Flute, marimba join forces for start to Classics performances

It’s time for the first Classics at the Castle Cultural Soiree at Richmond House, where Magdalena de Vries will enthral on the marimba and Malane Hofmeyr-Burger will accompany her on the flute.

This feast of music will be held at 3pm on Sunday February 17.

There will be works by Haydn and Bartok, among others, and a detailed programme along with a welcome drink which is included in the ticket price.

Kanna nominee De Vries is regarded as South Africa’s pre-eminent performer on the marimba. She has won a range of South African music prizes and two overseas scholarships, which took her to Japan as the first foreign student at the Tokyo College of Music under Professor Atsushi Sugahara. She obtained her postgraduate diploma cum laude.

She has also notched up several orchestral appearances in Covent Garden in London and at Cambridge.

After winning first prize in the Performing Australian Music Competition in London she was featured as guest soloist on a live BBC3 broadcast.

Back home, she has worked with the Cape Town Philharmonic and now performs regularly with the JPO and the Johannesburg Festival Orchestra De Vries’s first solo album,

was released in November 2013. Although she also has a full teaching and adjudicating schedule, she strives to expand the marimba repertoire by commissioning SA composers and promoting the classical marimba as a full-blown solo instrument.

Flautist Hofmeyr-Burger, chamber musician and teacher, like De Vries, is a stalwart of the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra. She comes from a musical family and started playing piano and recorder at the age of seven.

At 12 she took up flute studies and in 1987 completed her B Mus at Stellenbosch University, winning the ATKV Forté Music Competition and the Oude Meester Music Competition. She furthered her studies in Vienna and attended master classes with top international flautists like Shigenori Kudo, William Bennett and Trevor Wye.

Hofmeyr-Burger has performed as a soloist with all major South African orchestras, is a keen chamber musician and member of various ensembles (The Umoya Woodwind Quintet, the Sunset Serenade Ensemble, the Flute and Marimba Duo with Magdalena de Vries as well as Flute, Violin and Piano Trio).

As a member of the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra she has performed on stages all over South Africa, as well as Zambia, Mozambique, the Seychelles, Austria, Belgium, Italy and Azerbaijan.

Her classical and crossover jazz CDs and (with Hester Beyers-Martin) were both nominated for SAMAs.

Tickets at R90 will be on sale from Monday January 21 at Kowie News Agency.