The JPO doesn’t often use local musicians, at least not often enough in my not very humble opinion, but this season sees two local artists. The first of these was Charl du Plessis – a Gershwin specialist. Du Plessis played earlier in the year for the Johannesburg Musical Society and he invited the audience to hear him play with the JPO later in the year. They turned out in droves to support him. They were wise. He is a superb pianist who gave us a beautiful rendition and the music itself, the famous Rhapsody in Blue, is charming.

On the podium was Michal Dworzynski. He has coaxed a very, very good sound out of the orchestra for the past two weeks. The music this week is technically very difficult, and it is certainly new repertoire for the less senior musicians. The orchestra started with Four Dance Episodes from Aaron Copland’s Rodeo, the Buckaroo Holiday, Corral Nocturne, Saturday Night Waltz and Hoe-Down. Then came the Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue. The lightness of the music should not fool anyone into thinking that this is easy. The mere jazz feel is difficult for some classical musicians and a shambles is always a possibility. Dworzynski held them together making it all seem effortless. After interval we moved away from American composers (although the composer was living in the USA at the time these were composed) to Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances, Op 45.

South Africa’s gold medallists of instrumental music were announced on Saturday night during the SAMRO Foundation’s 2012 Overseas Scholarships Competition.

In what is arguably our own local youth music Olympiad, 24-year-old Avigail Bushakevitz (violin) and 21-year-old Darren English (trumpet) were named the winners of the two R170 000 scholarships for international study in the Western Art Music and Jazz/Popular Music categories, respectively.

These golden young instrumentalists have already shown that they have what it takes to make waves as professional musicians, and are now receiving an additional kick-start to their careers in the form of this prestigious music study award.

On Saturday, 18 August 2012, the SABC’s M1 studio in Johannesburg was the battleground for a lively music duel between the two finalists in each category.

This followed the intermediate live performance round on Thursday, when six semi-finalists in Western Art and Jazz/Popular Music were whittled down to two contenders in each genre. They had previously made it through the “heats”, during which candidates were evaluated on original recordings they had submitted to SAMRO.