Wendy Oldfield

Her first solo album Beautiful World set the wheels in motion for a succession of hits, including Real World, Acid Rain, Miracle and Don’t Stop Believing. Oldfield’s vocal performance on the album won her the Octave Award (1992) for Best Female Vocalist and a nomination for Song of the Year (Miracle).

Oldfield branched out into other areas of composition and arrangement, writing soundtracks for commercials, film and television, during which she was nominated for an M-Net film score award in 1995. Oldfield wrote soundtracks for Leon Schuster’s Sweet and Short and There’s a Zulu on my Stoep. Her song Acid Rain was chosen as the theme song for a 180 part series Nature on Track which has been played all over the world.

Oldfield moved into world music with her next album Ruby, produced by Thapelo Khomo and Leonal Bastos. Shortly after the release, Oldfield was asked to sing the South African theme for the 1996 Olympic album produced by Cedric Samson. She also performed as the support act for Wet Wet Wet that same year.

A 1998 newspaper survey noted that Oldfield was one of the South African artists who had performed the most live shows, averaging as many as 150 shows per year over the previous fifteen years. During 1998, she also released Duwayo, which was nominated for an FNB Producer of the Year Award. She supported Simply Red on their tour of South Africa in 1999 and shortly after that released her fourth solo album On a Pale Blue Dot, which won the FNB Pop Album of the Year Award. She was also nominated for Best Female Vocalist.

Oldfield took some time off to dedicate herself to her family. During this time, she continued to perform regularly with her band and also teamed up with sound engineering wizard, Neal Snyman on a variety of productions, ranging from movie sound tracks to wildlife documentaries such as the Discovery Channel’s Living with Tigers.

Oldfield joined world music group Mondetta with Steve Newman, Julia Kim, Gito Baloi and Elad Neeman. They released their debut album Small World, and performed to packed houses at venues around South Africa, including the Oude Libertas Amphitheatre and Womad 2001. Oldfield completed and released her 1st solo album ‘Holy Water’ toward the end of 2002. She was nominated for a South African Music Award for Best Adult Contemporary.

After Wendy moved to the Wilderness in 2003, she concentrated on bringing up her family but continued to write songs, working with Jazz prog band Gaia, musically directing and arranging the old mutual Choral Encounter series for a few years and writing and producing a children’s series of songs and rhymes,  Sing Along Kids for African Cream Music.  She won the SAMA award for best children’s music 2009 and 2011.