Wouter Kellerman’s Love Language was nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, and also debuted at #1 on the Billboard World Music charts in its first week.
South Africa (28 November 2021) – Globe-trotting flutist and composer Wouter Kellerman received a GRAMMY Award for his album Winds of Samsara, also reaching #1 on the US Billboard Charts and peaking at #1 on the Zone Music Reporter Top 100 International Radio Airplay Chart.
His album Love Language was nominated for a GRAMMY for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, and also debuted at #1 on the Billboard World Music charts in its first week.
Kellerman thrives on experimenting with the shades, textures, and colors that his magic flute is capable of painting, and creatively blending them with other instrumentation and vocal sounds. Over the course of nine albums, and through many high-profile live performances and collaborations, Kellerman has steadfastly built on the rigorous classical training of his youth, to create a signature sound that’s earned him both critical praise and multiple awards. He has won a total of eight SAMA’s (South African Music Award, the South African equivalent to the American Grammy), reinforcing his status as one of South Africa’s foremost musicians.
Kellerman composed the song ‘The Long Road’, a solo flute piece that Wouter wrote for Nelson Mandela, which won the 2016 Global Peace Song Award in the Acoustic/ Contemporary Music category. Wouter’s composition ‘Soweto Travels’ won first prize in the instrumental category of the 2018 USA Songwriting Competition.
In 2018 Kellerman collaborated with the Ndlovu Youth Choir (a rural choir based in Moutse, Limpopo, South Africa) to help showcase their talent – together they created a South African version of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape Of You’. The song became an internet sensation, with tens of millions of views, and winning awards like the HMMA (Hollywood Music in Media Award) for ‘Best Independent Music Video’ – pushing the Ndlovu Youth Choir firmly into the international limelight and all the way to the 2019 finals of America’s Got Talent.
Wouter has performed in places like Berlin, Shanghai, Delhi and Sydney, including three sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York City. In 2010 he performed at the FIFA Soccer World Cup Closing Ceremony to a global audience of 700-million viewers. A 2016 highlight was a performance in Johannesburg for the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi, and a television audience of more than 200 million.
Passionate about teaching and empowering young people, Kellerman has sponsored ten children in the SOS Children’s Village in Ennerdale, South Africa for the past 18 years; he has also financed the building of a house in the SOS Children’s Village in Rustenburg, South Africa. For his continued efforts in helping give these children better lives, Kellerman was nominated by the SOS Children’s Villages for the Inyathelo Special Recognition Award for Philanthropy. He continues to facilitate the teaching of young music and dance students in his country.
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