Charl-Johan Lingenfelder

(19**-) Composer, musical director and playwright, working in all musical and theatrical genres, from classical to progressive rock, experimental to hip-hop.

Biography

Youth

Training

Studied Music at the University of Stellenbosch, but soon became involved with play productions at the Drama Department. He later took a number of courses there as well, while acting as musical director for many departmental productions.

Career

His student work led directly to his first professional work in theatre, and from there he rapidly became a sought after musical director, playwright and composer for stage plays and musicals. He was the Resident Musical Director for The Fugard Theatre. He has worked in Paris, San Francisco, New York, Hong Kong, Athens, New Zealand, China, Taiwan and Indonesia as composer, musical director, arranger, conductor, writer and performer.

With Fred Abrahamse, he opened the Comedy Warehouse and The Warehouse theatres in Greenpoint, Cape Town.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

As musical dircetor

Lingenfelder has a long list of productions for which he has been musical director (and often co-creator), including Almost the Sound of Music (for which he also wrote the libretto), ABBA(toir), Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cabaret (1995 and 2015), Return to the Forbidden Planet (1996), Lied van die Boeings (1998), Hairspray, The Rocky Horror Show, Sunset Boulevard, Emotional Creature, Orpheus in Africa (2015), West Side Story (2015), Funny Girl, Langarm (2018).

He has also worked on various African plays, television programmes and films.

As an actor

As an actor he has twice played the Emcee in Cabaret, (Artscape, 1995 and Fugard Theatre, 2015).

As writer/composer

He is co-writer and composer of the critically acclaimed feature film, Kanarie, which premiered at Outfest in Los Angeles. He also created original music and soundscapes for Pieter Toerien’s The Curious Incident of The Dog in the Night-Time.

Awards, etc

Charl-Johan has been nominated for 14 Naledi Theatre Awards and 8 Fleur du Cap Theatre Awards. Charl-Johan was the Co-Musical Director, and created additional music and arrangements, for The Fugard Theatre’s 2017 musical production of King Kong – The Musical, for which he won both the Fleur du Cap Theatre Award and Naledi Theatre Award for his new compositions.