When what has been described as "the European cultural event for April" opens in Rome next week, the Italians will have South Africans to thank.Artist William Kentridge will show Triumphs and Laments, a 550m frieze along the embankment of the Tiber River to accompanying music composed by Philip Miller, who works from a captivating eyrie in Kalk Bay, set between fynbos and sea.Miller, famously known for his film scores, has magically conjured a musical score to accompany Kentridge's parade of images, which cover the history of Rome in all of its brutality and glamour.The composer has worked as a largely unheralded musical wingman to Kentridge's artistic projects for 20 years.With his curly hair and round face he is a figure out of a child's picture book, and exudes the joy of someone who is doing what he loves.Surrounded by keyboards, computers, a Steinway and two woolly poodles, he says: "It is definitely one of the most exciting projects I have ever worked on. People are saying that it is the European cultural event for April."He admits to finding it scary. "I am terrified - not the music part, of that I feel confident; it's the logistics, lighting, amplification..." He shudders."When William said we have to have a concert to celebrate all this, I wanted to go with processions. William wanted two processions, typical William.One of triumph and one of lamentation."I love processions and the timing is right, it is Passover, the Jews' exile from Egypt, there are political processions but it was the more recent procession of European migrants that became pivotal to my composition."The result veers between exotic pain, murmurous despair and victorious celebrations, played by musicians from all over the world and with two South African singers, Ann Masina and Bham Ntabeni.His working method is, like Kentridge's, fragmented."I pull things apart, layer and deconstruct and change them into a bricolage of references from poetry to madrigals to voices inside a ram's horn - and even graffiti."He may conflate the chord of a single-stringed instrument, the squeak of an old bike, the keening of mourners or the resonance of a hundred Tibetan bowls being struck."However," he says, "In the end music lies beyond its melodies and harmonies, its rhythms and tone colours. Triumphs and Laments is all about spirit."..