Africa Arts Enterprises (Pty) Ltd is an innovative boutique production company with a focus on producing high end productions and events. At the helm of the company is team of producers with international experience in music, arts administration, production and sponsorships. The team has produced acclaimed productions and events such as Winnie, The Opera, the SABC 3 telecast of Credo for Mandela Day 2013, the South African premiere of Menotti’s opera The Medium and most recently La Boheme in District Six at Artscape. Our current slate of projects include producing a high profile international gala and fashion show to raise awareness for the rhino, developing TV content on South African classical music and international opera stars emerging from South Africa, and collaborating as lead producer with prominent SA music industry luminaries on a new musical about South Africa’s journey to freedom.
Bongani Ndodana-Breen has wide experience in the creative industry spanning arts administration, arts journalism, music composition and opera producer. He was executive director of Ensemble Noir, Inc in Toronto, Canada until 2008 after a period of mentorship by Ottie Lockey MD of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra thereafter returning to South Africa to produce major projects funded by DAC and UNISA. As a composer, he has written a wide range of music encompassing symphonic work, opera, chamber music and vocal music. According to The New York Times his “delicately made music - airy, spacious, terribly complex but never convoluted - has a lot to teach the Western wizards of metric modulation and layered rhythms about grace and balance.” He has received commissions from Wigmore Hall, Vancouver Recital Society, Madam Walker Theatre Indianapolis, SAMRO, UNISA, Emancipation Festival of Trinidad & Tobago, Hong Kong Arts Festival, Luminato Festival Toronto and Haydn Festspiele Eisenstadt. He is the composer and one of the producers of Winnie, The Opera, based on the life of Mrs Mandela, which premiered in 2011 to great acclaim at the State Theatre Pretoria. He was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music in 1998 and selected as one of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans of 2011.
Amanda Osorio graduated from Smith College in the USA and has a postgraduate diploma at UCT. She was an Urban Education Fellow for the newly created Smith College Urban Education Initiative and was an inaugural Gates Millennium Scholar. She received a Mellon Foundation Study grant in 2003 which enabled her to conduct research on the state of education in South African township schools after Apartheid. As a full Lyric Soprano she has performed numerous roles with various companies including Cape Town Opera, Amherst Opera and spent the 2012-2013 year performing with the Metropolitan Opera in NYC. As producer of La Bohème in District Six, the Suidoosterfees awarded her the Rapport-Skouerklop award for contribution to audience development and promotion of the arts.