A droning vocal line in a low register with bright high notes whiffling in counterpoint, all issuing from the same mouth—this is what you’ll hear from practitioners of overtone singing as cultivated in Indigenous cultures across the continents. A perhaps unlikely master of this ancient art is the South African-born Gareth Lubbe, who moonlights (or is it the other way around?) as a world-class violist and member of the string faculty at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany. Listen for Lubbe in Matthijs van Dijk’s Moments In a Life, the finale in this season’s Met Orchestra Chamber Ensemble six-concert series at Carnegie Hall’s upstairs chamber venue, Weill Hall. These events were among the Metropolitan Opera’s most distinctive innovations in the James Levine era. What with a roster of instrumentalists that shifted with the demands of the chosen repertoire plus hand-picked guest vocalists, Levine’s programs were a must for audiences hungry to explore repertory beyond the tried and the true. Happily, the tradition continues. Yes, two out of four pieces on the present occasion are known favorites by Brahms (Two Songs for Alto, Viola, and Piano, Op. 91) and Ravel (the spicy Chansons madécasses). But the bill also includes Bongani Ndodana-Breen’s Rainmaking in Memoriam Queen Modjadji, scored for a singular combo of flute, viola, harp, marimba, and percussion—and the van Dijk, scored no less adventurously for the afore-mentioned overtone singer, string quintet, clarinet, percussion, piano, and narrator. This intriguing program is one of five bundled as “Spotlight on the Music of South Africa” (October 25 to 29). Other headliners include the sensational jazz pianist Nduduzi Makhathini, the genre-defying cellist Abel Selaocoe with his Bantu Ensemble, the star vocalists Zolani Mahola and Jesse Clegg on a “double bill,” and the explosive Ndlovu Youth Choir. The Ndlovu, we’re told, is the first choir ever to reach the finals of America’s Got Talent. Africa’s got talent, too. —Matthew Gurewitsch