The following is extracted from Volume IV of the 1986 edition of South African Music Encyclopedia (J.P. Malan, ISBN 0 19 570311 1)
VIOLET TURNBULL (Mrs IG Joubert), mezzo-soprano, born 11 July 1905 in Cape Town, died ?
Violet Turnbull's studies at the RAM in 1922 started well, but were curtailed by her return to South Africa. For the next five years she was a student at the South African College of Music in Cape Town, and then a bursary enabled her to return to the RAM where she obtained an LRAM.
In South Africa since 1928, she frequently sang at concerts and with the Cape Town Civic Orchestra. In 1936 she moved to Johannesburg where she was active in John Connell's opera ventures and in performances of oratorios, at times under visiting conductors. As a soloist she was in demand at concerts and for opera and oratorio performances in the larger centres and was engaged for radio broadcasts up to 1964. She may be considered a pioneer of Afrikaans gramophone recordings - she recorded Afrikaans songs for Edison-Bell, HMV and Columbia between 1924 and 1930.
