The Showroom Theatre presents a solo piano concert by composer and pianist Christopher Culpo on Saturday, 12 September 2026 at 19:00, marking a rare South African appearance for the Franco -American musician on his current tour of the country. The performance is his only scheduled date in the Karoo.
The evening’s program moves between Culpo’s own work and familiar jazz standards, featuring pieces by Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk alongside selections from his own catalogue of jazz,
chamber, and improvised compositions.
ABOUT THE SHOWROOM THEATRE
The Showroom Theatre, an art deco, live performance venue in Prince Albert, in the Western Cape’s Karoo region, hosts music, theatre, dance, movies and touring acts to the local and visiting community. It is owned by the Prince Albert Community Trust and run as a training hub for local young people.
BIO
Culpo’s artistic range spans contemporary jazz, contemporary classical music, and free improvisation. He holds composition degrees from Boston University and The Juilliard School, where he studied
under Milton Babbitt, David Del Tredici, and Charles Banacos, and his catalogue extends from chamber and symphonic works to vocal and operatic pieces and scores for dance, theater, and silent film. After Juilliard, Culpo served as personal assistant to Aaron Copland and as a Teaching Artist for the Lincoln Center Institute. A 1991 Fulbright scholarship brought him to Paris to work with Tristan Murail, and he has lived and worked in Europe ever since. His performing career has taken him to the Cluny Jazz Festival, Jazz at Domergue, and Rhino Jazz in France; the Blossoms Festival in Belgium; the Old Town House, the Athol Fugard Festival in Nieu Bethesda, and the Forge in South Africa; Club Borgo and Sestri Jazz in Italy; the Radar Festival and EuroJazz in Mexico; the Adelaide Cabaret Festival and the Sydney Opera House in Australia; and the Festival Christchurch in New Zealand.
As a recording artist, Culpo has released Portrait in Black & White with saxophonist Jean-Charles Richard; Love & Bananas Are Here with the Culpo-Richard-Herbert Trio; two albums with the Fresh
Frozen Trio, featuring clarinetist-saxophonist Achille Succi and tuba player Glauco Benedetti; Live in Cremona and the two-volume Golden Hand Sessions in duo with Succi; and The Spectral Life of Things and Mimesis in duo with Irish saxophonist Catherine Sikora. His composition After Midnight, Before Dawn was praised by The Washington Post as “a strikingly vivid work that explores the elusive worlds of sleeping and dreaming, to hallucinogenic effect.”
Culpo’s honors include the 2012 Clefworks composition prize, for which his Of Ground, or Air, or Ought was premiered by the ETHEL quartet in Montgomery, Alabama; a 2013 Radio France commission to Murmurations for the National Orchestra of France; and second prize in the 2019 Uuno KlamiComposition Competition for Mundus Imaginalis, for piano and string orchestra. His music is published by Les Editions Le Chant du Monde and Editions Musicales Contemporain.
Café Bar available for drinks before and after the concert. ENJOY!
WHAT: Christopher Culpo, Solo Piano Concert
WHERE: The Showroom Theatre, Prince Albert, Western Cape
WHEN: Saturday, 12 September 2026 at 19:0
BOOKING: Tickets: R150, available via Quicket or at the door (card payments only)
INFO: General enquiries E info@theshowroomtheatre.co.za · T +27 23 007 0050 VISIT | The Showroom Theatre · +27 82 419 6990 ·E irma@theshowroomtheatre.co.za
