In the face of dwindling or no sponsorship from national, regional and local government for the performing arts, it’s really good news Alexander Valentin (pictured left) has embraced the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra’s Composers’ Competition and an exchange of students between youth orchestras as a place to put his support, says PETA STEWART:
Alexander Valentin is a German lawyer, investment consultant in Germany and South Africa, and a businessman, with connections with this country (and a hotel) for more than 20 years. He chose to invest in the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra and its goal to prepare musicians for the future because he is committed to music as a life force to enhance the wellbeing of disadvantaged children.
“The CPO has a track record of doing this through its vast education projects, its transparency and its reporting structures,” he says. “I have attended CPO concerts and rehearsals of the Cape Town Philharmonic Youth Orchestra (CPYO) and decided this is where I want to become involved. I have seen for myself how music enriches lives, empowers children to take stock of where they are and take advantage of the opportunity to carve out careers. Such support enables young people to grow, to gain a feeling of self-worth as they get to grips with the value of performance and the pride that goes with it as their families and communities support them too. So I established the Alexander International Music Awards (AIMA) to deepen and broaden the involvement and reach more people without access to classical music.”
The first part of AIMA is the collaboration between the CPO/CPYO and the Young North-German Philharmonie (jnp), which is one of the foremost youth orchestras in Germany. Four musicians from the CPYO (pictured below) attended the summer camp of the jnp in July 2023, and four musicians from the jnp are coming to Cape Town to perform with the CPO in the Composers’ Concert and in a community concert in Ocean View.
Secondly AIMA sponsors the Alexander SA Composers’ Award in South Africa and in Germany. Both competitions are for young composers not established ones and all works were not performed before the closing date. The South African winner will have his or her work performed at a concert in Germany, and the winner of the Germany competition, a Chinese student in Germany, Yixie Shen, will have her work, Smoke, premiered at the composers’ competition finals concert on March 9 with the CPO and then performed in Hamburg on 11 April.
Interactive concerts
The South African concert, which is also being livestreamed, is conducted by Jeremy Silver, the German concert by South Africa’s Daniel Keet. Valentin, who is on the jury for the finals, is impressed by the calibre of the short list of Lize Briel, Owen Dalton, Micaela Loubser, Chesney Palmer and Kerwin Petrus.
Yet another important facet of Valentin’s commitment is in taking music to schools and he is sponsoring some concerts in the next couple of months where the CPO will give interactive concerts in schools across the peninsula.
Valentin believes that young disadvantaged talents deserve a chance, and that’s why he is also committed to enriching the lives of these young in South Africa and in Honduras, Central America. In both countries the miserable conditions are very similar.
He speaks German and English, French, Italian and Spanish fluently. In 2000 he founded www.accion-humana.com a non-profit organisation established to support young people in ‘high social risk’ situations. The local project in Honduras, AHLE, permanently hosts some 80 boys aged 6-19, mostly orphaned, abandoned and previous street gang children. The aim is to empower them to break the cycle of poverty though education, academic or technical in order to find decent jobs. Valentin has seen almost every graduate of AHLE to go on to establish careers, found families and raise their own children. AHLE also grants scholarships to 30 girls to prevent them from dropping out of school.
Says Louis Heyneman, the CEO of the CPO, “we cannot say often enough how grateful we are to people like Alexander Valentin who understand how important it is to provide opportunities to young people who need support. South Africa is not alone in having lost generations, and that Alexander has chosen to commit to the CPO and its youth development programmes is something to make us very proud. We look forward to taking this collaboration to the next level so more young people can have a chance to change their lives.”
WS
