Results for "Johannesburg"

Mandla Mlangeni

Mandla Mlangeni is a Johannesburg-based trumpeter, composer and bandleader. A superbly talented player, Manda is a member of the SAMA-nominated group Amandla Freedom Ensemble and has toured extensively as a member of the Cape Town Opera. Recently, his musical production Oratorio For A Forgotten Youth was premiered by the Artscape Opera House. Mandla is also highly active with Tune Recreation committee, a group which he founded to teach music workshops and provide healing to disenfranchised communities. Outside of his performance and education work, Mandla curates Monday Blues at the Bassline and a host of other Johannesburg-based concerts under the presenting banner of Afrikan Freedom Principle.

Vuma Levin

Born a South African and raised during the unstable interregnum years of Post-Apartheid South Africa, Guitarist Vuma Ian Levin's music is an attempt to interrogate conceptions of identity, nation, culture, power and being both globally and in the emergent, post 1994 South African Democratic project. First picking the guitar up at 14, Levin later received lessons from the South African Jazz guitar legend, Johnny Fourie. He completed a National Diploma at the Tswane University of Technology going on to be presented with the best Guitarist Award (2008). In 2009, Levin was selected as the guitarist in the Standard Bank National Youth Jazz Band, led by Feya Faku, which culminated in a performance at the Grahamstown Jazz Festival and later at the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz Festival

Givan Lotz

Multidisciplinary creative practitioner Givan Lötz escapes definition and can usually be found stretching, subverting or otherwise beguiling our understanding of the creative production. He is at once a visual artist and musician who lives and works in Johannesburg. He holds an honours degree in Information Design from the University of Pretoria. In addition to numerous exhibitions, talks and features Lötz has been included in the ABSA L’Atelier Top 100 in 2012, 2013 and 2014 as well as Design Days Dubai in 2014 and 2015. His most recent record, SNARLING was released to critical acclaim on Miami-based label Other Electricities.

Menziani Yende

Born: March 30, 1953

Nduduzo Makhathini

Born: September 24, 1982

Every generation has its own leading lights. For the current generation of South African young jazz musicians, pianist, and composer, Nduduzo Makhathini stands as a key torchbearer. It’s useful to note the refreshing virtuosity with which the 34 years old jazzman articulates a decidedly spiritual vision of the world with the piano, and his compositional clarity. Makhathini plays with a bright lyricism and a full sound pallet that gives him a markedly wide melodic vocabulary. His music is as open as it is invigorating. Makhathini commands the sort of remarkable talent and thematic focus that posits him among an illustrious pantheon of forbears

KUNLE AYO

Born: September 11, 1972

Multi-Award winning Nigerian born Jazz guitarist, Kunle Ayo is looking forward to the release of his new and 6th studio album release titled “Atunse the Revolution”, in which he features the internationally acclaimed musicians like Bra Hugh Masekela, America’s great Saxophonist Kirk Whalum and Zimbabwean guitar giant, Oliver Mtukudzi. The album is set to be released later this year and comprises of smooth African contemporary jazz which is ethnically influenced. Due to the demand for diverse styles of Music, Kunle Ayo stands out as one of the artists who has retained his roots as a Nigerian Jazz Guitarist. He celebrated his birthday on September 11, 2014 in a special way by spending time with motherless babies of Resthaven Baby Sanctuary in Turffontein, Johannesburg

Joe Penn

Peter Auret

Born: August 17, 1976

Peter Auret (born 17 August 1976, Johannesburg, Gauteng) is a South African drummer. Peter is a versatile musician who has performed an toured with many of South Africa's great groups and musicians. He also works as a producer, recording engineer and occasional composer at his Sumo Sound recording facility. His distinctive performances and musical ideas can be heard on his, and many others' records. Peter Auret grew up in Johannesburg listening to his parents' Rock 'n Roll and Folk Music records without much exposure to Jazz and African music, in the then still very segregated and isolated South Africa

Hugh Masekela

Born: April 4, 1939

Hugh Masekela was a world-renowned flugelhornist, trumpeter, bandleader, composer, singer and defiant political voice who remained deeply connected at home, while his international career sparkled. He was born in the town of Witbank, South Africa in 1939. At the age of 14, the deeply respected advocator of equal rights in South Africa, Father Trevor Huddleston, provided Masekela with a trumpet and, soon after, the Huddleston Jazz Band was formed. Masekela began to hone his, now signature, Afro-Jazz sound in the late 1950s during a period of intense creative collaboration, most notably performing in the 1959 musical King Kong, written by Todd Matshikiza, and, soon thereafter, as a member of the now legendary South African group, the Jazz Epistles (featuring the classic line up of Kippie Moeketsi, Abdullah Ibrahim and Jonas Gwangwa). In 1960, at the age of 21 he left South Africa to begin what would be 30 years in exile from the land of his birth

Sisonke Xonti: A Leap of Faith

by Seton Hawkins
January 4, 2020

Known for years as an outstanding saxophonist and first-call collaborator in a variety of top South African Jazz ensembles, in recent years Sisonke Xonti has rightly earned acclaimed for his own talents as a bandleader and a composer. Notably, Xonti's 2017 debut release Iyonde not only provided a stellar showcase for his superlative horn ...