Antoinette Olivier

Antoinette Olivier studied piano and singing at the University of the Witwatersrand. As an active performer she was engaged in professional performances and productions for Pact Opera, Salon Music, Brooklyn Theatre, Roodepoort Theatre and the Black Tie Ensemble. She appears on three of Salon Music’s CD’s and DVD, “Celebration”. Antoinette performed the world premiere of Hendrik Hofmeyr’s Song Cycle for Soprano and Orchestra (1999). In 1999 she became a founder member of the Black Tie Ensemble and since 2003 became involved in their incubator development program for young singers as singing and music theory lecturer (receiving a certificate for excellence as theory teacher by Unisa). Since 2003 Antoinette was a lecturer in singing at the University of Pretoria and at TUT. In 2009 she was a guest lecturer for the UP in Finland as part of an international exchange. She is still very active as a professional singer in all major cities in South Africa in recitals and with the Gauteng Philharmonic Orchestra.

Antoinette was appointed fulltime singing lecturer at the North-West University in Potchefstroom in 2012 where she obtained a Master’s degree in Music, cum laude, and have presented papers at international conferences. She is a recipient of numerous NWU research awards for excellence in music performance and for creative research outputs, as well as an award for teaching excellence. She has published in academic journals such as Koers and SAJCH. In collaboration with her colleagues of the voice department at the NWU School of Music, they were recently nominated by kykNet for a Fiësta award for the RSG Dis Opera production at the Aardklop and KKNK arts festivals which involved all the singing students. Furthermore, she has served as adjudicator on the Mimi Coertse voice competitions as well as on the DVD screening panel at the Unisa National and International voice competitions. She graduated in 2020 with a PhD in music at NWU. Antoinette believes in a healthy holistic development of young singers.