Music Research Institute



 Bolga Sonata cover  Bolga Sonata score Bolga Sonata for Violin and Piano
Score by J.H. Kwabena Nketia


2024 edition by Roger Zahab.
Published by the MRI Press January 2025

39 pages, ISBN 978-1-933459-12-7

$19.95 per set plus shipping




Professor J. H. Kwabena Nketia as a preeminent composer of Ghanaian and African intercultural art music has received increased awareness from the global artistic community through performances of his works. He is the greatest Ghanaian composer of chamber works. Hence, there is the availability to gain access to scores of his chamber works that will increase their chances of being more frequently performed locally as well as internationally.

Roger Zahab’s creation of the score for this special edition of Nketia’s Bolga Sonata for violin and piano was published by the Music Research Institute (MRI) Press). Roger Zahab’s performance of the Bolga Violin Sonata with Robert Frankenberry, piano took place during a symposium Professor Akin Euba organized on intercultural African art music held in Cambridge, UK. According to Zahab, it was Euba who encouraged him to complete the transcription of the sonata, which he started when Nketia was alive, and even though Euba has also passed on, Zahab was committed to fulfilling his promise, which he kept.

Availability of transcribed scores of Nketia’s works and those of his contemporary Ghanaian composers of art music should encourage teachers and students of compositional techniques to intensify the study, mastery, and possible exploration of the stylistic idioms idiosyncratic of these composers and creators of intercultural art music in general.




[Home] [About Us]  [Intercultural Music]   [MRI Press]   [Publications]  [Purchasing Options]   [Distributor]   [Events]   [Memoriam]   [Contact]