Rijk de Wet

Rijk began taking piano lessons in 2004 at the age of seven, at the insistence of his mother and his grandmother, a retired music teacher. Throughout his school years, he was taught by many different teachers in both piano and theory, before reaching Ms van Rensburg in eleventh grade (2014), with whom he completed Trinity’s Grade 7 practical exam. Rijk played the keyboard and later the piano for the Musica Perpetua orchestra from 2011 to 2015, for which Ronella was the conductor at the time. Thanks to this experience, they had already had a long and fruitful teacher-student relationship when he began piano lessons with her.

After entering university in 2016, Rijk kept playing the piano for self-enrichment, but did not engage in any further lessons or other formal musical education. He did not stop participating in cultural activities: he was a member and later leader of his residence’s a capella group, Eendrag’s Plutosêr, for which he arranged the repertoire and taught the vocal parts.

Rijk’s musical interests eventually grew to include jazz music. Seeking to be taught further in a genre that was entirely new to him, he reached out to Ronella again in 2023 to continue his lessons where he left off.

For his day job, Rijk creates content for Omni Calculator and is one of the many developers of their website. He also created and currently maintains the ScoreS2Duo website.