ABOUT CHARL
Charl du Plessis rose to fame when he was the youngest pianist in Africa to be named a Steinway Artist in 2010. He has since embarked on an international career working simultaneously as classical and jazz pianist. Charl became the first pianist ever to perform on top of Table Mountain in Cape Town and was invited to perform at the opening of Steinway Hall, Beijing. He has won two SAMAs, a Ghoema and Fiësta. Since establishing the Charl du Plessis Trio in 2006, Charl has alerted audiences to the complexities and capabilities of combining jazz and classic music. The creative possibilities of crossover music have offered him the means to produce a wide range of music not confined by any style or genre.
Charl has collaborated with many pre-eminent musicians and performed with South Africa’s most prestigious orchestras, namely the Johannesburg Philharmonic and Cape Town Philharmonic. International concert tours to Europe and Eastern Asia in concert halls ranging from London’s Royal Albert Hall and Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie to Shanghai’s Oriental Arts Centre, have contributed to the press hailing Charl as a “cult pianist”, an “edu-tainer” and a pianist with the “x-factor”. For the past 22 years he has performed as collaborative pianist with iconic South African singer and entertainer Nataniël.
Charl lives in Pretoria, South Africa, where he studied with master piano teacher, Joseph Stanford, at the University of Pretoria. He was the first student ever to complete a doctoral performance degree specialising simultaneously in classical and jazz piano. He also studied with well-known musicians, including György Sebök in Ernen, Switzerland, Dan Hearle and Stefan Karlsson at the University of North Texas, USA, and Ulrich Koellah at the Musikhochschule Winterthur-Zurich, Switzerland. He has been the recipient of major prizes at International Scholarship Competitions of the University of South Africa (UNISA) and the South African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO). Besides his career as piano lecturer at the University of Pretoria, he is a qualified international music examiner for Trinity College, London. He performs more than 130 concerts per season and pursues a comprehensive approach to the musical profession. Charl manages his own career and, besides from recording under his own independent label, he is also a Steinway SPIRIO recording artist and released three albums under the Swiss label Claves. His study of piano building culminated in training as a professional piano technician and concert tuner under the direction of Ian Burgess-Simpson (Cape Town) and Urs Bachmann (Zürich).
