VOX Cape Town

18/05/2026

📣 We are looking for four passionate singers—a high soprano, an alto, a baritone and a bass—to join our team! 🎵 If our musical vision and projects resonate with you, please get in touch with us right away! 💌 [email protected]

17/05/2026

📣 Listen back to the full live recording of our 'Lobgesang' THIS EVENING (Sunday) at 7 PM (SAST) on Fine Music Radio's 'Sunday Symphony' with John Woodland. Make a date and join us later! FMR can be streamed from anywhere via www.fmr.co.za 🎧

Tonight: Fine Music Radio’s Sunday Symphony at 7 pm, features a live recording from the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2026 Autumn Concerts in the Cape Town City Hall. Presented by John Woodland, (who also performs with Vox Cape Town in this concert). These broadcasts are possible thanks to the financial support of the Rupert Music Foundation.
SONG OF PRAISE
Conductor: Nicholas Chalmers
Viola: Petrus Coetzee
AfriArts Chorus and Vox Cape Town
CPYWE curtainraiser
Beethoven: Egmont Overture, Op. 84
Bartók: Viola Concerto
Mendelssohn: Symphony No. 2, Op. 52, “Lobgesang”

11/05/2026

Our priority will always be creating immersive live performances, but we're equally passionate about contributing to broader conversations around the role and impact of choral singing in South Africa 🎶✨🌍📚

In 2024, Dr Thea Lamprecht from Stellenbosch University interviewed several of our singers and joined us for two rehearsals as part of her research project exploring how local choirs create spaces for connection, learning, mindfulness and emotional expression. Her findings, now published in the peer-reviewed journal 'Emotion, Space and Society', reflect on some of the values that shape VOX—fostering a caring community, growing new audiences for choral music, creating spaces for emotional fulfilment, and engaging thoughtfully with the wider social and societal contexts in which we perform 🧠🎵🤝

📖 The open-access article is freely available here—we'd love to hear your thoughts! 💬 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1755458626000113

05/05/2026

We are very proud of our Imanagineer ('imagineer' + 'manager' 🌈💡🧠) Kyle Paulssen who once again represented us at the Choral Celebration Network's premier annual event for choral conductors, the Mzanzi Conductors' Convention, at the City Hall in March.

Leveraging his experience in clinical anatomy, Kyle delivered an oral presentation entitled 'The Science of Singing: An Anatomical Exploration of the Human Voice'. We hope to develop this into a future workshop for our singers and for others in the choral community! 🫁🗣️

30/04/2026

"Science and life cannot and should not be separated..." 🧬 Bringing the double helix to life at the UCT Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine with a DNA Day-themed performance of Cecilia McDowall's 'Photo 51'—a powerful musical tribute to Rosalind Franklin 👩‍🔬

29/04/2026

In celebration of 'DNA Day' last week—marking the day in April 1953 when three groundbreaking papers published in the prestigious scientific journal 'Nature' revealed the molecular structure of DNA—the voices of NanoVOX filled the Wolfson Pavilion Foyer of the UCT Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine at the UCT Faculty of Health Sciences 🔬🎵

In his capacity as an IDM Fellow, John presented a lunchtime talk introducing a striking new vocal work by Cecilia McDowall inspired by Photo 51, an extraordinary X-ray diffraction image produced by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling that was pivotal in uncovering DNA's double helical structure 🧬 Scored for SSATB, the piece weaves fragments of Franklin's own words into the music. The presentation reflected on her contribution to the discovery and celebrated the broader role of women in shaping modern science—revealing an unexpected connection to Cape Town! 🌍

Following VOX's performance at the South African Astronomical Observatory last year, this event marked another step in our ongoing exploration of interdisciplinary collaboration—bringing the arts and the sciences to connect perspectives, reframe narratives and spark new ways of thinking... An experiment worth conducting, one might say! 🧑‍🔬✨ (📸 Kathryn Wicht)

23/04/2026

"I was quite unprepared for the rays of sunshine that flew off the stage from the two combined choirs in the Mendelssohn Second Symphony. The AfriArts Chorus (under Siphosethu Anthony Gxako) and VOX Cape Town (under John Woodland) combined made an absolutely thrilling sound. Strong altos and tenors made for intensely satisfying voice-leading work—something Mendelssohn was particularly good at, and the sopranos produced consistent bullseyes with all the high-note targets." 🎯

We're still glowing after reading Albert Combrink's generous reflections on our performance of LOBGESANG with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra last week, capturing exactly what our choral partnership with AfriArts felt like from the inside! ✨🎵 Thank you to everyone who shared this bucket-list evening with us and, as always, to Domenic Gorin for capturing its magic so vividly! 📸

17/04/2026

✨🎺 Last night, we had the tremendous privilege of sharing the City Hall stage with our new friends in the AfriArts Chorus and the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra under the inspiring leadership of Nicholas Chalmers. Together with soloists Jason Atherton, Siphamandla Moyake, Nobulumko Mngxekeza and Zorada Temmingh, we gave proudly Capetonian voice to Mendelssohn's magnificent symphony-cantata LOBGESANG for the first time this century! ⭐

Bravo, too, to Petrus Coetzee for his Bartók Viola Concerto and the young musicians of the Cape Town Philharmonic Youth Wind Ensemble under Charlene Verster. Many thanks to Joan Ward for these beautiful photographs—and to our imagineer Kyle Paulssen for adding that special "VOX touch" to this magical evening 🎆🌸

14/04/2026

✨ From darkness into light… This week, we bring Mendelssohn's magnificent symphony-cantata LOBGESANG to life—a thrilling fusion of orchestra and voices written to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Gutenberg's printing press in 1840 📖 First performed in St Thomas Church in Leipzig—where JS Bach had served as music director—the work reflects both Bach's influence and Mendelssohn's role in reviving his music 🎵

🎺 LOBGESANG opens with a noble trombone fanfare that recurs throughout, before giving way to a lighter scherzo and a lyrical slow movement. The entry of the voices marks a turning point, as the opening motto returns in a proclamation from Psalm 150—"Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord"—leading into a sequence of contrasting vocal movements, ultimately culminating in a brilliant choral finale in which the voices and orchestra unite in a triumphant expression of praise! 🙌

🎻 In preparation for our performance with Nic Chalmers, the AfriArts Chorus and the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra on Thursday, listen to our favourite recording led by Jun Märkl! https://open.spotify.com/album/2KCUKEdeVyDRrz7YziJjW1