SOUND SAMPLES
Sissie my kind kom huis toe
Vrou van Samaria
(requires windows media audio)

LINKS
Open Record
Music.org.za
Afrimusic

COLLABORATORS
Derek Gripper
Les Javan
Mac McKenzie

ALBUMS







Sagtevlei, 
with Derek Gripper





Healing Destination, 
trumpet & accordion


Gramadoelas, 
own band 

ALEX VAN HEERDEN
trumpet, accordion, voice, composition

Performance format: available with Derek Gripper (on 8 string guitar), Gramadoelas, the Goema Captains, the Khoi Khollektif or in duo or trio format. Also film composition. 

For bookings click here

Alex is the boy in the bubble, the dreamer with genius in his breath. Like so many of South Africa's great musicians, Alex comes from Port Elizabeth, but now he lives in Cape Town. Musical geniuses might be born there, but they never seem to stay. They head for either Joburg or Cape Town.

But Alex is a port city man. And Cape Town is the home of his great icons, Winston Mankunku and Robbie Jansen. The day after Alex completed his final school exam, at age 17, he went straight down to Cape Town to go on tour with Robbie Jansen. Not long after he ended up living with both Hilton Schilder and Mac McKenzie, at different times, imbibing their magic and creating his own.

Alex is now close to 30, so he has had almost 13 years of regular playing with the giants of Cape Town: Robbie, Mac and Hilton - as well as Mankunku. He spent two years as a member of Mankunku's band. 

Alex is one of those rare musicians who anchors other musicians and brings out the best in all of them. He balances the madness of Mac and Hilton. He brings breath and tenderness to Derek Gripper's brilliant technicality. 

He brings a diversity of skills to each project. He plays trumpet and sings, in a fashion reminiscent of Chet Baker: high and breathy, soft and beguilling. Some years back he took up the accordion, and joined a small pentecostal church in Swellendam where he learned the church music of rural Cape Town. This was the inspiration for the vastrap / goema rock inspired Cape Town band Gramadoelas, which also features guitarist composer Les Javan.

Alex has been exploring Cape Town music in all its guises. It is the music of his heritage as an Afrikaner from the Cape. Together with Derek Gripper he has been creating a new legacy of Cape Town classical music, playing with the goema idiom in classical and avante garde terms (together they made the live recording Sagtevlei as part of the afribeat.com and SABC produced Wondergigs series, now released on Open Record).

Alex spent 2003 in Stockholm, working with a variety of pop producers  such as Hakan Lidbo and Klas Baggstrom. At the end of the year, he  travelled to Hong Kong with Mac and the The Goema Captains of Cape Town', before returning to stockholm to collaborate with swedish musician/producer, Magnus Bank in a project called 'Hemisfar' , exploring vastrap within a contemporary scandinavian aesthetic. 

He lives in Cape Town on a smallholding in Tulbagh', some two hours out of the city, composing, recording and playing music with the locals.