Louis Heyneman

Louis matriculated at the Paul Roos Gymnasium and graduated from the University of Stellenbosch with a B. Mus and B. Journalism Hons (cum laude) in 1980. In his student years, he became the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper, Die Matie, and started his career as a music and art journalist at the Afrikaans daily, Die Burger. In 1983, he was awarded a scholarship from the Rotary Foundation for post-graduate studies and furthered his studies at one of the world’s foremost institutes for journalistic studies, the University of Columbia-Missouri in the USA.

In 1987 he became the deputy editor of De Kat magazine and in 1991 he was appointed the Director of the Oude Meester Foundation for the Performing Arts. Under his guidance, more than 30 recordings of prominent South African composers and performers have been published under various South African and international labels. He served as a Trustee of the UNISA Music Foundation for two decades and occasionally writes articles on music for various publications. He became the Chief Executive of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra in 2000. In 2014 he and colleague Shirley de Kock Gueller published a book on the hundred years of symphonic music in Cape Town, A Century of Symphony” The story of Cape Town’s Orchestra.