#Time - National Arts Festival

#Time is brought to you by the Standard Bank Ovation award-winning ensemble PentaFusion. It is a collection of original compositions for flute, violin, and jazz trio that delves into the fluid and elusive nature of time through the language of jazz-fusion. PentaFusion is known for their bold experimentation and genre-blurring sound, and with #Time, the musicians have once again pushed the boundaries of musical expression. 

At first glance, time, much like music, seems like the sort of thing you can trust. It ticks along steadily, never faltering — until Einstein waltzes in with his theory of relativity and casually drops the bombshell that time isn’t as reliable as we thought. Instead, it’s as unpredictable as a cat on catnip, refusing to follow simple rules. Time doesn’t flow in a smooth, straight line the way we often imagine. It behaves more like a trickster — shifting and warping depending on your speed, your perspective, or the pull of gravity around you.

Time is an illusion, delightfully absurd, the perfect playground for musicians — as fluid as melody itself, ready to be reshaped and reimagined. It can slow down, speed up, and sometimes even be suspended altogether. As a listener, you may find yourself lost in a piece of music, wondering where the steady beat went, or whether the musicians have lost it. You begin to question whether you're truly hearing what you think you are — or if it's just an elaborate ruse your brain, ever so politely, chooses not to confront.

But does it matter? Music and time, like life itself, are rarely as straightforward as we wish. Yet in their complexity and unpredictability, we stumble upon true treasures — the depth, growth, and sheer beauty of embracing uncertainty. It is within these shifting rhythms and bends in time that we discover what it truly means to experience something profound.