Jessica Lloyd-Jones

I grew up in Pretoria and was homeschooled until I was 14. Although my parents didn’t sing or play instruments themselves, they enthusiastically encouraged me and my two sisters to develop our musical talents. Joy and I took recorder lessons from the age of seven, and attained exceptional results in Eisteddfods and Music Festivals, but our best performances were always our duets – we loved to play together and pushed each other to become better musicians.

A few years later, my sisters and I joined the Centurion Childrens’ Choir, and for the first time started to develop our singing technique. To this day, when we get together, we end up singing songs we learned in the Childrens’ Choir.

At the age of 14, I moved to Eastern Cape. As soon as I arrived at my new school, Hudson Park High School, I joined the Concert Band (playing oboe, my second instrument), the Choir, and the Chamber Choir. The Chamber Choir, which was composed of approximately 16 girls singing in four parts, afforded me my first opportunity to sing complicated music in a small group, with very few singers per part. While it was a musical challenge, it was the first time I had experienced the close bond that can form between singers in small groups. Tuesdays – also known as Chamber Choir Day – was the best day of the week.

So, when I arrived at Rhodes University, it was an easy decision to audition for the Rhodes Chamber Choir. In the choir I made my closest friends and grew to be more confident, in addition to developing my singing skills. A few years later, two of my choir friends, Charles Antrobus and Glyn Lloyd-Jones (who you may have heard of), convinced me to join the Cathedral Choir. The music director at the time, AJ Bethke, asked the three of us to join him to sing Byrd masses for special services. In 2015, Mike Lambert asked Glyn if he happened to know any singers, and thus Saeculum Aureum was founded. in 2019, Glyn and I got married in the Cathedral, with Charles as our best man.

At Rhodes, I did a BSc in Mathematics and Instrumental Music Studies, in which I studied the oboe. This rather naturally resulted in me becoming a Maths and Music teacher where I get to pass on my passions to the next generation.