SA: Young pianists claim SAMRO honours

Soweto-born Ncgapu, 26, was named the winner of the Jazz category and Prins, 27, from Riversdale in the Western Cape province came up tops in the Western Art Music category. The two will receive R200 000 ($15 500) each to further their studies. Prins will also receive R10 000 for the best performance of a prescribed work in his category.

“Congratulations Ntando Ncgapu on winning the main Jazz Award at the #OSchols. Congratulations Megan-Geoffrey Prins on winning the main Western Art Music prize at the #OSchols,” SAMRO wrote on its Facebook page.

The event, which was also a celebration of South African music and a rallying call to forge an authentic African musical identity, also honoured runners-up Nicholas Williams (jazz) from Cape Town and Willem de Beer (Western art music). Both runners-up will receive R70 000 each. Williams was also awarded R10 000 for the best performance of a prescribed jazz composition. “We are so impressed with all our semi-finalists and wish them all the best with their promising careers,” SAMRO said.

SAMRO also gave subsidiary awards to some of the 12 semi-finalists. In the Western Art Music competition, Lourens Fick, a master’s student at Stellenbosch University, received two subsidiary awards: the SAMRO/Flink Award of R30 000 and the merit award of R10 000. The SAMRO/Fishers Award of R6 500 went to University of Cape Town graduate Bronwyn van Wieringen.

In the Jazz category, Tshwane University of Technology student Teboho Kobedi scooped the R8 000 SAMRO/De Waal Study Award. Gauteng music professional Lifa Arosi won the R10 000 merit award, and University of Cape Town graduate Elizabeth Gaylord received the SAMRO/Fishers Award of R6 500.

For the first time, the event was live-streamed online on the SAMRO Foundation Facebook page. The finalists performed before a live audience and a panel of adjudicators.

Ngcapu performed works by Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea and Antônio Carlos Jobim, while Williams did renditions of songs by Herbie Hancock, Kenny Kirkland and the late South African jazz pianist Hotep Idris Galeta. Prins’s collection included works by South African composer Graham Newcater. On the other hand, De Beer did an interpretation of works by Scarlatti, Haydn and Chopin. Both finalists also performed a SAMRO-commissioned composition: ‘Catch Me if You Can’ by local composer Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph.

Meanwhile, former SAMRO scholarship winner Bokani Dyer’s rousing 'I Am', an African jazz composition based on the seminal speech by former president Thabo Mbeki, also premiered during the scholarships finals. In keeping with the I Am theme, SAMRO Foundation managing director André le Roux said indigenous African music – also referred to as IAM – would be the strategic focus for the SAMRO Foundation in the coming years.

Included in this is the development of the SAMRO Online Archive, a digital music portal that will enable South African composers’ scores to be accessible by a global audience thus supporting their work. Another SAMRO Foundation initiative is a project to document the region’s indigenous musical heritage by transcribing recordings of fading cultures into musical scores that will be available for analysis, performance and study throughout the world. This, according to SAMRO, will be carried out in partnership with specialists in the fields of ethnomusicology, composition and transcription.

“Through both the online archive and IAM projects, the increased global access and exposure to South African compositions will also translate into money in SAMRO members’ pockets,” Le Roux said.