Our survey for 2011 is online and ready for you to contribute.
We’d like to know what you think about the course structure, international tutors, time of year, how many performances – and most importantly – what is the one thing that could improve Nationals?
There are ten questions, and it is completely anonymous. Please let us know how we can improve your National Youth Orchestra.
Link to the 2011 National Youth Orchestra Survey: http://goo.gl/rt2z3

A scintillating programme of South African works by Mokale Koapeng, Robert Fokkens and Peter Klatzow, as well as the Russian masterpiece, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, will showcase the talent of the top youth orchestra in the country as they share their love for South African music with the audience.

People speak (from time to time) of “transformative experiences”, moments of “rare clarity” — sometimes even invoking cosmic influence, with talk of “planetary alignment” and such like.  Probably the most over-worked — and thus ‘popular’ — phrase in talk of this kind is “life-changing” — one we are more than well acquainted with and have perhaps all, at one time or another, taken recourse in when searching for adjectives to assist in the description of particularly significant events or moments in that silken (or not-so-silken) thread of which our ‘time …

The classical music highlight of the decade is almost upon us. Opera superstar Renée Fleming’s long-awaited South African tour kicks off next Thursday, August 27, in the Durban City Hall.

We’ve uploaded photographs from the Sasol National Youth Orchestra Course 2009 – have a look: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationals09/