As senior lecturer in piano at the College of Music for more than 30 years, Neil Solomon made a special contribution to music in Cape Town - not only as a teacher, but also as performer and composer. This concert, on 12 November at 15h00, is to honour Neil Solomon, who recently turned 80.

Pianist Pieter van Zyl will be joined by Carin Bam (oboe) and Bennie van Eeden (piano) in a programme featuring works by Neil Solomon, Schubert and Chopin.

In 1996 Neil Solomon was elected as Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM), an award offered by the directors of the RAM only to past students who have achieved distinction in the profession.

After completing his studies at UCT he was awarded the UNISA Overseas Scholarship for Performing and the Performing Right Scholarship for Composition.  He furthered his studies at the Royal Academy of Music where he won awards for piano and composition, as well as the coveted Potter Exhibition.  He was invited to teach the piano in his final year at the RAM before taking up a lectureship for an academic year at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology.  After his return to South Africa he was appointed to the UCT College of Music in 1966.

Active as performer, teacher and composer, Neil Solomon achieved distinction in all three aspects of his profession.  He performed in major concert halls of the UK, Europe and South Africa in concertos, chamber music and solo recitals as well as having made numerous broadcasts from the SABC (including SATV), the BBC (UK) and Europe.  His performance repertoire extended from Byrd and Bach to Bax, Bartok and Beyond, focusing in particular on the piano sonata, and included all by Mozart.

An acknowledged specialist in the music of Schubert, he gave all-Schubert recitals, several times partnered the song-cycles and promoted concerts of Schubert’s rarely heard chamber, choral and lieder compositions.

His many performances under visiting and local conductors with the then Cape Town Symphony Orchestra (CTSO) included the first performance in South Africa of Bax’s monumental 40-minute Symphonic Concerto Winter Legends (conducted by David Tidboald in 1980, and by Omri Hadari in 1990).  In 1981, in a CTSO concert conducted by Allan Stephenson, he performed three concertos, including the first South African performance of Walton’s Sinfonia Concertante.

As teacher of piano his students have won top prizes in competitions:  Unisa International, SABC Music,  Oudemeester,  Adcock Ingram,  EMI Sutton,  etc.  Many of his past students are now professionally engaged in performing and teaching in England, Germany, Scotland, Holland, America, Australia, Malaysia and South Africa.

Neil Solomon’s compositions have had public and broadcast performances in South Africa and the UK and have been programmed in the Highham Ferrers Festival in England.  His opera You, Anna and I (libretto by South African author Stephan Gray) had its premiere and first run of performances at the Fitzwilliam Theatre in Cambridge (England)  and was acclaimed in the press ‘a minor masterpiece’

Solomon recorded on Reader’s Digest and Claremont labels.

Tickets for the concert, presented at the Welgelegen Hall on the grounds of Jan van Riebeeck High School, are available at the door for R 100.