Féroll-Jon Davids

Féroll-Jon Davids, principal clarinettist of the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO), hails from McGregor, a rural town in the Cape Winelands of South Africa. As a proud recipient of an Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Scholarship for BMus and Hillensberg Trust Scholarship for MMus, he obtained both degrees in clarinet performance cum laude from Stellenbosch University under the tutelage of Maria du Toit, Jimmy Reinders and Daniel Prozesky, all former CPO principals.

While at university, Féroll-Jon received numerous awards, among others as soloist in South African youth concerto festivals with the CPO, KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra and Stellenbosch University Symphony Orchestra; winner of the Mabel Quick International Scholarship Competition; and, recipient of the 2019 Rector’s Award for Academic Excellence. He also attended two semester exchanges in the USA, at the University of Georgia and Montana State University respectively, where he was tutored by Dr D-ray McClellan and Dr Gregory Young.

Having a proclivity for chamber music, he was thrilled to be a member of a project pioneered by the Decoda Institute, a group of chamber musicians affiliated to Carnegie Hall. Their project Disa was a programme hosted in South Africa, focusing on interactive chamber music performance practices in diverse communities and contexts. At the 2019 International Summer Academy in Payerbach, Austria, hosted by the Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts, a wind quintet of which Féroll-Jon was a member won the Antonin Reicha Award for Best Interpretation by A Wind Quintet.

The commencement of Féroll-Jon’s professional career in 2020 coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic. He made his debut in that period performing the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, arranged for string quintet, with musicians of the CPO. Two years later, he performed it to great acclaim with the full orchestra at the annual Summer Concert Series of the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens and again at the Franschhoek Chamber Music Festival.

Besides his duties as the CPO’s principal clarinettist and his participation in chamber music concerts, Féroll-Jon also has an appetite for contemporary music. At the 2023 International Society of Contemporary Music’s festival in South Africa called World New Music Days, he joined fellow-musicians in performing newly composed chamber works. He also has regular outings as a recitalist. As recent as April 2024, performing with esteemed South African concert pianist Nina Schumann, one reviewer wrote:
Davids is a vibrant virtuoso who is totally immersed in the music in hand and at one with his instrument. It’s a pleasure to watch him trace the melodic and rhythmic structures with a sway of his clarinet or a discreet playful movement of his body.

Féroll-Jon lectures clarinet as a member of the faculty of Stellenbosch University’s Music Department and is an active adjudicator at local and national youth music competitions and eisteddfods. At the Stellenbosch International Chamber Music Festival (SICMF), Féroll-Jon annually coaches various chamber music ensembles. Believing in the capacity of music education to bring about social change, Féroll-Jon has been the project manager of Jamestown Sounds, a community outreach programme in Stellenbosch, South Africa, where pupils from previously disadvantaged communities are taught to play brass and woodwind instruments. Other outreach activities include YONA (Youth Orchestra of Namibia in Windhoek), Xiquitsi (Community Music Project in Maputo, Mozambique), and the CPO Music Academy in Cape Town.

Furthermore, as a scholar Féroll-Jon co-edited “Sorry. I am what I am”, a book on the life and letters of South African pianist and vocal coach Gordon Jephtas who, as a person of colour during South Africa’s apartheid era, left the country to find work abroad and by the end of his life had trained and collaborated with world-famous opera stars such as Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland, Renata Tebaldi, Franco Corelli, Plácido Domingo, and many others.