UCT Summer School 2025 (20 January – 1 February) has an extraordinary series of musical events and other events celebrating 101 years of lifelong learning as part of the UCT Summer School! South African College of Music (SACM) highlights these five special treats.
Rising Stars in Concert: Opera UCT
Wednesday 22 January 2025, 7:30pm
Baxter Concert Hall
Join this showcase performance by a quartet of talented singers from Opera UCT, accompanied at the piano by their director, Professor Jeremy Silver. The programme is meticulously curated to combine popular favourites with moving excerpts from the rich operatic repertoire. The performers will also share insights about the music they perform.
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J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations
Thursday 23 January 2025, 7:30pm
Erin Hall, 8 Erin Road, Rondebosch
Bach’s Goldberg Variations, opens and closes with one of the most recognisable tunes in the keyboard repertory. This work, which was originally written for a two-manual harpsichord, poses a challenge for performance on the piano, despite the longstanding performing tradition on the instrument. Join pianist and musicologist Dominic Daula, who will share insights on these practical matters as well as the theoretical underpinnings of the Goldberg Variations. Following a short lecture, he will give a complete performance of the work
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One More Sea to Cross – William Kentridge
Tuesday 28 January 2025, 7:30pm
Baxter Concert Hall
William Kentridge will discuss his chamber opera, The Great Yes, The Great No and related film To Cross One More Sea. The chamber opera reimagines the historical journey of the ship, the Capitaine Paul-Lemerle which sails for Martinique from Marseilles in 1941 with artists and intellectuals on board fleeing Vichy France, including surrealist André Breton, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, Cuban painter Wifredo Lam, communist novelist Victor Serge and exiled German author Anna Seghers. The production is part play, part Greek choir, part chamber opera – all interwoven with Kentridge’s breathtaking surrealist visuals.
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Phases, Phrases, and Palindromes
Wednesday 29 January 2025, 7:30pm
Baxter Concert Hall
Composer Grant McLachlan has earned a reputation for turning conventional history of music on its head and encouraging audiences to experience concert-going in new and exciting ways, as will be done in this lecture-recital. Composers performed will include J.S. Bach, Joseph Haydn, John Tavener, Steve Reich, Arco Pärt, and Grant McLachlan. VOX Cape Town, conducted by John Woodland, is well known for its innovative approach to choral music. They will be joined by Lucia Di Blasio Scott on violin, Neil Robertson on flute and organ, and Grant McLachlan on piano.
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Mussorgsky ‘Pictures at an Exhibition
Thursday 30 January 2025, 7:30pm
Erin Hall, 8 Erin Road, Rondebosch
‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ is a piano suite in ten movements, written in 1874. It is a musical depiction of a tour of an exhibition of works by architect and painter Viktor Hartmann, put on at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, following his sudden death the previous year. Each movement of the suite is based on an individual work, some of which are lost. Join Professor Romero as he discusses and performs ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’.
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- NOT TO BE MISSED – one of the reasons Cape Town is Time Out’s Best City in the World for 2025
WHAT: UCT Summer School 2025 – Musical Events
WHERE: Baxter Concert Hall and Erin Hall
WHEN: See dates above
TICKETS: Webtickets – see links above
INFO: UCT Summer School 2025 VISIT | South African College of Music (SACM) VISIT | E music@uct.ac.za
See also UCT ANNUAL SUMMER SCHOOL 2025 – 20 January to 1 February
