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The music for this Symphonic Jazz Concert was first performed as part of the 2022 BBC Proms at the iconic Royal Albert Hall under the baton of Wyatt, with the Grammy award-winning Metropole Orkest, a hybrid jazz and pop orchestra based in the Netherlands.
The collaboration between the JPO and the ZAR Orchestra exposes the beauty and power of this music to a South African audience for the first time. The Symphonic Jazz Concert also features South African trombone player and vocalist Siya Makuzeni and jazz musician Siyabonga Mthembu, alongside the beloved JPO and ZAR Jazz Orchestra.
A trumpet player, composer, arranger and bandleader from Gqeberha in the Eastern Cape, Wyatt has been an influential and important figure in the South African musical landscape for more than two decades. He founded the ZAR Jazz Orchestra in 2015 to "present a gathering of some of South Africa’s finest young jazz musicians from all corners of the jazz scene".
For the first time in South Africa, the JPO and ZAR Jazz Orchestra will converge for this one-night-only performance to celebrate the country's jazz heritage and pay tribute to the legendary jazz musicians who have made an indelible mark on South African music.
The evening's repertoire is drawn from The Jazz Songbook – a collection of some of the most iconic and important South African jazz songs from the last half a century – curated for a full orchestra with big band and rhythm sections.
Audiences can hear the Marabi and Mbaqanga influence in Dudu Pukwana’s Mra and Angel nemali, the more avant-garde approach to Louis Moholo’s take on one of the best-loved local ballads Lakutshona Ilanga, the pop/soul influence of Stimela (Hugh Masekela’s deeply tragic ode to the continuing problem of forced migrant labour in South Africa) and Jonas Gwangwa’s Diphororo.
Audiences can expect Bheki Mseleku’s breathtaking The Age of Inner Knowing and Winston Mankunku Ngozi's Yakhal’ Inkomo, while the sound of the Cape Town minstrels’ carnival music shines through Wyatt’s Anneke Tassou. Abdullah Ibrahim’s frenetic Bombella is juxtaposed with Miriam Makeba’s most famous of songs The Click Song (Qongqothwane).
