Thuthuka Sibisi
Thuthuka Sibisi’s musical education began at the world-renowned Drakensberg Boy’s Choir School where his passion for performance was born. He subsequently went on to graduate with a Bachelor of Music at Stellenbosch University in 2011. Alongside his music studies, he completed studies in Physical Theatre and Movement with Sam Prigge and Estelle Olivier. He is a graduate of the MA (Performance Making) program at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK.
Thuthuka has toured extensively, performing throughout South Africa as well as Asia and South America. Further tours include Stockholm, as Musical Director of Philip Miller’s opera Between A Rock and A Hard Place (premier) in collaboration with Cape Town Opera. Further, he was Associate Conductor and Chorus Master for Bongani Ndonana-Breen’s oratorio Credo, which was written to commemorate UNISA’s 140th anniversary of its founding. Other engagements include Chorus Master for UCT Opera School: Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites, Rossini's Il Viaggio a Reims and Four:30 - South African Operas.
Visual collaborations include work with Johannesburg-based photographer and sculptor, Jake Singer, on Joburg City Hustle (2015) and Intersections To This City (2014) - presented at Sustainable Empires (Venice, Italy) and Los Angeles Centre for Digital Art (USA). Other exhibition work includes a reiteration of the short opera Between A Rock and A Hard Place into a live-art installation – renamed Extracts from The Underground (2013) - presented at The Cape Town City Hall; in collaboration with Gordon Institute of Creative Arts. This installation was later presented at Wits Art Museum in 2014 as part of The Migrant Journey Series. In 2016 a new work, a sound/image installation, The African Choir 1891 Re-imagined was presented as part of the Black Chronicles Archive Laboratory display at Autograph ABP (London).
In China, he served as Musical Director to Philip Miller’s Pulling Numbers (premier) and performed as Musical Director for Ciné-Concert presented as part of Notes Toward a Model Opera by William Kentridge. 2016 also saw Thuthuka make his Italian debut as Music Director for William Kentridge’s Triumphs and Laments to be presented in Rome, Italy. Further projects include a commission by Cape Town Opera for Musiques Sacrées d’Afrique et d’Europe, in residence at Festival International d’Aix-en-Provence (France).
Most currently he is the Musical Director and co-composer alongside Philip Miller for William Kentridge’s The Head and The Load to premier in July 2018 at London’s The Tate Modern. He is a recipient of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans 2017 award and the 2018 Ampersand Foundation Fellow.