The Stellenbosch International Chamber of Music Festival (SICMF) features Rebecca Tong, one of very few up-and-coming international women conductors to lead the Festival Symphony Orchestra in performance on Friday 7 and Sunday 9 July, respectively.
Since winning the First, ARTE and Orchestra prizes at the inaugural La Maestra conducting competition in 2020, Tong has conducted the Orchestre de Paris, Tampere Philharmonic, Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto, Orchestre national de Lyon and Manchester Camerata among others. The Indonesia native is Resident Conductor of Jakarta Simfonia Orchestra and Artistic Director and Music Director of Ensemble Kontempore.
The concert, on Tuesday 4 July, will open with a world premiere by New York-based SA composer Mikhaila Alyssa Smith. She has written extensively for film and television, supplying scores and orchestration for productions by Netflix, Disney, HBO and PBS. Lighting our Stories: Tapestries of the Invisible is a collaboration with jazz singer and songwriter Tina Schouw, whose life and work, and in particular her experiences and personal journey during South Africa’s transition to democracy, are being depicted musically here.
Allison Loggins-Hull is also a US-based female composer who has written for a variety of media, from television and film to radio and the concert stage. Her piece “Hammers”, for the unlikely combination of flute and percussion, will also be performed by Demarre McGill (flute) and Jauvon Gilliam (percussion).
Other high-profile women artists on the faculty include two top local violinists, Suzanne Martens and Farida Bacharova. Other acclaimed violinists and violists from abroad include Gwendolyn Masin, Jennifer Stumm, Frederieke Saeijs, and Karolina Errera. In the brass department, Stellenbosch University is represented by French-horn pedagogue Pamela Kierman. In the piano division, the international award winning pianist Anastasia Markina will perform Rachmaninoff’s grand “Trio Élégiac” on Monday the 3rd and Grieg’s much-loved piano concerto with the Festival Concert Orchestra on Saturday 8 July.
Of special significance is the woman whose brainchild the SICMF is. Nina Schumann, Artistic Director of the festival, needs no introduction to South African audiences. She deserves credit for the amazing line-up of artists as well as the spectacular programmes, and will perform herself on 1 July, with the Vaughan Williams piano quintet, and on 5 July, Taneyev piano quartet.
And among the 150 or so women in the student participant body is Colette Brand, who will attend with her string quartet. She said: “As a female string quartet based in Switzerland, the Eleas Quartet is building up a versatile repertoire which ranges from classical to jazz to contemporary music. We are very excited to make music together with the international artists and the South African students at the SICMF and are eager to see what the festival has to offer.”
The coveted evening concerts take place every day at 20:00 from tonight (Friday 30 June) to Saturday 8 July. The final concert on Sunday 9 July begins at 16:30.
- Tickets and additional programme details are available at Webtickets.
- For more information and the complete lineup of festival artists, visit www.sicmf.co.za.
