Roxane Steffen

Roxane Steffen started her musical education at the age of 6 with violin at the Music School of Delft, The Netherlands. At the age of 8 she started cello lessons and changed to double bass when she was 16.

After finishing her studies for Performance Diploma at The Royal Conservatory in The Hague she got her first contract for Tutti Double Bass with The Netherlands Ballet Orchestra in Amsterdam and filled the position of Sub-Principal with Holland Symfonia from 2002-2006. In 2004 Roxane took a sabbatical to come to Cape Town for one year to fill the position of Sub-Principal Double Bass in The Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra (CPO). In January 2006 she resigned her job in The Netherlands to return to Cape Town to fill the position of Principal Double Bass with the CPO and has not left Cape Town since.

Roxane has been teaching Double Bass in cape Town since 2004 at various institutions and privately. Currently she is only lecturing at the South African College of Music (University of Cape Town) at both the classical and jazz stream and works closely with The Cape Town Philharmonic Youth Orchestra musicians.

Next to her job at the CPO, teaching and other chamber music projects she plays concerts promoting the solo double bass and played Allan Stephenson’s Burlesque for Double Bass and small orchestra with the CPO in October 2021 at their symphony season with Bernhard Gueller conducting and has featured as soloist with the Musicanti Chamber Orchestra Cape Town.

Roxane is also a qualified Personal Trainer, Yoga instructor and Digital Marketer and uses all disciplines in her lessons.

During 2020, the year of lock down, Roxane has developed a passion for video editing which resulted in making various videos for the CPO and starting the YouTube channel ‘Cape Town MotoLife’ where Roxane combines her love for riding motorbikes with creating videos.