Maria Haipinge

The Youth Orchestras of Namibia will be gifting music lovers a gripping musical experience tonight and tomorrow evening. 

As part of the National Youth Strings Festival, the two gala concerts will take place at the National Theatre of Namibia, following rehearsals that ran from 11 July 2022.

Conducted by Dorothee Mariani, harmonies of the violin, viola and cello are what the audience should expect from the orchestra. Mariani is from Basel, Switzerland, where she is the founder and conductor of Orchesterschule Insel, a music school focusing on marginalised youth. 

Mariani will also mentor young adult musicians who will, in turn, mentor younger children, to hone their teaching skills.

“The programme is a journey through time and also a journey through the world, eventually landing in Namibia,” is how Gretel Coetzee, director of Youth Orchestras of Namibia (YONA), describes it.

The strings festival aims “to improve the standard of string playing in Namibia, to bring youth from diverse backgrounds together around a shared goal, and to promote cultural expression in a local context”.

Children and youth from Tsumeb, Otjikondo, Swakopmund, Walvis Bay and Windhoek have gathered to present a combination of classical repertoire and music by Namibian composers.

“It starts with classical music, beautiful sounds and then it goes into fun items and more serious items also from different countries, and it ends with some choir items together with the string orchestra with Namibian music,” said Coetzee. 

As an organisation with the vision of social change through music and the orchestra, part of YONA’s aim is to reach out to musicians in the different regions and to eventually also create a national youth orchestra.

Coetzee explained that this is just a preparation for that, saying these are just strings, but YONA reached out to musicians, music teachers and orchestra groups from all over the country and even sent out a call on social media in order to bring Namibians together. 

“We really always wanted to get together with musicians from the rest of the country and I would like the children to know other musicians in other towns and not only in Windhoek. I also really wanted to inspire them to play better and to practice hard and to excel at what they do, and I thought that a week-long workshop like this would really improve their playing and also give them a lot of fun,” she added.

The event is a first for YONA, and it plans to present an annual Youth Orchestras Festival, and from next year also incorporating wind instruments and percussion.

The concerts will commence at 19h00. Tickets cost N$200 for adults and N$100 for under 18. These are available at Webticket.

-   emariahaipinge@gmail.com