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Sue Webster

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‘Music won the cause’

By Alastair Findlay*

On entering Sue Webster’s sunny abode one is immediately struck by her collection of beautiful artefacts. A Sydney Carter oil, a Pierneef water colour, and works by her uncle, David Anthony Jones (reminiscent of the works of John Piper and Paul Nash) adorn the walls. Along the windowsills there’s an assortment of decoy ducks and wooden bird sculptures.

“I’m a collector,” says Sue, “and my late husband, Bill, was a minimalist. An interesting dynamic.”

Sue’s mother died young and so she was raised by her aunt, Connie Kinghorn whose son, David, became something of a brother and mentor to Sue.

As a girl in her late teens, she could only yearn to do the wonderful things Dave was doing. He had joined the Johannesburg Bach Choir, something quite out of her reach as sight reading music was a prerequisite. It was a time when one’s auditions were reviewed in the city’s newspapers. Whenever Dave left the house, she would ask, with burning curiosity, “Where are you going, Dave?”

“I’m going out,” would be his lofty reply.

Sue (pictured with her dog Teddy) qualified as a medical technologist and worked with Jemima Cantrell in Braamfontein for many years. Her husband was an electrical engineer. They had two children, and she now has four grandchildren.

She became a member of St Paul’s Anglican Church choir in Parkhurst and became deeply involved with all aspects of the parish. She has been running the fundraising charity shop for many years and also qualified as a lay minister and counsellor with Anglicare. She partnered with Rosebank police station in offering trauma counselling and is currently giving psychological and spiritual support to the elderly at Deansgate Retirement Village in Craighall Park.

When her husband died eight years ago, she joined the Johannesburg Bach Choir, encouraged to do so by Anne Kohler. Sue had always shown an aptitude for singing and had a good ear. Besides, one could take an audition without running the risk of a bad review in the papers.

After being a member for four years, a wonderful opportunity was announced. The choir had been invited to sing at the Bachfest in Leipzig! Sue saw this as a chance to do an extended tour after the Bachfest and put together an itinerary for herself that included going to St Petersburg, sailing up the Volga to Moscow and flying on to Istanbul.

And then, the arrangements completed, the calamitous Covid lockdown occurred. The tour was sadly cancelled.

Despite this potential death knell to the performing arts, the Johannesburg Bach Choir kept going. Every Monday evening the choir director, Tim Roberts, would drive to accompanist Ruth Coggin’s house, and from there the rehearsals continued via Zoom. Enthusiasm and dedication carried the choir through these challenging times. Since then, Sue has seen the choir grow in strength and diversity with many strong voices joining – including a growing number of younger people from all walks of life. She has also since become the leader of the soprano section.

“Music and singing is good for the brain,” says Sue, “It keeps those synapses firing and dementia at bay.”

Alastair Findlay is leader of the bass section of the choir.

The Bach Blog is the official blog of the Johannesburg Bach Choir and is edited by Theo Coggin. The headline for this article is taken from the lyrics of Handel’s The Many Rend the Skies which is among the choir’s repertoire.

Reiner Fossati

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Marriage it shall be: the many faces of Bach choir rehearsals

By Lucia Poorter*

Reiner Fossati, who was a member of the choir from 1983 until around 2019, and chairman for seven years, grew up in a musically-minded family in Cape Town, listening to classical greats such as Beethoven and Brahms.

“I also liked Mozart but always considered Beethoven two or three notches above him,” he says.

Reiner (above), who holds a doctorate in operations research and teaches additional maths for grades 10, 11 and 12 at the Johannesburg German International School, says he taught himself to read music at the age of seven or eight. “I was fascinated by anything that could be written down.”

He sang in the choir at the German School in Cape Town from the age of 10, and later, after moving to Johannesburg, was persuaded by a friend who was with him in the army to join the Randburg Male Voice Choir in 1979. In 1983, he responded to an advert in The Star for the Johannesburg Bach Choir.

Reiner remembers the choir having well over 100 members and singing two of his favourite works, Mahler’s Symphony No 2 and the Brahms Requiem, which he says “are both highly romantic.” The Mahler symphony also has “an incredible range for the basses. There is something sublime and kind of spiritual when the whole thing comes together.”

Other favourite compositions of his include Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Bach’s St Matthew Passion, and the big Mozart pieces.

