RULS, BMus, BSocSC (Hons)

Corinne Cooper graduated from the Rhodes Department of Music and Musicology, with majors in clarinet, orchestration, theory of music, history of music, method and practice of school music teaching and philosophy of music education.  The topic of her thesis predicted her focus in later years: an analysis of Mike Oldfield's symphonic works which were revolutionary at the time for their use of overdub techniques.  She started her own recording studio in 1992 and developed, and has taught the Sound Technology course in the department from 2000 to the present day. 

As a recording engineer, Corinne's range in terms of genre is enormous. She has always enjoyed orchestration and arrangement and has many years of experience preparing and recording music and sound tracks for both amateur musicals and professional theatrical works, working with artists such as Reza de Wet and Gary Gordon. She recorded part of the soundtrack for "SMS Sugarman" a film by Aryan Kaganof, and worked with an occupational therapist on "My Little Body", a signed album of children's music designed to facilitate muscle and coordination development.  More recently, Corinne created the soundtrack for “Polis: An Arena for the Examination of a South African Town” which, under curatorship and direction of Athina Vahla, was performed at ThinkFest, National Arts Festival in 2012.  A soundtrack Corinne arranged and recorded for a video installation by artist Christine Dixie, “To Be King”, which was originally exhibited at the National Arts Festival in 2014, in Venice from June until December 2017, in both London and Lithuania in 2018.  In 2019, Corinne composed a sound track for an upcoming exhibition by Christine Dixie entitled “Worlding The White Spirit Maiden”.

As principal recording engineer at the New Music Indaba held annually at the National Arts Festival from 2000 to 2006, Corinne had the opportunity to work with and record over a hundred concerts including many prominent international and national New Music performers such as the Kuss Quartet, the Duke Quartet, Rothko Piano Trio, Steamboat Switzerland, the Stockholm Saxophone Quartet, the Fitzwilliam String Quartet and Jill Richards. In contrast, she also arranged and recorded two albums of langarm music that have been released by EMI.

Other interesting projects include a recording of poet Seamus Heaney, the restoration and mastering of archival choral works of eminent African choir leader and composer, Joshua Pulumo Mohapeloa, and The Bow Project featuring 12 recordings of the late Nofinishi Dywili, accepted as the world's greatest uhadi player and 11 interpretations of these works by contemporary composers, performed by the Nightingale String Quartet. Frequent and long-term collaboration with composer and producer Michael Blake has most recently resulted in the albums "Michael Blake's String Quartets 1 and 2 and Piano Quintet" and "Michael Blake Complete Works for Solo Piano". 

Corinne has engineered many live music concerts for artists such as Prime Circle, David Kramer, The Parlotones, Big Nuz, Liquideep, PH Phatt and Khuli Chana among others.

Involvement in the local music scene in Grahamstown saw Corinne co-founding the Makana Musicians Initiative which held talent competitions in 2003 and 2006 for historically disadvantaged local musicians, providing a platform for performance and recording and distributing a cd of the winners of each competition. She is also a much sought after judge at the Rhodes University Battle of the Bands and other live music competitions. From 2011 to 2016, Corinne has trained dozens of interested learners from previously disadvantaged local schools, in hip hop and song composition as part of the Awarenet Songwriting Competition to produce songs for International Peace Day. 

Corinne is currently mixing and mastering a compilation of 24 short pieces by 24 prominent South African composers, which were performed by Michael Blake.  This compilation, which will be released during 2020, includes works by Joshua Pulumo Mohapeloa, Michael Mosoeu Moerane, Surendran Reddy, Paul Hanmer, Reuben Tholakele (Thola) Caluza, John Simon, Christopher James, Stanley Glasser and Andile Khumalo, among others.

Corinne has been offering modules in Sound Technology since 2000. In 2006 Sound Technology 1 became a stand alone credit for Humanities and Science students and the Honours paper was made available to students outside the department for the first time. Since 2016, Sound Technology 2 has been made available as a continuation of Sound Technology 1.

Last Modified: Mon, 28 Aug 2023 14:23:34 SAST