Written 26 June 2026
WOW – WOW- AND YET ANOTHER WOW!
We promised a concert out of the ordinary, and that is exactly what we delivered! Our Carmina Burana concert on Sunday was SPECTACULAR! A quick look at the Review page gives you a glimpse of the reaction of the audience. Standing ovation. Thunderous applause.
The atmosphere in the Linder Auditorium was ELECTRIFYING! People were on the edge of their seats so as not to miss anything! The pianists were brilliant – Carmina is not for the faint hearted it’s fiendishly difficult to play – the soloists were equally wonderful, Magdalene Minnaar never fails to impress and Van Wyk Venter, new to us, was phenomenal – his drunken abbot and swan about to be eaten were hilarious. The percussion section is of course vital to the Carmina and The Cross-sticks Percussion Group was superb; the choir was bristling with excitement and totally focussed on the task at hand!
The onus to make all this happen rests squarely on the shoulders of the conductor – and my-oh-my have we got a winner! Sue’s enthusiasm and energy is contagious! We all feed off it – even the audience. We were all part and parcel of this spectacular performance – we all worked in beautiful synergy to make this a Carmina Burana never to be forgotten.
So, what is next from your favourite choir? You know, with this kind of performances you could easily become addicted – and we’re sure our next concert will lead you there:
The Symphony Choir of Johannesburg
proudly presents
Antonio Vivaldi – Gloria
&
Ola Gjeilo – Sunrise Mass
Soloists: Sinesipho Mnyango (Soprano), Jacobi de Villiers (Mezzo)
The Phoenix Co. Orchestra
.Sunday 25 October 2026 @ 3pm
Linder Auditorium, Parktown
Conducted by Sue Cock
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist and impresario of Baroque music Regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, Vivaldi’s influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe, giving origin to many imitators and admirers. He pioneered many developments in orchestration, violin technique and programmatic music. He consolidated the emerging concerto form, especially the solo concerto, into a widely accepted and followed idiom.
Gloria: When the modern-day Vivaldi revival began early in the twentieth century, attention focused mainly on the composer’s concertos. Those were particularly interesting to scholars and musicians because of their influence on J. S. Bach. But then, in the late 1920’s their view of Vivaldi changed, when a large collection of his vocal music was discovered in Turin. Suddenly, he was much more than a composer of violin concertos. The Gloria, part of that Turin collection, received its twentieth-century premiere in 1930 and has remained the most popular of all Vivaldi’s vocal works ever since.
In addition to concertos, Vivaldi was asked to write a good deal of religious music for the accomplished musicians at the Ospedale della Pietà, the girls’ orphanage in Venice where he served as music director. In all likelihood, the present Gloria, in which all the vocal solos are for female voices, was written for the girls at the school. It is a setting of a single section of a mass, but it is almost certainly a complete work and not a fragment, since it was not uncommon to write individual mass movements for specific occasions.
Ola Gjeilo: The Norwegian composer and pianist Ola Gjeilo was born near Oslo in 1978, and after studying at the Norwegian Academy of Music he moved to New York City in 2001 to begin further composition studies at the Juilliard School, he then carried on his studies at the Royal College of Music, London where he received his bachelor’s degree in composition. He continued his education back at Juilliard and received his master’s degree in 2006, also in composition. Ola Gjeilo is one of the most frequently performed composers in the choral world. An accomplished pianist, improvisations over his own published choral pieces have become a trademark of his collaborations.
He grew up in a musically eclectic home listening to classical, jazz, pop and folk, a broad background he later incorporated into his classical composition studies at The Juilliard School, and the Royal College of Music in London. He is especially inspired by the improvisational art of film composer Thomas Newman, jazz legends Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny, glass artist Dale Chihuly and architect Frank Gehry.
Sunrise Mass: Ola Gjeilo is renowned for lush, cinematic choral works and evocative piano compositions blending classical, jazz, and film-score influences. Travelling from beginning to end aurally through Ola Gjeilo’s Sunrise, one could experience the full metaphorical journey from the starry Heaven to Earth, from undifferentiated darkness to solid, warm life, evolving spiritually as a human. The essence of the Mass includes not only the dark parts of the psyche, but also the entire spectrum of human emotion.
Gjeilo firmly believes his Sunrise is a journey in which, in his own words: The Self, having experienced each movement in the work, now has the perspective and understanding to peacefully contain everything it has gone through. Gjeilo further elaborates: The reason I used English titles for each movement in this setting of the Latin Mass has to do with the initial idea behind Sunrise Mass. I wanted the musical journey of the work to evolve from transparent and spacey to something earthy and warm; from nebulous and pristine, through more emotional landscapes, to ultimately solid groundedness – as a metaphor for human development from child to adult, or as a spiritual journey. The piece is also inspired by several movies and film scores from the past few years that I love dearly.
Listen to the Sunrise Mass here.
BUT REMEMBER – MUSIC IS ALWAYS MORE EXCITING IN LIVE PERFORMANCE.
This is a concert you don’t want to miss – it is going to be spectacular –
book now using this link.
Kind Regards
The Symphony Choir of Johannesburg