Cape Town’s Candlelight Concerts

If you're into live music, Candlelight Concerts is sure to have a genre that rocks your boat. They're offering everything from edge shearing meets Coldplay or Careful to forval these four seasons. And joining me on the line to tell us more about it is that Lindy Savandah Fever original Candlelight project manager Linda Good to have you with us this morning.

Hi, good morning, Thank you for having me pleasure.

Tell us about the history of Candlelight Concerts.

Okay. So, Candlelight is a series of live music concerts that originated in twenty nineteen by a company called Fever. And this was an admission to democratize access to classical music. So formerly classical music concerts would be very long, highly priced and boring venues and you know, inaccessible to the common public, normally for highly educated individuals. But Fever saw a niche market in that and decided to delve into that and it's been very successful.

Okay. And then who was involved in bringing it to Cape Town?

So FIVA is only seeking to delve into new markets. So South Africa was then identified as a potential market and they collaborated with local individuals like myself to bring the series to South Africa. The first city was then Cape Town last year in around October, and we've also launched in several other cities as well.

And so just just explain to our listeners what the concept is. I mean it seems pretty obvious candlelight concerts, but but just talk a little bit about how it set up, the capacity and how long duration, et cetera.

Okay, so our concerts normally an hour long. We usually have about two sessions every day. Then our concerts happen every other day on a weekend. So we usually launch Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, sometimes Thursdays as well, and we partner with talented local musicians. And we always identify iconic venues, usually venues with a historic resemblance to each city, and they illuminated by thousands of candles.

I want to know more about that. Talk to me about the logistics of the thousands of candles, How does that work, who likes them? What are the safety precautions. I'm fascinated by that because I'm looking at some of the footage from previous concerts. I mean, it looks magical, but potentially a logistical nightmare.

Definitely, I mean, there's a lot of players that goes into those concerts obviously, So each city has its own local producer who manages a team of individuals, usually young people, that then put their heads together and set up the candles. Right, as a safety concern that a lot of people are obviously consent. I mean five thousand, sometimes twenty thousand candles being lit in a venue.

How many.

Five thousand sometimes twenty thousand, depending on the size of the venue.

How long does that take? How long does it take to like twenty thousand candles?

Okay, So first of all, our candles are led operated, so it's not flame candles. So yeah, as a safety precaution that's covered in terms of time, it takes about two to five hours to set up, depending on the size of the venue.

Yeah, to ask if they're led, it makes I mean, it takes a little bit of the magic out, but it also makes me feel a little bit more comfortable because all it takes is for somebody to, you know, to have a loose piece of clothing, you know, or something, and suddenly it's gone from that to a front page, front page news article. Okay, led, okay, but twenty I mean twenty even still, you've still got to switch on twenty thousand led candles. Oh my goodness, imagine being the

So we've got people can check out our concerts at Candlelight Experience dot com. That's the Candlelight Experience dot Com. And the moment you enter that gender locations on, it's going to there it to tow the candlelight concerts in your respective city. So if you're in Cape Town, the moment you punch in Candlelight Experience dot Com, it's going to show you all the the lined up concerts.

Okay, can you give us an idea if some of the ones coming up in Cape Town.

We've got a different variety of concerts coming up. Examples include Vivaldi, Vivaldi's Seisens that's a very famous one. We've got concerts by Mozart Choppin. Those are traditional, traditionally known classical music artists. We also have several contemporary ones like Queen Up, Coldplay at Sharan and Adele so it's it's modern and contemporary music pieces that have been changed into a classical form and being played either by a string corded or a pianist.

So the musicians that the play for these concerts, they're not already a collective. You you bring them in, you source them sort of independently of each other, and then they presumably go through a rehearsal period. Where do you find the conductor if they're all independent and not already part of an orchestra collective.

So we've got a dedicated team FEVER that deals with that. Our music curators are professional musicians themselves, so they work to identify other professional musicians in each local city that we deal with. So in Cape Town, we've got the play String Couttet, Tundega String Curtet, the New Stream Cottage, amongst others. So sometimes we find in a really existing string cutet and then we make them join our global

I'm with you, I'm with you, So it's not necessary if I come and see a candlelight tribute to Queen and the Beatles on one evening night of August, folks, and then on the twenty second of August, I go and see Coldplay and imagine Dragon's kind of light. It's not necessarily going to be the same lot of musicians. Or is it the same lot of musicians for all of the Cape Town concerts.

No, it's it's not going to be the same. Not you can I find that today we've booked play Drink Tid that's the play. Then tomorrow it's Tender Drink It. So it's never the same people.

Okay, fantastic stuff. This looks exciting. I'm looking forward that there really are. There's a host of a host of concerts available right through until December, folks, So go to the website and find out. And I'd love to hear from you if you've already been. I know that was the tribute to Queen is currently on at the Norvel Foundation, So if you've been to that, then do let me know what your thoughts are. If you've been to any of these candlelight concerts, what's it been like? And yeah,