With only a handful of artists announced on Tuesday, the organisers behind next year’s 16th annual Cape Town International Jazz Festival are keeping mum about the headline acts. Theresa Smith takes a closer look.
THE CAPE TOWN International Jazz Festival organisers are playing their cards close to their chest, if Tuesday’s announcement of next year’s line-up is any indication.
While the 20 band names released so far range from jazz stalwarts to hot newcomers, they seem to be leaving the identity of their headline acts for later.
Tickets for the annual Cape Town International Jazz Festival (CTIJF), which takes place on the weekend of March 27 and 28, go on sale from 9am on Wednesday. If previous years are anything to go by, tickets will sell out fast, regardless.
Jazz enthusiasts will have to wait until January 27 (when the next announcement pertaining to the line-up will be made) to learn who will grace one of the five stages that will be set up at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.
That’s not to say the line-up announced so far is dull; it is anything but!
New York vocalist Amel Larrieux fuses a range of genres – R&B, soul, hip hop, jazz and folk - with flashes of Middle Eastern, West African and Indian styles. Another New Yorker who will be coming to the festival is Dutch-born pianist Gerald Clayton, the son of bassist and band leader, John Clayton.
Capetonians will surely turn out in their droves to finally catch up with Polish singer and songwriter, Basia. The vocalist established an international career with her Latin-tinged jazz-pop crossover tunes and wide vocal range, beginning in the late ’80s when she was part of the trio Matt Bianco, with hits like Half a Minute.
Another Cape Town favourite is Melanie Scholtz, who together with rapper Jitsvinger, will present Our Time. She opened the Standard Bank Jazz Festival at this year’s National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and brought the house down with her collaboration with the Afrikaans hip hop artist.
English tabla player and composer, and father of Asian electronica music, Talvin Singh, will collaborate with Indian sitar player, Purbayan Chatterjee.
Sons of Kemet are a band that cry out for a live experience, mixing as they do jazz, rock and Caribbean folk with touches of African-inspired music. Led by saxophonist, clarinettist, composer and “BBC New Generation Artist”, Shabaka Hutchings, Sons of Kemet feature Oren Marshall (Moondog, Radiohead) on tuba and Seb Rochford (Polar Bear, Baby-shambles) and Tom Skinner (Zero 7, Matthew Herbert) on drums.
Bass guitarist Bänz Oester and his friends The Rainmakers improvise around original jazz compositions, African polyrhythms, funky blues and obscure Swiss and Bulgarian folk tunes.
Pop trio Beatenberg exploded onto the local music scene earlier this year, prompting South Africans to ask, “who is Chelsea Blakemore?”
South African bassist and composer, Carlo Mombelli, is a lecturer at Wits, but will be coming to Cape Town for the festival with his quartet, The Storytellers, featuring Kyle Shepherd on piano, vocalist Mbuso Khuzo and Kesivan Naidoo on drums.
English multi-reedist Courtney Pine drew on his soprano saxophone skills for his 2012 album House of Legends, which is the name of his performance at this festival. With that palbum Pine drew on his Afro-Caribbean roots, revisiting calypso, soca, zouk and reggae and even bringing in South African rhythms into an electrifying be-bop dance party, so expect more of the same.
The Claude Cozens Trio from Cape Town will showcase hot new drummer Cozens, who plays with pianist Shepherd and electric bassist Benjamin Jephta. He recently released his debut album, Jubilee Jam.
Swedish trio Dirty Loops are Jonah Nilsson on vocals and piano, Henrik Linder on bass and Aron Mellergårdh on drums. As their name suggests, they take pop songs and twist them with some funky sounds and jazzy slaps, creating videos that go viral online.
American post-bop trumpeter, Wallace Roney, will bring along his quintet, which will also feature jazz fusion drummer Lenny White and double bassist Buster Williams.
In their current configuration South African performance ensemble The Brother Moves On perform mainly as a band. They released a full-length album last year, A New Myth, though their first musical offering is available from their website as a free download.
Durban guitarist Madala Kunene is the king of the Zulu blues, again an artist you want to experience live. Earlier this year he released an album, 1959, which features some Durban artists such as Guy Buttery and Lu Dlamini who would be a welcome addition to his performance.
Sipho “Hotstix” Mabuse has a longstanding link with the festival since he used to own Kippies, the legendary jazz venue that gives one of the festival stages its name. The musician and band leader has been performing for close to 50 years and still tours the world.
The current line-up of the Mahotella Queens feature singers Hilda Tloubatla, Nobesuthu Mbadu and Amanda Nkosi. Though the band have been together in some or other guise since 1964 and they were always prolific performers, very little of their earlier recordings are available.
Naima Kay is a new Afro-pop proponent with a wide vocal range from KZN, first discovered in her home town of Port Shepstone when she sang at the Ugu Jazz Festival.
On the developmental side, the Delft Big Band under the direction of Ian Smith and GrandWest Open Mic winner Zoe Modega will also take to the main stages.
• Tickets: R860 for a weekend pass and R530 for a day pass from Computicket. Limited early bird weekend passes available. Rosies stage tickets: R30 a show, available from mid-February.
• For updates check out www.capetown jazzfest.com