Applications and auditions for the 2025 season are open!
Please contact us if you'd like to audition to become a CTC Choir (seniors) member. CTC Choir (juniors) do not need to audition.
Coming Together Through Music
Strength in diversity
Cape Town Children's Choir enables young singers to develop their musical skill in a positive, stimulating environment and provides a place where they are surrounded by musically talented friends who strive for excellence. Being part of this dynamic new choir creates an opportunity to develop a life-long love for music.
Cape Town Children's Choir members are 7 - 9 yrs old (CTCC Juniors) & between the ages of 9 and 16 (CTCC Seniors) and come from diverse communities in the southern suburbs of Cape Town and wider metropolitan area. Choristers have the opportunity to form friendships and interact with children from many different walks of life.
We are fully registered as an NPO and have PBO status.
Our Music
Our repertoire encompasses a wide variety of styles and genres, catering to a range of interests. We sing pop songs, musical theatre and film features, folk songs, gospel, classical and sacred songs, spirituals, and vernacular songs in South African and other languages. Movement is added where appropriate, but the emphasis is on singing to a high standard with a beautiful tone. Recently, we were privileged to add a song to our repertoire which was commissioned by us and written by two South African composers.
The choir sings in unison, and in two, three or four parts. Choristers are tested for their appropriate voice parts during auditions and this is re-evaluated regularly. We sing acapella (unaccompanied) or with piano accompaniment, and sometimes add various instrumentations when necessary such as flute, strings, percussion, etc.
The CTC Choir Team
The choir was started in January 2020 as an independent project by Bronwen Leith (Choir Director), Anne Meyer (Co-trainer & accompanist) and Helen Stabrey (Choir Secretary). Penny Middelkoop joined us as accompanist in 2022. In 2024 we welcome Colleen Hart who is the conductor of CTCC Juniors.
The choir operates under the auspices of Beau Soleil Music Centre. The Music Centre primarily focusses on instrumental lessons and ensemble training. Cape Town Children’s Choir is an added venture based at the Centre.
The choir is a fully registered NPO with PBO status.
Our management comprises of
Bronwen Leith
Cape Town Children's Choir Director & Senior Choir Conductor
Bronwen has a BMusEd degree and HDE from UCT where she majored in Piano and Organ. She has taught music in many forms in a number of schools and from home for over 30 years. She has, in particular, had the privilege of conducting the Senior School Choir at St Cyprian’s School and accompanying the choir on a tour to Germany and Austria. Bronwen also grew and developed the Senior Choir at Herschel Prep School to a choir of over 100 girls which performed to a high standard at various concerts and Eisteddfods. Bronwen and her husband, Craig, home-schooled their two daughters, and during this time she started and conducted a choir for home-schooled children so that their own young daughters and their friends would have the joy of singing together. In 2019, Bronwen had the vision to establish a regional children’s choir in the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town, and Cape Town Children’s Choir was launched at Beau Soleil Music Centre at the start of 2020.
Bronwen is a full-time staff member at Beau Soleil Music Centre where she teaches the piano and directs and conducts the Cape Town Children’s Choir. She has always had a particular love for children’s choirs and is passionate about giving children the opportunity to sing together while striving for excellence. She sees Cape Town Children’s Choir as a means of positive growth in the lives of the choristers, their families and communities.
Colleen Hart
Junior Choir Conductor
Colleen (M.Mus, LRSM, ARSCM) is an all-round musician with diverse musical tastes and diverse skills who is passionate about music education. She teaches piano, organ, recorder, choirs, vocal ensembles, vocalists, African marimba and Orff ensembles, theory classes, gumboot squads and Colour Guard Flag teams. Director of Music for St Thomas’ Anglican Church, Linden, Johannesburg until 2011, she was Head of Music at Wynberg Girls’ Junior School until 2023.