Ken Fuller, who was chairman of the choir for more than 20 years, worked opposite the Johannesburg City Hall where the choir often performed, and was therefore usually able to pop across to check that everything was in order before concerts. However, in 1994, after his retirement, and what was to be the last time the choir ever performed in the City Hall, there was a mishap.

“There were supposed to be something like 29 rows of 36 chairs, but there were only 22 rows of 36 chairs,” says Reiner. “This meant that just before the concert was to start, members of the choir were sent down to the basement to fetch extra chairs.”

Another anecdote Reiner remembers is that there used to be a prize for the choir member who sold the most tickets before a concert. There was also a curmudgeonly person in the Choir, let’s call him Robert. Robert sold a huge number of tickets but occasionally someone else would share the prize. Ken would announce that the first prize was a week at Sun City with Robert, second prize was two weeks with Robert, and so on. Robert never saw the humour in this.

Reiner also recalls the choir being hired for a marriage proposal at St Columba’s.

“Someone had to stand guard to watch out for the groom. In the meantime, the wax from the tealight candles, which were laid out in the shape of a heart, leaked all over the floor.”

The bride accepted the proposal. But the choir was left with the challenge of how to remove the wax. (See accompanying photograph.)

  • Lucia Poorter is a soprano in the choir
  • Theo Coggin is the editor of The Bach Blog

Jane Abrahams

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English with a musical ring has lifelong memories  

By Tim Roberts

Some people one never forgets, often for a variety of reasons. Jane Abrahams, a former secretary, committee member and, not least, an invaluable member of the sopranos of the Johannesburg Bach Choir for many years, is just such a person.

It was not just Jane’s sterling work in the background, or enjoyment of sharing her gift of singing which remains in my memory, however.

Jane Abrahams before in concert, before she retired from the JBC.

When interviewing her recently at her home in Rivonia as part of our celebration of the Johannesburg Bach Choir’s Diamond Jubilee, I remembered that when in the choir, Jane’s eloquence in the use of English came through often as she would draw my attention to an elegant phrase in what we were singing.

I asked her why words were so important to her, little realising that she has been surrounded by words all her life; as a novelist (under the pen name of Jane Fox), a poet, a bookseller, an editor, and for some years a librarian at the library of the Rudolf Steiner Society in Bryanston, Johannesburg. 

This simply underlined how fortunate we are as a choir to have members who come from all walks of life. Writers, poets, artists, doctors, builders, lawyers, academics… the list knows no end, and musicians and singers fit in there somewhere as well!  

As Jane says when she recalls what drew her for the Johannesburg Bach Choir: “All my family sang in church choirs and choral societies in Essex in the UK when I was a teenager, and it seemed natural to sing in a choir later in life in Johannesburg.” 

Jane said one of her favourite pieces is the Faure Requiem, which she regards as a wonderful marriage of words to music.

She speaks with great happiness and delight that her son, Matthew, has also been a member of the Choir, and a grandchild is showing promising signs of carrying on the tradition in the family of making music.

As she approaches her ninth decade, Jane’s love for music is undimmed, and her support of the choir continues.

It is heartwarming to chat to members, not least to past members like Jane, who are part of a continuous group of people from many differing backgrounds who share a common joy in making music together, surely one of humankind’s greatest achievements.

  • Tim Roberts is the Director of the Johannesburg Bach Choir, Founder of the Apple Green Orchestra and annually presents the St Francis Baroque Festival.

Click here to read more about Jane and her life, including wonderful photos of Jane and her late husband, Lionel.

Tony and Jemima Cantrell

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Old pump organs and beetles – but singing lifts the soul

By Alistair Findlay

Tony and Jemima Cantrell are long-standing members in the Johannesburg Bach Choir, having joined in 2005, when it was still under the directorship of Mario Broccardo. They both come from musical and artistic families.

Jemima’s grandfather’s violin narrowly escaped being incinerated in the burning of their farm during the Anglo Boer war. Her parents sang in the church choir and many in the family were piano teachers. As a schoolgirl she came first in many an Eisteddfod with her singing. She also took piano lessons. Piano exams were through UNISA and examiners had to travel from Bloemfontein to Postmasburg to do the assessments at their family home. Work-wise she established herself in the field of medical research from where she would often nip off during her lunch hour for singing lessons. In 1967 she took two years off to study at the Hochschule für Musik in Munich under Professor Dr Karlheinz Blaschke. She also sang in the Munich Bach Choir under Professor Karl Richter. On her return she joined the SABC choir and had a chorus part in the PACT production of The Merry Widow.

