Noteworthy

Cellist and vocalist Abel Selaocoe is reshaping the boundaries of his instrument, drawing threads between African and Western music traditions with electrifying results. In his Toronto Symphony Orchestra début during the 2025/26 season, he will perform a vibrant Jessie Montgomery concerto that mirrors his own genre-crossing and improvisatory spirit. Selaocoe’s performances blend virtuosic cello playing, rich vocals, and a deep sense of cultural storytelling—inviting audiences into a sound world where traditions meet and evolve together.

Beginnings

Growing up in Sebokeng, a large township to the south of Johannesburg, Selaocoe (pronounced “se-LAU-chway”) first began to learn the cello with his brother at Michael Masote’s renowned outreach school, the African Cultural Organisation of South Africa (ACOSA), in Soweto. While he went on to study classical cello at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, he didn’t conceive of it solely as a Western classical instrument in those early days. “Where I come from, we tend not to label things in boxes. So, when I was given a cello, nobody said ‘Play classical music.’ Immediately, somebody said, ‘What sound can you make?’ And I had to start from the voice—I can make this kind of sound. And immediately, I started to explore beyond the bounds of the cello in that sense.” 

“The template we knew was the music we sing at home, and of course, my teacher afterward kind of opened up the world of classical music, mostly starting with Bach. And I thought, ‘Okay, there are two worlds now, but I have to make sure that they live in the same space.”

Path to Creative Diversity

Selaocoe is now pursuing a multi-faceted career with his cello, with a goal “to take this instrument that I’ve learned from a very young age in a classical manner and connect it to where I’m from, allowing the culture of a stringed instrument like a cello or violin to evolve as it visits different cultural spaces.” His solo and orchestral music, such as his own cello concerto, Four Spirits (2022), typically combine virtuosic cello and vocal performance with improvisation and African rhythms and groove, in explorations of the ties between African and Western music traditions. His experimental ensembles, Bantu and Chesaba, play music that moves seamlessly across a multitude of genres and styles, incorporating classical, traditional, and jazz influences as well as new sounds from their instruments. He makes his TSO début with the North American Première of a new Cello Concerto by American composer Jessie Montgomery, co-commissioned by the TSO and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. 

Ambassador of Sound 

Selaocoe seeks to push the limits of how the cello is played and perceived, relishing his instrument’s “ability to shapeshift,” from percussion to “chanting.” He describes his music as “contemporary of its influences,” which include African sound worlds that “don’t sound like the cello” and highlights the parallels between Western and African music. To Selaocoe, this is not a “fusion” but rather “an opportunity for different places to live in the same space.” This idea of the mutual coexistence of different types of music is a quality he believes is essential to ensuring the future of classical music: “I feel like the survival of classical music is based on living with other music. I feel like, for too long, classical music has been living in its own room with its own people. And I think for it to prosper and for it to be forever here, it needs to live with others.”

Discover the electrifying sound world of Abel Selaocoe in Jessie Montgomery’s bold new Cello Concerto at Epic Wagner—Legends & Lore on May 14 and 16, 2026. Celebrate the meeting of cultures and the limitless possibilities of the cello with the TSO. Get your tickets now at TSO.CA/Concerts.