Currently free-lance, she is involved in Marimba Education Foundation, a PBO dedicated to music education, and was also approached by the Cape Town Children’s Choir to establish a
Junior feeder choir. Colleen’s love for African music and marimba resulted in her publishing “Marimba Music” a two-volume resource of music for African marimba, the largest resource of its type globally, with Volume 3 currently in preparation. She enjoys teaching and performing everything from Gregorian Chant and Bach to Pop and music for Akadinda and Mbira. She is married to Charles, a pipe-organ builder, and they have two sons.
Penny Middelkoop
Accompanist
Penny Middelkoop joined Cape Town Children's Choir as accompanist in 2022.
Penny has a B Soc Sc (Psych) degree from UCT. She studied the piano under various teachers, including Sona Whiteman. She also studied ballet and Spanish dance, performing with La Rosa Spanish Dance Company for several years. She has worked as church organist and musical director at several churches around Cape Town, and acted as an ad-hoc accompanist for various vocalists and ensembles. She has performed with several choirs, including the Philharmonia Choir of Cape Town and the Symphony Choir of Cape Town. She particularly enjoys working with children, and currently conducts the choir at The Vine School in Lansdowne.
She is married to Stephen, and has 3 adult sons and a young daughter.
Helen Stabrey
Secretary
Helen studied at Stellenbosch University where she graduated with a BMus(Ed.) in 1992. She started her teaching career at Camps Bay Primary and then moved to Mountain Road Primary in Woodstock where she established and ran the Music Department. After this she was appointed as HOD at Rondebosch Boys’ Prep school. After the birth of her first daughter she gave up full-time teaching to move to a part-time teaching position, establishing and running the Music Department at Auburn House Montessori School where she remained until the end of 2014 when she decided to take a sabbatical from teaching to be at home with her youngest daughter. She has always loved Choir music and is excited to be part of the Cape Town Children’s Choir as Secretary.
Fritz van der Lecq
Chairman
Fritz has an academic background in commerce and theology, and has worked in faith-based youth development for two decades. He is the Director of the Student YMCA at the University of Cape Town and is passionate about the holistic development of university students. While he doesn’t have any formal music training, singing in choirs has always been a part of his life. Being a member of both the Stellenbosch University Choir and Stellenbosch Libertas Choir were particularly enriching and transformative experiences for him. He is grateful and excited to be involved with the Cape Town Children’s Choir in his capacity as Chairman.
Craig Leith
Treasurer
Craig qualified as a primary school teacher, and after teaching younger children for a number of years, moved on to working with teenagers as the first principal of a small private high school in Claremont. He then moved into the language travel industry, where he was the Centre Director of an Austrian-owned English language school. After that he took up the position of Founding Head of two new privately-owned high schools in Hout Bay and Gardens, before returning to the language travel industry in 2017. He is currently part of the Support Management Team at Rustenburg Girls’ High School. Craig married Bronwen in 1992 and, in one way or another, has been part of the story of Cape Town Children’s Choir since it was just a thought in Bronwen’s mind several years ago. It has been a joy and privilege to have walked alongside Bronwen on this journey, and to be a part of the choir’s first management team.
Cost
Although the choir is a registered NPO, choir members pay an annual fee. Fees are necessary to cover costs such as honorariums, sheet music, special projects, venue hire, etc. The fees are kept as low as possible in an attempt to make it affordable. A limited number of bursaries towards the annual fee are available for those who need and qualify for financial assistance. The choir relies on sponsorships to assist these members. We would love to have more people and businesses supporting us in this way so that many more children in our communities are able to benefit.
Join the choir
If you are a child of 7 - 9 yrs OR between the ages of 9 and age 15 (unchanged voice) and would love to sing in a fun, stimulating environment with like-minded children then send us an email or fill out the application form below.
Our secretary Helen Stabrey would love to hear from you.
If you are (9 - 15) she will set up an audition with the Choir Director (Bronwen Leith).
CTCC Juniors do not audition.