vanderbijlpark - very boring town!

father was a minister in Dutch Reformed Church. died when i was 7 from cancer. mother a music teacher who raised four kids on her own - mostly while living in Brixton, Johannesburg

my father inspired me to improvise
my mother to take formal lessons
the changes in SA inspired me to leave behind the classical environment and let Africa breathe through me..

for 8 years i hitch-hiked through SA, owning nothing but a backpack full of essentials. often i pitched my tent next to the road, sometimes in harsh weather. i played on the streets on borrowed cello's to stay alive. this was great, but also hard. often chased away by security guards protecting the churches of money against art (shopping malls)

1 older sister, 2 younger brothers. all married with children. how weird.

no pets. i am a wild animal. pets won't survive with me

the joy of play, and seeing how something that comes out of yourself can surprise you (creativity!). also i am keenly interested in the world and human affairs and am inspired by the news, my travels and my meetings with people to communicate my vision to the world through sound and other mediums. yes, i'd like to see a healthier future for all of us. deep inspiration there.

Animals, yes, even though i am not a pet person. the underprivileged are also just human. i also take an interest in rich people. rich people are poor in many ways, also underprivileged. and poor people often have a chunk of humanity and great skills of survival rich people have lost. so i go around and learn from all.

Vorentoe Hoe"rskool, a very lekker skool. We lost all the sports events but always won the cheering cup.

Many things in my life points to primitivity. I am not a big fan of civilization. For instance, i always shower in cold water and no chemicals get near my skin - no soap, no deodorant and so on. ok, i do sometimes brush my teeth. i eat raw food mostly, mostly fruits and sprouts. and i discovered water last year when it healed me from a tooth abscess. i am a bad consumer and go bare feet whenever i can. i think commercials is pure propaganda and take away our freedom of choice. and finally, love to me is like a plant. it cannot be boxed in, unless you want to kill it. herewith ends details of my shocking personal life. ps. i love south africa to bits.

I grew up as a white person in Apartheid South Africa, being trained as cellist and pianist in the Western Classical tradition. However, as a very young child, my first musical stimulation came from my father who played by ear with no musical training. I also spent my early years in the hills of Kwazulu Natal, surrounded by the spontaneous harmonized singing of the local black communities.

While a student in philosophy and theology during the crisis years of the late eighties in Stellenbosch, the whole edifice of Eurocentric thinking came crushing down in me. This had a major impact on my musical career, which became based on spontaneous music making.

To me, the notion of spontaneity goes deeper than what is referred to as "improvisation." Like traditional African music, the art form becomes a means to the end of human connectivity. What I would like to present in my performances, workshops and retreats, is also an interactive exploration of how we can come together as humans through sound, in a context where both Western Classicism and African traditionalism have been deconstructed.

While we all retain a certain imprint of culture and conceptual paradigm, our challenge is to find means to evolve our thinking systems and art forms to not only reflect our times, but to connect the deeper and more sound roots of our common African heritage with the juggernaut of 21st century modernity.

Spontaneous Creativity, as I present it, hopes to be one way of contributing to this existential process, both individually and collectively.