As part of the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival (SICMF), the Festival Concert Orchestra will be performing at a free concert at Klapmuts Primary School this weekend.
The 2018, 2019 and 2022, FCO community concerts were held respectively in Cloetesville, Jamestown and Macassar. The 2023 community concert, held at the Silvertown Auditorium in Athlone, was a great success in terms of the opportunity created for the members of the Festival Concert Orchestra as well as the local community. Audience attendance figures were not recorded as there were no tickets (free entry), but Festival Director Peter Martens was present and counted well over 250 audience members, considerably more than in previous years.
At the first SICMF in 2004, a conscious decision to consolidate the concerts and other SICMF events in the Stellenbosch Konservatorium building was made. This was a deliberate decision to bring students, faculty and audience from all walks of life into a building with world-class music making facilities, which was for many year’s during the apartheid regime, “unwelcoming” to a large sector of our population. Although transformation at Stellenbosch University is still ongoing, the SICMF has broken barriers. At the 2004 SICMF 4% of the student participants were students from the previously disadvantaged communities. Last year, in a completely unforced way, 57% of the SICMF student participants were from these areas.
Festival Director Peter Martens said: “The introduction of the Festival Concert Orchestra community concert in 2017 was not only to create an opportunity for the members of this orchestra to perform a second concert under the auspices of the SICMF, but an acknowledgment of the fact that we still have poorer communities right on the doorstep of Stellenbosch University, and these people also deserve to share in the joy and camaraderie that our music making brings.”
The concert is free and takes place at 12:00 at Klapmuts Primary school hall.
