Buskaid

To the Sheila Nelson Stringwise Fund

On behalf of Sonja Bass, Keabetswe Goodman and myself, I am writing to express our
very great appreciation to the Sheila Nelson Stringwise Fund for generously agreeing
to fund our visit to present three workshops at the ESTA Summer School 2026.
These workshops, involving children from the local community, will demonstrate how
we work in Soweto during our weekly group lessons. These groups always have an
element of surprise and fun, which we hope will be the case at the ESTA course!
They will include a lot of singing, solfa, movement, and right- and left-hand techniques,
all based on the Essential String Method and other Nelson repertoire. And, depending
on the age/standard of our young ‘guinea pigs’, we’d like to introduce them to some
simple township music, to be played by ear.

From Buskaid’s early beginnings, I have acknowledged Sheila, a very close friend and
colleague since 1972, as the mentor and advisor whose support and wisdom informed
my teaching in Soweto. In the 90s, this often took the form of my phoning her from
South Africa in some panic, for advice on how to lead a workshop of more than 40
young string players from Diepkloof Soweto! This was for me a new and very daunting
prospect!

To be acknowledged as a successful example of how Sheila Nelson’s approach,
together with that of her Stringwise colleagues, has been the driving force behind all
our teaching at the Buskaid Music School in Soweto, is an amazing validation of what
we do. Thank you so much!

We shall also present a concert involving an additional six young Buskaid teachers
who will accompany us to this event. This concert will reflect the extraordinary capacity
of our young African musicians to understand and interpret various performance styles from historically-informed baroque and classical, to romantic and township Afro-Jazz.