Staff Recital March 2018

The Beau Soleil Jazz Quartet performed a selection of Jazz standards is this staff recital. Items included Swing and Latin tunes by well-known jazz greats like Dizzie Gillespie and Thelonious Monk, and two South African items. One of these, “Grazing in the Grass” was composed by Hugh Masekela, a highly influential South African Jazz performer and composer. Masekela succumbed to cancer earlier in the year and it was performed as a tribute to his contribution to South African music. The other South African item was “Nants ‘Inkululeko” by Bheki Mseleku, an entirely self-taught jazz musician and composer. The Quartet featured Claire de Kock on saxophone, Victor Tichard on piano, David West on drums and Marc Röntsch on bass guitar.

Conducting Workshop

John Rojas, head of woodwinds, recently participated in the WindWorx Conducting Workshop where he was selected from a number of participants to conduct October by well-known composer Eric Whitaker for the final evening concert. Dr Richard R Fischer, Distinguished Professor of Music from Concordia University Chicago, was the visiting conducting teacher. 

Mr Rojas will discuss notes taken from the Workshop including interpretation and music making. This will be Wednesday 26 July at 5:30pm in the Minor Hall.

Musathon 2016

The annual Musathon took place on the 29th October at Beau Soleil Music Centre. This marked a big day in most of our student's calendars, many of whom experienced their very first public performances. 

Our aim from this event is to do fundraising for our Music Centre. There were various fun activities like a jumping castle for the kids and a tea garden for the adults to relax. There was also a variety of burgers and boeries to eat. We were spoiled with a perfect sunny day and music coming from every hall at the school. Audiences enjoyed performances of all our teaching staff and their students and what a joyful noise it was! Beau Soleil Outreach groups as well as the Ifidyoli project also performed during the mornings events. 

The jam packed day filled with music started bright and early at 09:00 and we finished the day with great success at 14:00. Thank you to all the parents , family and friends who supported us in this fun day. We hope to see you all again supporting your young performers in 2017. Public performance can be a daunting task for a young performer and it is such wonderful initiative to get our learners excited about performing for their family and friends at such an event. We encourage parents to come and join us for our Chamber concerts on a Wednesday at 17:30. 

Chamber Music Concert 2016

Beau Soleil had scheduled a Chamber Ensemble concert for the 2nd term and a separate staff concert with programme items from a recent school demo/performance. Due to limited evening slots available, we decided to combine the two concerts and the result was a great success. The student ensembles were a Piano Trio, a String Quartet, a Woodwind Ensemble and a Percussion Ensemble. The staff items were a Gliere duet for violin and cello with Elzahn Johnson and Maya Maile, a Handel trio for flute, cello and piano with Derek Fennell, Maya and Sandra Kettle-Loubser, a Beethoven trio for flute, violin and viola with Derek, Elzahn and Marina Louw, and a trio for vibraphone, bass and drums with David West, and 2 guests, Sheldon Yoko and Adrian Fowler. Due to the success of the concert, the Music Centre will be making this an annual event.