The Jazz Epistles featuring Abdullah Ibrahim & Ekaya with Terence Blanchard at Jazz Alley in February
Purchase tickets HERE.
ARTIST INFO
Legendary South African music – a concert to tell the story of The Jazz Epistles, arguably the most important jazz album ever recorded in its country’s history. This music was almost lost forever — only 500 copies were made in 1959, buried, and rediscovered decades later after the tyranny of apartheid.
“South Africa’s Mozart.” – Nelson Mandela about Abdullah Ibrahim
“It’s the first all-black modern South African jazz recording.” – Gwen Ansell, author
“This story hasn’t been written yet. It’s a hidden history and it’s waiting to be told.” – Sazi Dlamini, ethnomusicologist
“At a time when apartheid itself was very backward looking, you had a collection of black musicians who were saying very defiantly: We are here, we are modern-city people, there is no way you are going to exclude us from modern life. And that is the beautiful undertone in that music.” — Gwen
During the era of apartheid in South Africa, jazz signified a special kind of threat to the white nationalist regime. Not only did its swing and syncopation resemble African rhythm, the music also invited a breeding opportunity for the thoughts it conveyed. In a place fortified by only separation, jazz inspired the mixing of people from all backgrounds and fostered modern ideas. In this animation, the legendary South African pianist Abdullah Ibrahim tells us how jazz and improvisation saved his life. – Simon Renter
“Four-time Grammy winning trumpeter, Terence Blanchard is a restless soul. His career is like a jazz chart, filled with unseen turns, twists and handoffs.” – Wall Street Journal
Abdullah Ibrahim, South Africa’s most distinguished pianist and a world-respected master musician, was born in 1934 in Cape Town and baptized Adolph Johannes Brand. His early musical memories were of traditional African Khoi-san songs and the Christian hymns, gospel tunes and spirituals that he heard from his grandmother, who was pianist for the local African Methodist Episcopalian church, and his mother, who led the choir. The Cape Town of his childhood was a melting-pot of cultural influences, and the young Dollar Brand, as he became known, was exposed to American jazz, township jive, Cape Malay music, as well as to classical music. Out of this blend of the secular and the religious, the traditional and the modern, developed the distinctive style, harmonious and musical vocabulary that are inimitably his own.
Since top-tier jazz and multiple Grammy-winning trumpeter and composer Terence Blanchard embarked on his solo recording career with his eponymous Columbia Records album in 1991, the New Orleans-born and based artist has traveled many paths musically, including delivering adventurous and provocative acoustic jazz outings of original material, composing over 50soundtracks and even, in 2013, debuting Champion: An Opera in Jazz. He has also, in the spirit of his onetime membership in the jazz school of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, mentored several musicians in his band who have gone on to have significant recording careers of their own (including Lionel Loueke, Aaron Parks, Kendrick Scott and one of his current band members Fabian Almazan).