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Cape Town Opera and Classical Music - Donald Graham Archive

Draft 19/10/25 - NOT FOR PUBLIC USE BEFORE -  15/11/2025

In the 1980s and '90s Cape Town music and sound system enthusiast the late Donald Graham released several dozen records on vinyl and cassette tape, on his GSE Claremont Records label. One of his most popular releases was titled, Beautiful Cape Town - Fine Music, "Voices".

The compilation set out to showcase Cape Town orchestras and artists from live recordings Donald had made or acquired the rights to over a period of forty years beginning in the 1960's. He was a specialist in live recordings and doing the editing on his tapes and later his digital recordings. The artist performances are not microphone enhanced, in other words completely acoustic allowing some wonderful dynamics.

(c) SONGWRIGHTS PUBLISHERS

There were fourteen tracks in all, featuring such performers as, Joseph Gabriels, Lynn Julius, Aviva Pelham, Andrea Catzel, Sally Presant, Carina Cronje and Oliver De Groote. The orchestras include the Cape Town Symphony Orchestra and the CAPAB Orchestra.

A re-release in digital form has been arranged by Mountain Records to be distributed by the parent company Lee Thorp Entertainment.  Mountain Records and Donald Graham  collaborated on the release of several album releases by the Langa band Amampondo. Graham recorded the band live a number of times.

Donald Graham was also an audio electronics enthusiast and developed his own range of custom built sound speakers. Notably he marketed a model which was a folded horn design, enhancing the sound through separating the bass frequencies to the bottom of the rather large wood constructed stack and the higher frequencies from a horn facing forward on the top of the stack. Later his son Andrew continued the manufacture of the model (as an extended hobby) for a few years.

"We are issuing these archive recordings under the title Beautiful Cape Town, to remember both Donald as well as some of the outstanding classical music talent from Cape Town at the end of the last century." - Patrick Lee-Thorp for Mountain Records.

The release date for this digital release is - 

Music link (After release)

 Links to other GSE releases > 

https://open.spotify.com/album/7cnJWznveLwxh9cbdP1ARd?si=6qtEkTHuRVSEcDLt4T0TmQ

https://open.spotify.com/album/1JV9RG2LUE3OIt3Fy4Uy7K?si=vZ-ytx55QomftsaZEgQx0g 












 

 

 

 

 

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