Cara Stacey
Cara Stacey is a South African musician and researcher. She is a pianist and plays southern African musical bows (umrhubhe, uhadi, makhoyane). Beyond her solo work, Cara collaborates with percussionist and drummer Sarathy Korwar in the project Pergola and is a member of the Cape Town-based Night Light Collective. Released through Kit in 2015, her debut album Things That Grow - featuring Shabaka Hutchings, Seb Rochford, Ruth Goller, Crewdson and Dan Leavers - was a dizzying fusion of traditional South African instrumentation, modern jazz and electronics.
Her second album, Ceder, sees Cara teaming up with the groundbreaking Peruvian flautist Camilo Ángeles. Recorded live over a day in Cape Town, Ceder presents a narrative in turns soothing, shrill, euphoric, dissonant, serene - unfurling like a labyrinthine soundtrack to some foreign planet; a landscape sparse, desolate, yet somehow teeming with life. Recommended if you like the hauntingly isolated Western soundtracks of Bruce Langhorne, Keith Jarret's serpentine piano playing or the fantastical terrains of Rashad Becker.
Cara is also the ringleader of avant-garde quartet Stacey Juritz Ravens Keller, and presents Khashane!, a radio show focussing on indigenous music from southern Africa. She holds a doctorate in African music, specifically looking at the makhoyane musical bow from Swaziland (University of Cape Town/SOAS). Cara studied African instruments (mbira, uhadi, umrhubhe, budongo and makhweyane) with Dizu Plaatjies, Khokhiwe Mphila, Bhemani Magagula, Tinashe Chidanyika, Modou Diouf, and Andrew Cooke. She is based between London, Johannesburg and eSwatini.
