Two Maties Alumni, Lucinda Watts and Roché van Tiddens are engaged. The couple met each other while studying at the Conservatorium in 2011. Lucinda specialized in Music Education and among other ventures, taught music lessons as part of the community music project Jamestown Sounds. Roché studied Music Composition under the tutelage of Hans Roosenschoon. During this time Lucinda was employed as a music teacher at Bastion Primary School. After completing his master’s degree in 2016, the couple spent a year in the UK. Here Roché continued his studies at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire where he obtained a Post-Graduate diploma in composition. Thereafter the couple moved to the Hague, Netherlands where Lucinda studied a master’s degree in music education at the ‘Royal Conservatory’ and Roché studied the one-year course in Sonology.
For Lucinda’s research, the couple started a project called Crab Music (krabmuziek.wordpress.com), which is aimed at bringing music composition, with the use of hands on electronic sound generators, to young learners in the form of a workshop. A fusion of both of the couple’s individual interests, electronic music composition and music education. During the workshop participants build their own electronic instruments with simple objects such as batteries, speakers and contact microphones. After the participants discover a new sound world, their ideas are developed into a musical composition which is then performed as a small concert for their parents at the end of the workshop. After the pilot workshop with a total of 8 participants the project grew and developed. In 2019 Crab Music was invited to take part in the annual music festival, ‘Rewire’ (https://www.rewirefestival.nl/artist/creative-sound-lab). Apart from hosting Crab Music workshops Lucinda has a private piano studio and teaches violin at the British School in the Netherlands.
Roché is currently working on a new composition called Dumelang for choir and with live electronics. The piece was commissioned by the ‘Haags Toonkunstkoor’, a choir that has been around for nearly 200 years, which he is also a member of. The text of the piece comprises of greetings in the 11 official South African languages and the music includes recordings of wildlife made on a game reserve in the Limpopo Province. The meaning of the text is a celebration of diversity in South Africa and would have been performed as part of the ‘75ste jaar bevrijdingsdag feest’ on the 5th of May 2020. Visit Roché’s website to listen to of his works (rochevantiddens.wordpress.com).
The happy couple are planning to get married in Western Cape in 2021.