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SCENE IT: Cape Town Favourites Sing THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK
- Mar 1
- 2 min read
Maria Kearns
It's hard to believe this year’s Maynardville Open-Air Festival's music programme is at an end with the second of two performances of THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK on Sunday, 1 March 2026 making the last concert of the season.
The previous Sunday provided good weather and clear skies under which to enjoy the first of these concerts, consisting of a selection of well-known American swing and jazz standards strung together by a rather cumbersome collection of presenter-style links that soon strayed into the realm of subtitling. Or sports commentary. That aside, the concert allowed Katlego Maboe, Amy Campbell, and Tankiso Mamabolo, all very familiar to local audiences, to reaffirm their star attractions status.
Maboe delivered powerful renditions of ‘Cry Me a River' and ‘Georgia on My Mind’, Campbell once again proved she's incapable of producing a dodgy note as she treated us to ‘Get Happy’, ‘My Funny Valentine’, and ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’, and Mamabolo's ‘Summertime’ and ‘Embraceable You’ were smooth and sultry. Mamabolo also sang ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me’ as if it had been written for her. The trio’s ‘What a Wonderful World’ exhibited truly beautiful harmonies.
Track Five Vocal Ensemble, also well-known on the local scene, delivered crowd-pleasing and technically impressive versions of classics like ‘Unforgettable’, ‘It Don't Mean a Thing’ (in a Swedish arrangement displaying exciting tempo changes, challenging scat sections, and a demand for the soprano’s whistle register), and ‘Nature Boy’ (where the bass voice was allowed to attain prominence, with very pleasing results). The quintet's performance of Gavin Fullard's take on ‘Route 66’ (narrating ‘that lovely N2 trip’ down the Garden Route) was bright and sprightly, and their updated version of ‘My Favourite Things’ for the over-55s (‘When the pipes leak, when the bones creak’) received raucous applause and was clearly an audience favourite.
With three or four notable exceptions who clearly got into the spirit of the music under the baton of Wessel Odendaal (shoutout to the flautist, who was a delight to watch as he bopped along to the music), the nerves may have gotten to the stony-faced young musicians from the Paul Roos Gymnasium Orchestra who appeared to not enjoy their own performance. Perhaps that was just a consequence of the heat of the day. Rather more consequentially, the temperature also seemed to have got to the tuning of more than one section of the orchestra—a fact all the soloists managed to work around with laudable professionalism.
Plaudits go, however, to the electric bassist, percussionist, trumpet section, and saxophone soloists for their impressive contributions throughout the show.
Despite the aforementioned intonation issues, THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK provided an entertaining hour or so to a very appreciative audience.
The Maynardville Open-Air Festival will be playing host to TWELTH NIGHT until 14 March 2026. Tickets are available through Quicket.