Name: Charl du Plessis in Concert
Start: 2025-10-20T19:30:00-05:00
Location: Ellis Hall

South African classical and jazz pianist, Charl du Plessis, will be on campus concluding a week-long residency with the Missouri State Choirs and giving a guest recital. This event is free and open to the public. You're not going to want to miss this!
Charl du Plessis made his international debut in 1999 and rose to fame when he was the youngest pianist in Africa to be named a Steinway Artist in 2010. His international performing and teaching career is a testimony to his versatility, working simultaneously as classical and jazz pianist.
Du Plessis is active as recitalist, soloist, composer and arranger and has collaborated with many pre-eminent musicians abroad. He has performed at esteemed music festivals in China, Japan, Switzerland and The Netherlands as well as soloist with South Africa’s most prestigious orchestras such as the Johannesburg and Cape Town Philharmonic. After debut performances in London’s Royal Albert Hall, the Berliner Philharmonie (with Chick Corea) and Shanghai’s Oriental Arts Centre, Du Plessis became the first pianist to perform on top of Table Mountain in 2017. In the same year he was also invited to perform at the opening of Steinway Hall (Beijing). Concert tours to the USA, Europe and the Far East have contributed to the press hailing him as a “cult pianist”, an “edutainer” and a pianist with the “x-factor”.
For the past 20 years he has performed in more than 60 concerts per year with singer and iconic South African entertainer Nataniël.
Charl du Plessis lives in Pretoria, South Africa and has spent the first part of his life, dividing his time between concert life, and chamber music and, over the last few years, a teaching position at the University of Pretoria. He performs more than 130 concerts per season and pursues a comprehensive approach to the musical profession, organising his own management, recording under his own independent label, as well as Swiss label Claves, and studying the art of piano building and the latest sound technology. He has developed a similar approach to recording, a process that he controls at each and every stage. He has released 9 CD and 2 DVD recordings.