SHARON KATZ
South African Musician & Founder of The Peace Train
South African guitarist, singer and composer, Sharon Katz, helped make history by breaking through the barriers of Apartheid in 1992 to form South Africa's first 500-member multicult [+]SHARON KATZ
South African Musician & Founder of The Peace Train
South African guitarist, singer and composer, Sharon Katz, helped make history by breaking through the barriers of Apartheid in 1992 to form South Africa's first 500-member multicultural performing group. It's been a musical joyride worldwide ever-since.
Nelson Mandela kissed Sharon and called her creation his "vision of what the Rainbow Nation could become." To help spearhead the path toward a nonracial democracy, Sharon organized a 1993 country-wide tour with 150 of her musicians and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Dubbed The Peace Train, over 200,000 people attended the concerts and watched the live coverage on TV. When CNN filmed Sharon jumping out of a helicopter with her guitar to teach South Africans about the new voting process, she began getting requests for Sharon Katz & The Peace Train band to tour worldwide as South Africa's Cultural Ambassadors.
As a teenager during the terrible days of Apartheid, Sharon would hide on the floor of friends' cars and travel to their homes in the Black townships. Playing music together and sharing hopes for the future, it was here that she developed her African guitar picking style, later adding 10 African languages as well as West and Central African rhythms to her sound.
During the 70's when the political situation in South Africa was boiling up, Sharon expanded her ideas about the power of music. Living in a village in Lesotho, Sharon explored the role of music as a healing force and in violence prevention. Fine-tuning her craft with a Master's degree in Music Therapy from the United States, Sharon earned a reputation for "converting gang members into band members" in communities, schools and prisons.
Honored with a commission to orchestrate traditional African songs as well as her own compositions, Sharon created historic, transcontinental productions fusing the music and choreography of her band and the National Theatre of Ghana's dance company with the classically-trained Ghana Symphony Orchestra, the traditional African Orchestra of Ghana, and the Natal Philharmonic Orchestra, astounding the critics.
U.S. highlights include performances for Carnegie Hall, The Getty Museum in Los Angeles, New Orleans Jazzfest, Harlem, Dis
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