Bio Notes: Heleen Du Plessis

Heleen Du Plessis has been well known in the South African music world for some time, as soloist, chamber musician and teacher and has, while living in the USA for the last 4 years, furthered her studies in Performing Arts, at the highly prestigious Conservatory of Music: The Peabody Institute of the John Hopkins University in Baltimore. She studied with renowned Israeli cellist, Professor Amit Peled, where she obtained the Graduate Performance Degree in May 2007 with a full scholarship. She was principle cellist of the Peabody Orchestra for two consecutive years. During this period she attended master classes and private lessons with Carter Brey, Richard Aaron, Ilya Finkelstein and Burton Kaplan.

While living abroad she was principal cellist of the Prince William Symphony Orchestra in Virginia, USA, with whom she appeared as soloist performing the Elgar Cello Concerto. Other recent performances include, the Haydn Cello Concerto in C with the Nova Manassas Symphony Orchestra, recitals in Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia.

Previous qualifications include the post-graduate Performer's Diploma under Daniel Grosgurin at the Conservatoire de Genève in Switzerland, while living there for 5 years. She attended and played for master classes with, Mtislav Rostropovich, Janos Starker, Arto Noras, Antonio Ménéses and private lessons with Marie-Paul Milone in Paris and performed at venues in and around Geneva.

Since her return in 2009 to SA, she has resumed her teaching at the University of Pretoria and was recently invited to perform and teach at the University of Otago in Dunedin, NZ. She has rejoined the Musaion Trio with Malcolm Nay and Zanta Hofmeyr, who previously performed at national and international venues like the Amsterdam Grachte Festival and the Het Loo Palace Apeldoorn, Holland, collaborating with Philippe Graffin and Colin Carr, the International Chamber Music Festival in Cape Town, at the Baxter Theatre, Rachmaninov festival in Stellenbosch, Brahms festival at the Musaion and Aardklop. Cello recitals with well known pianists like Malcolm Nay, Anton Nel and Charl du Plessis include highlights of performances in the Endler Hall, Stellenbosch, Hugo Lamprecht Hall , Paarl, Unisa Sunnyside Campus, Pretoria, Musaion, Pretoria, Atrium at Wits, Johannesburg and the University of Johannesburg.

Critics have referred to her playing as “velvet-like and colorful, smoothing to the ears, leaving audience breathless”, or have remarked that she “played with sensitivity and expression that is story like, imaginative and with a huge sound”.

She is currently busy with her D. Mus. in Performing Arts at the University of Pretoria, writing a dissertation on the teaching, learning and application of cello technique based on several scale systems of 3 famous American cello teachers, Amit Peled, Richard Aaron and Hans Jorgen Jensen.