Festival concert orchestra host free community concert

The Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival (SICMF) is running at the US Konservatorium from Friday July 5 to Sunday July 14, with the SICMF hosting a special free community concert in Klapmuts this coming Sunday.

A new initiative in 2017 saw the Festival Concert Orchestra performing at a community centre in Khayelitsha on the penultimate day of the SICMF. The 2018, 2019 and 2022, FCO community concerts were held respectively in Cloetesville, Jamestown and Macassar.

The 2023 community concert, held at the Silvertown Auditorium in Athlone, was a great success in terms of the opportunity created for the members of the Festival Concert Orchestra as well as the local community. Audience attendance figures were not recorded as there were no tickets (free entry), but Festival Director, Peter Martens, was in attendance and counted well over 250 audience members, considerably more than in previous years.

At the first SICMF in 2004, a conscious decision to consolidate the concerts and other SICMF events in the Stellenbosch Konservatorium building was made. This was a deliberate decision to bring students, faculty and audience from all walks of life into a building with world class music making facilities that was for many year’s during the Apartheid regime, ‘unwelcoming’ to a large sector of our population.

Although transformation at Stellenbosch University is still ongoing, the SICMF has broken barriers. At the 2004 SICMF, 4% of the student participants were students from the previously disadvantaged communities. Last year, in a completely unforced way 57% of the SICMF student participants were from these areas.

Festival Director, Peter Martens, says, “the introduction of the Festival Concert Orchestra community concert in 2017 was not only to create an opportunity for the members of this orchestra to perform a second concert under the auspices of the SICMF, but an acknowledgement of the fact that we still have poorer communities right on the doorstep of Stellenbosch University, and these people also deserve to share in the joy and comradery that our music making brings.”

The concert in Klapmuts on Sunday July 14, will be with conductor Simeone Tartaglione. He currently holds a number of positions in the USA including at the Catholic University in Washington DC, Music Director of the Delaware Youth Symphony Orchestra, Conductor of the Symphony at the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras at Strathmore Hall and Artistic Director of Musica Viva Kentlands.

The concert will be hosted at the Klapmuts Primary School and starts at noon. Entry is free.