German-born Ghanaian to head Symphony Orchestra

Accra, April 13, GNA - A German born Ghanaian, Mr Lahnor Adjartey Adjei has been appointed the Conductor/Director of the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) for the next two years.

Mr Adjei, 33, joins the NSO with a high pedigree in both practical and theoretical conducting, managing and teaching.


In an interview with the Ghana News Agency on arrival in the country over the weekend, the new conductor outlined a three-prompt overhauling mechanism aimed at transforming the aging orchestra to a modern one.


The includes: training workshop under the tutelage of Ms Lohbeck Bettina, a German Orchestral Teacher Conductor, youth development and inculcating into the main group and raising the profile of classical music in the country.


Mr Adjei said the NSO would also associate with educational establishment especially; tertiary institutions for the development and harnessing of talents which would offer the youth opportunity to interact and develop the enthusiasm in the field.


He said the hallmark of every professional is discipline, hard work and consistent training and adopting to challenges in his or her field. Mr Adjei said this would ensure that both performers and administrators of orchestra adhered to measures that could improve the work.

He said maintaining an orchestra was expensive and required massive investment in strings and other logistics.


Mr Adjei announced that, in this regard, he had acquired instrumental scores, orchestral seats and other classical musical instruments to augment the those of the orchestra.


On measures aimed at controlling, managing and maintaining discipline among the performers, Mr Adjei said he would exhibit the power of persuasion, energy, enthusiasm and discipline for the performance to follow.


He said "This is what classical lovers and the orchestra would see in me throughout the period."


Professional orchestra depends on tune, intonation, sounds; it is a hard job to get every thing perfect but we would move to achieve this objective".

Ms Adjei said the NSO would explore fundamentally new direction in African music composition, advanced its orchestral innovations to the classical level and expand the scope of permissible harmony with a change in the rate of harmonic version of contemporary African music.


He said orchestra improves upon the afro-centric systems of orchestrating African music, exploitation of indigenous sound sources and musical concepts as a framework of reference.


He assured classical music lovers of regular performance starting from July this year.