Dirt Road to Excellence: How to Find and Nurture Talent through Your Audition Process to Develop Talent in a Responsible Way. ~Renette Bouwer

Dirt Road to Excellence

My journey of abandoning traditional audition methods, finding new pathways to source and develop young, inexperienced singers from vastly different backgrounds and empower them through simple, yet effective listening skills to grow vocally.

The profile of students I worked with over the last decades changed dramatically. Young singers with solid music background and mostly fine reading skills were replaced by singers from disadvantaged backgrounds and pitiful lack of knowledge and/or experience. The methods I used previously (e.g. evaluating voice colour, sight reading skills etc.) became of no use for me. I realised that I needed to find innovative, unconventional, nonjudgmental ways of unearthing young talent.

In this presentation I will share audition templates and methods I developed over the past decade that enables me to find raw talent despite of complete lack of experience or music training. Video and sound recordings will be used to demonstrate the flexible, unintimidating audition process.

Since the process doesn’t end with the selection of the most suitable voices, the technical ground work of building vocal sound that should follow, will be discussed with practical demonstration.

Talent is everywhere. We just need to find ways to recognise it.

Dirt Road to Excellence: How to Find and Nurture Talent through Your Audition Process to Develop Talent in a Responsible Way. ~Renette Bouwer

Building bridges for the next generations of musicians through early child and youth development programs.~Thabe Matsebatlela

The children and youth in rural communities face the constant challenge of not being exposed to choral music skills and education to develop their creative arts potential. Coming from a rural community and having acquired music education locally and internationally, the focus was to serve Limpopo Province's and its communities' needs by establishing a world-class, equitable and sustainable performance arts and music programme with African Excellence.

The main mission was to establish a vibrant infrastructure suitable for a world-class performance arts and music programme that responds to community needs and nurtures and unearths hidden African talent. The ultimate goal is to launch and build a well-equipped Performance Arts and Music infrastructure that will be used by the community as a centre for training musicians and artists.

This will provide a centre with qualified personnel to host workshops for schools, community centres, art groups and choirs. This will ultimately create jobs by training and employing personnel to maintain a world-class arts building, keep it vibrant, and attract professional artists and musicians who will transfer knowledge and skills to the youth and capable members of the community. This has already started to bear fruit as international musicians travelled to share their knowledge and skills with our young communities. More than 30 young members have already received master classes on international visits, creating bridges and fostering high levels of musicianship.

Building bridges for the next generations of musicians through early child and youth development programs.~Thabe Matsebatlela

Seeding and Nurturing a Sustainable Choral Ecosystem – VOX Cape Town as a Case Study - John Woodland

While the core of any choir is its singers, its “musical family” extends to a much larger community encompassing composers, instrumentalists, those who host and promote performances, and, of course, the audience! Musicologist Christopher Small coined the term “musicking” to describe the process of combining the many aspects of musical performance and the varied relationships between the participants contributing to that performance.

This talk will describe how VOX Cape Town, since its inception in 2015 and arguably the Mother’s City's most active and versatile choral collective, has developed a sustainable choral ecosystem by fostering an engaged cohort of singers and a supportive audience, establishing collaborative relationships with composers and instrumentalists, and disseminating choral music widely through its recordings and on radio. VOX has primarily done this through its immersive, imaginative performances that span a range of musical styles and have explored innovative concepts such as wine-and-music pairings and singing in the dark. Critically, these activities are underpinned by an inclusive sense of community, keenly felt during the pandemic when regular in-person choral singing was not possible.

Drawing on the dozens of projects undertaken by VOX over the past decade, this talk will highlight lessons learned along the way and offer tips for choirs who wish to build an engaged and loyal following of singers and supporters.

Seeding and Nurturing a Sustainable Choral Ecosystem – VOX Cape Town as a Case Study - John Woodland

WHERE THE MUSIC CAME FROM: Compiling compelling repertoire for your choir year. ~Pieter Bezuidenhout

WHERE THE MUSIC CAME FROM: Compiling compelling repertoire for your choir year. ~Pieter Bezuidenhout