The Sunday Soirée sets new trends

Since 2023, the Sunday Soiree has established itself as a unique music entertainment platform built around a firm belief in elegance and artistic excellence.

The Sunday Soiree went a notch higher when it played the first Afro-house orchestra at Umodzi Park in Lilongwe, dubbed the Sunday Soirée AU-RCHEST-RA.

The event placed a full live orchestra band, vocalists, instrumentallists and DJs on one stage to perform Malawian music arranged for symphonic scale.

Lord Timmy and Nathaniel Chakuchalu. | Courtesy of Sunday Soiree

The event brought together the duo of Lord Timmy and Nathaniel Chaluchalu, The New Apostolic Church Orchestra, The Joyful Souls, Temwah, Tay Grin, Dziko la Rei, Ishiu, SMPH Music, Cyphen, DJ Enzo, Titus Mizaya, Judah, TY Frequency and Flipp.

The Sunday Soirée stage built from scratch with engineering precision, which provided another attraction away from the performances.

In an interview with On The Arts, Sunday Soiree creative director Timothy Mtilosanje alias Lord Timmy said the performance was a first in the company’s history as well as for house and Afro house music in Malawi.

He said: “It is easy to write and harder to build. The symphonic arrangement is not a matter of adding strings to an existing record. The music had to be rewritten from the ground up, scored across sections, rehearsed in ensemble and then integrated with performers working in an entirely different discipline of live sound.

“What the audience heard was not a concert with an orchestra attached. It was one continuous evening in which one form of music moved into another without the seams showing.”

Mtilosanje said beyond what they are producing artistically, they are also priding in being a youth-funded Malawian company which has earned the support of the corporate world in its engagements.

“It is also a signal to every other creative business in the country that this kind of backing is possible and to every other institution that it can be done,” he said.

The Sunday Soirée AU-RCHEST-RA was sponsored by FDH Bank plc and Ekhaya Farms Foods and produced in partnership with Kweza Arts, BCA Travel and Ketase Group.

Mtilosanje said of the support: “Corporate sponsorship of the arts here has tended to attach itself to formats that have already proven they work, at a scale that carries no risk. What FDH Bank and Ekhaya Farms Foods did was different in kind. They underwrote an untested format from a small company, before any evidence existed that a Malawian audience would turn out for a symphonic Afro-house production.”

A Lilongwe-based entertainment enthusiast Ethel Phiri said the cultural production that the Sunday Soiree is bringing out has the potential of an export product.

“They are generating employment across skill levels and creating demand in adjacent sectors, most visibly in fashion. The event of this scale demands that hundreds of guests engage Malawian designers and tailors to have their clothes made,” she said.

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