Jemima and Tony with the delightful portable pump organ in their beautiful home in Emmerentia. The Cantrells have been members of the Johannesburg Bach Choir for nearly a fifth of a century!

Tony’s grandmother played the harmonium, a portable pump organ much in use in those days. She accompanied her husband on missionary work in the then South West Africa (now Namibia). They travelled by railway caboose to small towns where she would attract residents with the sound of her playing, forming congregations for their mobile ministry. Tony sang in both the Kearsney College and the University of Natal’s Maritzburg campus choirs. On meeting Jemima, they became members of their church choir. Tony is a trained biochemist and was Professor in Toxicology at the University of the Witwatersrand. It was his head of department, the late Professor Tony Davies, who suggested the couple join him in the Bach Choir.

According to Jemima, the Bach Choir today is in better shape than ever, with Tim Roberts and Ruth Coggin at the helm. “I have a passion for singing and singing together with other people lifts the soul,” she says.

Tony and Jemima’s other pastimes include painting, birding and beetle collecting. Jemima showed me an exquisite water colour of a pineapple she had done. “Beautiful pawpaw,” quipped Tony. But he couldn’t show me his beetle collection. It had been eaten by very small beetles.

  • Alistair Findlay is leader of the bass section of the Johannesburg Bach Choir

Leona Malan

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“Monday, Monday, so good to me”

By Theo Coggin

The Mamas and the Papas of the 1960s would have little in common – one would think – with JS Bach, the doyen of Baroque composers, let alone with the Johannesburg choir that is named in honour of one of the most revered composers of all time. But listening to the animated manner in which the current chairperson of the Johannesburg Bach Choir (JBC) speaks of how much she looks forward to every Monday, the 1960s hit, “Monday, Monday”, by the Mamas and the Papas immediately came to mind.

Leona, a lawyer by profession, says with great conviction about her enjoyment of music and the JBC, “This choir is my therapy. I know that everyone has to ‘turn up for life’ on every occasion we are challenged. But knowing that on Mondays I will sing in the Bach Choir helps me cope even better.”

With her blue eyes flashing with conviction, Leona says that her Monday afternoons are spent looking forward to choir practice. “I prepare fully. I go to choir at rest with the fact that I am experiencing a dimension which, before I joined the choir, my life never had. It’s like the final piece of a puzzle fitting in.”

Leona joined the choir about two years before Covid struck. During Covid, she faithfully attended online practices each Monday, even though it was an exceptionally difficult medium for the choir to work in. Nonetheless, with others, she persevered to hone her musical skills. She laments the fact that the choir had to forego an invitation to attend the Leipzig Bach Festival in Germany as a result of the pandemic. Yet she believes that participating in those online practices assisted in building the team effort which is the prerequisite of any good choir.  And now, says the soprano who became chairperson shortly after Covid, the Bach Choir is a good choir, with its own unique culture, commitment, community and growing passion.

Independence is one of Leona’s strengths. But her understanding and appreciation of the community and belonging that the choir provides to each of its members is exemplified by the harmonious cooperation she seeks in a group of people, many of whom also exhibit their own strong characteristics. And the way in which she works with the choir’s music director and assistant music director underlines this.

Speaking about her life, she adds: “I’ve tried to live in a unique way. I’ve never wanted to wait for someone else to make my life. So I’ve often swum against the tide, which has brought many challenges. But I cherish my independence, and joining the choir gave me the space to be myself and yet, at the same time, be part of a harmonised community through music and song.”

As Leona spoke about her love of music and commitment to the JBC, an echo of the last verse of “Monday, Monday” reverberated in my mind.

Every other day, every other day, every other day of the week is fine, yeah
But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes, you can find me singin’ all of the time.

The mamas and papas

(With apologies to lyric writer Papa John Phillips, leader of the Mamas and Papas, for the change in the last line.)

Theo Coggin is a member of the bass section of the Johannesburg Bach Choir and is Chairperson of the 60th anniversary marketing sub-committee.