SACM 3.62

The South African College of Music at UCT is considered to be the leading music school in South Africa. Additionally, it is the largest school and offers a diverse palette of degrees and diplomas in a wide range of disciplines including: African Music, Composition, Jazz, Opera, Music Technology, Western Classical music, Early Music and World Music. The College staff include some of the foremost and internationally acclaimed performing artists, academics and composers; our graduates continue to dominate the arenas of performance and academia. Some alumni who have excelled in 2013 include Pretty Yende (soprano) who has performed all over Europe, Russia and at the Met in New York, Pumeza Matshikiza (soprano), who is in great demand in England and Europe and has was signed up by EMI, James Baillieu (piano) who is professor in piano accompaniment at the Royal Academy of Music and has just been signed up by Holt Management, Levy Sekgapane (tenor) and Goitsemang Lehobye (soprano) who won the Mimi Coetzer prize and were finalists in ATKV Muzikanto competitions, Darren English (jazz trumpeter) performed in the jazz hot spots of America, Goldfish (Dominic Peters), who have performed internationally, and Musa Ngqungwana (baritone) who performed leading roles in America, to mention just a few. Our musicologists Prof Rebekka Sandmeier delivered papers in Muenster, Germany. Prof Bruinders and Dr Anri Herbst both delivered papers in Greece. Prof Franklin Larey was director at Adamant Summer School in Vermont. This includes performances at Carnegie Hall. Prof Farida Bacharova (violin), Prof Albie van Schalkwyk (piano) and Prof François du Toit continue to enjoy active performing careers. In 2014, George Stevens (baritone) was appointed to the singing staff.



The college has introduced two new courses – Music Technology and Early Music and Historically Informed Performance (HIP).

The South African College of Music launched an initiative to expand the existing Music Technology programme and infrastructure. At undergraduate teaching level, Music Technology courses have been implemented as part of the BMus General degree. The course content is theoretical and vocational in nature. Therefore, the trajectory that is followed encompasses the fundamentals of sound wave generation, propagation and manipulation, culminating in audio recording practices. These activities are currently housed in the Music Technology Sound Laboratory, and it is foreseen that the recording facilities at the SACM will continue to expand over the course of the next years.

During the past years a number of initiatives in the field of early music and historically informed performance have been set up at the South African College of Music, with the aim of making it a centre for performance and research in these fields.

Every year in the winter vacation (June/July) a course in Historically Informed Performance is offered to 4th year BMus students and occasional students from outside UCT. Several concerts by students and lecturers take place during the course.

In 2013, the College had a symphony orchestra, a symphonic wind orchestra, a string ensemble, a big band, a percussion ensemble, a flute ensemble, saxophone ensembles, brass ensembles, jazz vocal ensemble and chamber music ensembles.



During the course of 2013, the SACM staged 43 evening performances in the Baxter Concert Hall, six in the Chisholm Recital Room, one in the Cape Town City Hall, one in Bishops Chapel and two major operas – one in the Baxter Theatre (Don Giovanni) with the UCT Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kamal Khan, and the other in the Artscape Theatre (Barber of Seville) with a professional ad hoc orchestra. A further 51 daytime concerts were presented during the academic year in the Baxter Concert Hall and the Chisholm Recital Room. The year ended with 140 exam recitals in all genres, which were open to the public. The MusEd students staged a musical, using children from local schools.



At the beginning of 2014, the College of Music also presented its first concert collaboration with the Cape Town Concert Series with a recital by esteemed South African pianist, Anton Nel.



The evening concerts included three symphony concerts, two with internationally acclaimed visiting conductors Bernhard Gueller and Arjan Tien. Also two symphonic wind orchestra concerts, and ten gala evenings (for singing, piano, jazz, chamber and opera bursary competitons).



Two African Music concerts, with the orchestra of traditional African instruments – the Ibuyambo Orchestra - featured Mozambican Chopi Xylophone virtuoso Venancio Zango, who was the SACM’s artist-in-residence for the first semester.



The SACM staged three Big Band Jazz concerts, the Jessica and Bernard Lyon Jazz Prize and the SACM Jazz Festival, as well as collaborated with Ann Barr to host the Cape Town Big Band Jazz Festival, the marimba festival and the steel-band festival.



New compositions: new instrumental music composed by Martin Watt and Adrian More was performed in the Baxter Concert Hall. The UCT Symphony Orchestra performed the world premiere of Hendrik Hofmeyr’s Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra as well as a new overture by Andrew Hoole. The popular student composition competition, The Cone of Composition, coaxed fierce competition from the students.



Fifteen master classes were held in the various sections listed above, with visiting international musicians.



At the end of 2013, the SACM had just over 500 students. 70 graduated, including one doctorate, two masters and three honours.



The SACM houses the Kirby Collection, one of the continent’s largest existing collections of indigenous African musical instruments. The collection has recently been re-housed in a museum and research setting where, as part of their training, students are involved in documentation and research projects that form a vital part of the departments’ efforts to record and document Africa’s vanishing cultural heritage as well as emerging endeavours to engage musicians and researchers in a dialogue that embraces both older and more contemporary African musical traditions and expressions.