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Category: Interview

The serious job of making you laugh

WITH HIS THICK head of hair that is more TV host than radio host, he’s the voice that the people of KwaZulu-Natal wake up to, see their blood pressures rise to the tempo of the news with, and enjoy chewing the cud alongside, once the children have been […]

Of Schubert and the guts to hang in there

“SHE’S A HARD taskmaster,” says career performer Andrew Warburton (60), with a half a smile, of his piano. He started playing as a three-year-old and has a long, varied and wonderful trajectory of playing, learning and teaching arguably the king of musical instruments. Above all, he’s an affable […]

Still Nouveau, but sexy

RECENTLY, THE CINEMA Nouveau complex at Rosebank Shopping Mall underwent a facelift. But this was no complicated structural reconfiguration. It looks, on a superficial level, almost the same, except for some nips and tucks and a bar which serves small meals around the corner. This is the wisdom […]

My heart belongs to Chopin

BECAUSE A PIANO is not the easiest thing in the world to transport, you may find it surprising that Israel-born pianist Amit Yahav, a fundi of the work of Frédéric Chopin, who visited South Africa last year and returns this month, spent most of his formative years travelling. […]

Films that last forever

WHEN YOU HAVE enough passion for something that is important to you, often the universe casts a fond eye in your direction and throws something your way to encourage you, even more. This was something that inveterate film-watcher Johann Botha (67), a semi-retired Pretoria resident experienced on February […]

Wit and mechanics of the holiday composer

IT WAS A music teacher in the early youth of composer Hans Roosenschoon (pictured) who suggested the boy write music for piano, instead of take the conventional route of mastering the instrument first. “I think it was out of desperation,” says Roosenschoon, this year’s composer-in-residence for the Johannesburg […]

How to step up to the plate

“IN MY NEXT project, I will be making a wildebeest out of 10 000 dried locusts that Wits University’s Zoo Museum curator has decommissioned and given me.” You wouldn’t expect a statement of that nature from anyone other than South African mosaic sculptor Hannelie Coetzee, whose work you can […]

Theatre to stay home for

“WOLWEDANS IN DIE skemer (the popular afternoon serial by Leon van Nierop) was my programme, as a child,” says Kobus Burger, executive director for drama on Radio Sonder Grense (RSG), South Africa’s Afrikaans-language Public Broadcasting Service, which is under the aegis of the SABC. “If I missed an episode, […]

Pearls from a mandolin

HISTORY WILL TELL you the mandolin’s popularity has wavered. It played second fiddle to the fiddle. And when the guitar came into fashion, the mandolin was subject to design modifications, forcing it to take a path less travelled. But good stuff always rises to the surface: When the […]