Dr Bridget Rennie-Salonen (PhD, PGDip, LRSM, BA, LBME)
An award-winning flautist and academic, with extensive and diverse music education experience, Dr Bridget Rennie-Salonen (PhD) is a sought-after pedagogue, performer, and researcher. At the SU Music Department, she lectures in flute, woodwind teaching methods, repertoire and orchestral studies, and Baroque traverso; supervises postgraduate research and directs the woodwind ensemble. Many of her former students have excelled locally and abroad, now occupying key performance, entrepreneurial, and educational positions in the South African (SA) music sector.
Bridget has appeared as soloist with several SA orchestras. As the Solo Principal Flute of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra for many years, she was the recipient of the prestigious Carklin Award for Artistic Excellence. Recent awards include Fiesta, Silver Ovation, Fanie Beetge Academic Prize, Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, and SU Top-20 Postdoc awards. As a freelancer, Bridget is the principal flute of the Cape Town Festival Orchestra, guest principal with the Free State Symphony Orchestra, and Baroque traverso flautist with Cape Town Baroque.
Her internationally-connected interdisciplinary research in performing arts health is ground-breaking for SA. Interested in integrating optimal artistic performance with wellbeing and health promotion, her research includes musicians’ health education and health literacy; somatic learning; sensorimotor retraining; and music and performance psychology. Bridget holds certificates in the Essentials of Performing Arts Medicine and Functional Movement Anatomy; is Licensed Body Mapping Educator and Training Mentor; is core researcher on the international Musicians’ Health Literacy Consortium; is commissioner on the International Society for Music Education’s Instrumental and Vocal Teaching Commission; serves on the Performing Arts Medicine Association’s Long Range Planning Committee, and is president of the SA Performing Arts Health Association. She is also an experienced external examiner, adjudicator, and peer-reviewer. Bridget is an artist who is passionate about both the meaning of the performing arts in society and the meaning of the performing arts for the artists themselves.