In the first of his articles on Ruth Coggin, the new music director of the Johannesburg Bach Choir, Stuart Meyer traces her musical journey from her teenage years of learning to master the grandeur of a pipe organ to participating in some of the seminal historic events in South Africa

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything” (Plato).

For Ruth Coggin, recently appointed music director of the Johannesburg Bach Choir, Plato’s quote perfectly sums up how music brings purpose and joy to her life.

I was blessed to meet Ruth when I auditioned for the Johannesburg Bach Choir at the end of 2023. Tim Roberts, music director at that time, had asked me to warble out some sounds approximating what Ruth was playing on the piano. My performance was dire. Tim was all grace and diplomacy. Ruth’s face, however, told the truth in all its devastating clarity. And this wasn’t a good cop / bad cop regime. Despite being truly awful, Tim’s kindness prevailed and I was accepted in the choir.

Only later did I discover the extent of Ruth’s own kindness, brilliance and immense generosity.

Week after week, Ruth collared me during the Monday evening coffee break. Standing at the piano she patiently helped me hear and alter my tone between octaves and even climb and descend scales. She also made sure I practiced on the piano at home, testing my range weekly for improvement. This attention and effort, unfailingly dedicated to a single unimpressive new member of a long-established choir of over 60 people, is illustrative of the skill, kindness, commitment and attention to detail that Ruth brings to the Johannesburg Bach Choir.

Subsequently, Ruth and her husband Theo have made their home and expertise available to the Johannesburg Bach Choir’s basses (and other sections) for extra lessons on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the year. It’s a real treat to gather in Ruth’s music room, often surrounded by vases of magnificent roses for which she and Theo regularly receive prizes at horticultural shows.

Seated at either her piano or organ Ruth commands the room. For two or three hours, she will tirelessly play, listen, correct, cajole and explain. And she doesn’t miss a trick. No matter how many punters duff it around the piano, no one can hide. Ruth has the sharpest ears. A wizard of attention, focus and patience. A true and inspired teacher.  

Hearing the pipe organ in a church at the age of 16, Ruth Sampson fell head over heels in love with this majestic instrument.

It was inevitable. With both parents playing musical instruments and the young Ruth learning the piano, she grew up in an intensely musical home. She remembers drifting off to sleep in bed to the sound of her parents listening to live music broadcasts from Johannesburg City Hall. Dropping off to the sound of the orchestra tuning up, Ruth remembers waking later to the waves of applause as the symphony ended. She always thought the clapping also sounded like music.

Yet it was the magnificent cadences of organ pipes redolent of heaven, however, that truly galvanised her 16 year old mind. Thoroughly inspired by the celestial sounds of the organ, Ruth started taking lessons at St John’s College with the late James Gordon, music master at the College and subsequently at St Martin’s-in-the-Veld Anglican Church. James was also a magnificent tenor and sang in at least one of the Johannesburg Bach Choir’s concerts.

In those days, the pipe organ was not an instrument frequently played by girls. Explaining that every organ has its own distinctive ‘soul’, Ruth says that the St John’s College organ remains her favourite to this day.  It is the one which she feels most comfortable playing, as though she is ‘at home’. Not surprisingly it was a highlight for her to perform a Trumpet Fanfare by Purcell on St John’s organ for the JBC’s 60^th anniversary concert in November 2024.

After practicing the organ every afternoon through high school, Ruth went on to a BMus degree at Wits, majoring in pipe organ, followed by an honours degree with a dissertation on the Johannesburg City Hall organ. Ruth graduated as one of only two women in her age group to study the organ professionally at Wits.

As a female pipe organist and all-rounder Ruth went on to blaze her own musical trail, defined and inspired by her characteristic enthusiasm, aplomb and plain old hard work and perseverance.   

In her student years Ruth, like many others, became deeply aware of the socio-political inequity in South Africa. On graduating, she became convinced that she could contribute to breaking down the barriers between the races in South Africa through communication, and in particular through the one institution that, at the time, facilitated such communication – the Church. As a result, she applied for a job at Dimension, the official national newspaper of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa. Appointed by the then Editor, Theo Coggin, Ruth’s career in communication began.

Her love for the organ notwithstanding, Ruth was still completing her studies at Wits when she formed a choir at what was then the student church of the Methodist Church, the Civic Centre Church. Her love of the organ and choral singing never wavered but it was clear when she left university that South Africa was not a country where playing the organ and directing choirs could sustain a living.  That said, in addition to her day job on the newspaper Ruth went on to play the organ and form and lead choirs for both the Kensington Methodist and Johannesburg Central Methodist Churches as well as the St Francis Anglican Church. She regularly fills in at other churches when organists are away and frequently plays at weddings and funerals. Indeed, she is considered the  ‘official’ organist for a wide variety of events for her extended family whenever an organist is required!

In one of her most memorable experiences Ruth was honoured to be appointed organist to accompany the Imilonji nKantu Choir that sang at the inauguration of South Africa’s first democratic President, Nelson Mandela, at the Union Buildings in Pretoria in 1994. She also played at the National Service of Thanksgiving for a democratic South Africa on the Sunday before Mandela’s  inauguration at the FNB Stadium in Soweto.

Ruth is currently the accompanist for the Lewandowski Chorale, which sings Jewish liturgical music in Hebrew, a relatively new musical challenge for her that she greatly enjoys.

• To be continued in the next blog
• Stuart Meyer is a member of the bass section of the JBC
• The Bach Blog is edited by Theo Coggin. Please “like” and “subscribe” to our Blog. Send suggestions for contributions, attention Theo, to  johannesburgbachchoir@gmail.com