At the end of 2024, after 15 years leading the Johannesburg Bach Choir, Tim Roberts stepped down as Music Director and Ruth was appointed to follow him with effect from 1 December 2024. Ruth says that succeeding Tim is a great honour and a unique opportunity to continue to build the reputation and good name of the Choir.
Throughout her life, Ruth has jumped at musical opportunities in many environments. In 2012 for example, on one of four ocean cruises that she and husband have taken, she was selected by fellow passengers on a two-week voyage from Cape Town to Southampton to conduct this choir on the world cruise. The choir consisted of choristers from all over the world; from Australia to America, Europe and Britain. And, of course, Africa.
For many, the choir was the highlight of their cruise, something that inspired Ruth’s dream to form and lead a community choir of people who want to sing together but may not have the musical technique to do so in a “professional” choir in which one has to be able to read music. She brings a particular understanding of the challenges faced by singers and how to help them achieve a level of choir singing that can perform in public.
Another opportunity to work with a community arose when, just weeks before the Covid-19 lockdown, she founded the Johannesburg Queer Chorus with her son Thomas and Guy Trangos. Despite the travails of lockdown, the JQC, under her musical direction, grew apace and sang its first concert in February 2022. Further performances of this Chorus, dedicated to celebrating the city’s LGBTQIA+ community, followed, culminating in its participation, under Ruth’s direction, at the 2023 Various Voices Festival in Bologna, Italy. It was the only choir from Africa to do so. This was her final performance before she stepped down as its Music Director, having established a solid foundation on which the JQC continues to build.
But this was all to be in the future as a young Ruth completed her music degree. As mentioned in the previous article, she then started working for the Methodist Church of Southern Africa’s official newspaper, Dimension. Interviewing her for her first career job, that of administrative assistant was the Editor of the newspaper at the time, one Theo Coggin. He hired her and, over the years, taught her every aspect of producing a newspaper. At some point Ruth got tired of reporting to Theo, so she married him instead in December 1982. Theo has reported to her ever since. [An opinion of the writer that Ruth strenuously disputes.]
She did, however, become the Editor of Dimension in 1987 when Theo was appointed Deputy Director of the SA Institute of Race Relations. The first woman to do so, she held the editorship until the mid-1990s (together with the post of Information Officer of the MCSA) when she and Theo moved full time into their business, Quo Vadis Communications. Her time in the Church gave her vast experience as she worked with giants of the pre-liberation era such as Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Methodist Presiding Bishop Stanley Mogoba. As communications officer for the Church, she liaised with local and international media and was part of the MCSA’s national leadership.
Theo and Ruth’s relationship and marriage has always been full of graciousness and good humour. For instance, Ruth remembers being instructed by Theo in her early days of employment on the exact way in which his tea should be made. The tea pot and cup had to be warmed with boiling water. After pouring the warming water, the tea bag or leaves go into the tea pot and more boiling water is added. Only after being turned three times – anti-clockwise! – and resting for a few minutes, is the tea ready to be poured into the pre-heated cup. Needless to say, Theo today makes his own tea. [Not true, says Ruth.]
While raising a now grown-up family in which Ruth was stepmother to Andrew and Jenni and mom to the couple’s own son, Thomas, and building a strategic marketing and communications consultancy (a huge achievement in its own right), Ruth continued to sing, teach, play and conduct music. Joining the Johannesburg Bach Choir as an alto in 2013, she became the choir’s accompanist in 2018 when much loved Anglican priest and musician, Owen Franklin, retired from the role.
As a marketing professional Ruth also became involved in publicising the work of the Johannesburg Bach Choir. (She holds a Chartered Marketer qualification, as well as a Digital Marketing Diploma.) She was instrumental in preparations for the choir’s participation in the 2020 Leipzig Music Festival. When travel plans to Leipzig were sadly brought to nought by Covid, Ruth, in typical fashion, didn’t retreat into isolation. Instead, during lockdown she and Tim threw their energy into creating digital practice files allowing choir members to rehearse the pieces they were working on at home. Thanks to the pair, and, in spite of lockdown, the Johannesburg Bach Choir survived – even coming together, once strict lockdown was lifted, for practice every Monday evening via Zoom at Ruth’s home, with Tim singing and conducting the soundless voices via computer screen and Ruth accompanying on the piano!
This is pure Ruth. Giving 100% and then still finding some more.
More recently Ruth completely recrafted the website of the Johannesburg Bach Choir, including creating and uploading digital practice files. These allow the various sections’ voices to listen to their parts, a boon to members practicing at home. She also assisted Theo in creating The Bach Blog on the website, which you are now reading. Edited by Theo, the Bach Blog records and tells the history of the choir through the personal stories and recollections of members present and past.
In her spare time Ruth enjoys knitting, especially Aran jerseys. She also loves animals and at home is surrounded by a pack of boisterous canines, with musical names like Carmina, Papageno, Buxtehude and Wagner. Her favourite by far, however, is her silky grey cat, Mister Wu, named by Theo for a song made famous in the 1930s by George Formby. Ruth is also a keen water baby, celebrating the start of spring with what she calls the ‘Great Spring Swim’ – a dip in the large and unheated swimming pool of the Coggin home. No matter how icy, this occasion happens religiously on 1 September every year.
Despite her many interests, pursuits and activities Ruth loves the pipe organ the most. Ever her first love, and as her many friends and colleagues attest, she is never happier than seated at an organ expanding her repertoire. Her feet firmly on the pedals, hands on the manuals, she revels in “pulling out all the stops” of an instrument played most often to reflect God’s grandeur and magnificence.
Now it is the Johannesburg Bach Choir that is benefitting from her immense love of music, choral singing, and working with choirs. An inspired teacher and leader in her work and life.
The Johannesburg Bach Choir 