidiki Dembélé, and with the Oregon Symphony in a cello concerto by Jessie Montgomery.

Listen for a cellist who treats the instrument as a voice and a drum at once. He slaps and strums the strings for rhythm, bends notes so they slide rather than step, and sings over his own playing, sometimes in a growling low register that sounds like two people at once. Audience participation is common: he will often ask a hall to clap or sing a repeating line back to him. In Portland he plays a cello concerto by Jessie Montgomery, an American composer whose music tends to move in short, springy rhythmic cells with blues and folk fiddling inside them. In Saint Paul he shares the stage with djembe player Sidiki Dembélé, so expect drum and cello trading patterns rather than a soloist standing apart from an accompaniment.

Selaocoe grew up in Sebokeng, a township south of Johannesburg, and began cello there before continuing his studies in South Africa and then at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, where he has been based. He built a career that runs on two tracks at once, playing standard concerto repertoire with orchestras and leading his own groups in music that blends composed and improvised material with southern African song. He released the album Where Is Home (Hae Ke Kae) in 2022. He has appeared at the BBC Proms and with orchestras in Britain, Europe, and the United States.