14-day Cape Town
Winter Camp 2026
January 12-25, 2026 (14 days)
Accommodations:
Rehearsal week at Volmoed Retreat Centre in Hermanus, Western Cape; with second week in the Gardens district of Cape TownLeaders:
Bongani Magatyana, Suzannah Park & Liam KantorPrice:
- $2200 adult/$1950 youth (under-26), in 2-person rooms
- $500 supplement charged for single room accommodations
Space in the camp is limited to 25 singers.
Not included in the tuition:
- airfare to/from Cape Town;
- 6-8 meals when you’ll be on your own during the second week;
- any optional (non-group) excursions during free time.
This will be Village Harmony’s fifteenth study-performance camp in South Africa and our third time running an exclusively Cape Town experience. You will come away from your two-week adventure with an insider’s understanding of the musical and cultural diversity of South Africa’s premier city. Six township singers will join as full participants and helpers in the camp to add to the musical—and social—experience.
The program’s musical focus will be learning traditional and contemporary South African folk/church songs and dances, including Bongani’s own brilliant folk-style compositions. That said, to add variety to the concert program, Suzannah & Liam will also teach the group a set of American and Irish songs and an Appalachian clogging routine.
The camp will begin in residence rehearsing at Volmoed Retreat in Hermanus, set in the heart of the western Cape’s wine country and a roughly 2-hour drive east from Cape Town airport. During our second week we will stay in the heart of Cape Town, collaborating with local ensembles, visiting township schools and taking in the amazing sights and sounds of the cityscape.
Our Hermanus stay will start with long rehearsal days (6-7 hours/day of singing) and self-catered meals. Bongani’s wife Noxi will act as reigning queen in the kitchen, with sous-chefs rotating in for each meal from among the participants. Meals will include traditional South African dishes as well as western comfort foods. Later in the week, we will take breaks for nearby excursions, including a group visit to a local winery and an afternoon in the beach town of Hermanus itself.
In Cape Town, we will be comfortably housed at Mount Sierra Apartments in the vibrant Gardens district near the heart of the city. During our Cape Town week we will perform and hold musical exchanges with township church, school and prison choirs. While not performing we will be able to choose from myriad excursion options, including trips to Table Mountain, Cape Point and Robben Island, plus swimming with penguins, watching the sun set at Camps Bay, a raucous dinner at Marco's African Place Restaurant and a closing noontime feast at Moyo Restaurant in beautiful Kirstenbosch Gardens.
GETTING THERE
Participants will be responsible for arranging for their own round-trip transportation to Cape Town. We recommend that you plan to arrive in South Africa at least a day early to help to adjust to the time change. Everyone will be expected to meet at CPT (Cape Town International Airport) mid-morning on January 12 for the 2+ hour drive out to Hermanus. (We will set that time based on people’s arrivals.)
We will officially finish in the mid-afternoon on Sunday, January 25. We’ll first check out of our Cape Town accommodations that morning and head to Kirstenbosch Gardens, where we will enjoy a group lunch together starting at noon.
If possible, time your return travel home to late afternoon or the evening on January 25, keeping in mind that it is at least a 30 minute drive (much longer during rush hour) from the gardens to the airport.
By the way, it is mid-summer, not winter, in South Africa in January.
Meet the leaders
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Bongani Magatyana
Bongani Magatyana is a music director, composer and theatrical producer living in Khayelitsha Township in Cape Town, South Africa. His father was a self-taught choir conductor in the Old Apostolic Church who taught him how to read and write tonic-solfa music notation at a young age. Today Bongani conducts large OAC choirs himself. He also composes and directs for an educational theatrical company, leads a male choir and a successful children’s choir, and continues to compose music in a variety of genres, bringing vibrant performances to communities across Cape Town.
Bongani’s folk-inspired choral compositions are popular pieces for South Africa’s major choral competitions and are sung by choirs throughout South Africa and internationally.
Bongani has taught with Village Harmony every year since 2012 at our study-performance camps and workshops in South Africa, the US and the EU.
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Suzannah Park
Suzannah Park, a native of Asheville NC, is a performer, teacher, activist, organizer and community leader. She comes by her musical skills naturally as a third generation performer in a family of traditional Appalachian and British Isles singers, storytellers, artists and dancers, and has been touring and teaching for the past twenty five years, both in the USA and abroad.
Suzannah began singing with VH as a young teenager in 1994, and was touring with Northern Harmony as early as 1996. Suzannah has since become one of VH most popular teachers, first joining the teaching staff as an intern in 2000.
Founder and director of the Wild Asheville Community Chorus—now under the umbrella of VH—Suzannah was a founding member of VH alumni group, the Starry Mountain Singers. She is currently a member of the traditional music faculty and choir director at Warren Wilson College.
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Liam Kantor
Liam Kantor is a vocalist and instrumentalist based in Evanston, IL. From an early age, he was steeped in the world of traditional music, learning fiddle tunes and folk dances from his teachers and family alike. During the pandemic, he spent a year in Marshfield, VT, working with Village Harmony, to organize workshops and perform online concerts with Northern Harmony.
Liam's musical interests span a wide range of traditional folk styles from around the world with a focus on New England-style and Celtic fiddle music and traditional ballads of those regions.
Liam has a particular passion for finding ways to bring people into community through art and, particularly those who might not think to find connection through art. Thus, drawn to community-based musical traditions, he finds himself most at home singing in choirs, playing in jam sessions, and trading songs around campfires.
Rehearsal venue
Volmoed Retreat Centre
Set in its own little valley of 130 hectares of fynbos, VOLMOED offers comfortable accommodation in well-equipped houses accommodating 2 to 12 people each..
The property has always been known as Volmoed (meaning full of courage and hope) and the valley first came to prominence as a place of healing during the 18th century when a leper colony was established here.
The Volmoed Trust was established in the early eighties as a place that would minister to people who felt battered by their life's experience. Today it serves the wider community as a facility for conferences and courses.