Jazz concert brought back memories

[caption id="attachment_79261" align="alignright" width="300"] JAZZ ICONS: A reader has good things to say about Feya Faku, left, and Nduduzo Makhathini -[/caption]

I RECENTLY had the privilege of listening to an accomplished jazz artist and his band at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University auditorium.

Nduduzo Makhathini, an awardwinning and well-travelled musician, led an exquisite quintet.

Blowing the Friendly City away were the imaginative Durban tenorsaxophonist, Linda Sikhakhane, and an avant garde flugelhorn-trumpeter from Mdantsane in East London.

The rhythm section led by Makhathini on piano could easily match the legendary Dexter Gordon’s famed rhythm section of George Cables et al.

Suddenly my mind raced back to a jazz show in 2006 at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. We had arrived late at the hall and, on stage, busy negotiating an intricate tune, were the jazz saxophonist Buddy Wells and trumpeter Feya Faku. The concentration, energy level and sensitivity of that band reestablished once more the essence of the art form.

Improvisation, lacking too much in what is branded as jazz nowadays, has always been a defining ingredient in jazz music.

The smiling faces at the end of the Wells/Faku show attested to a well-executed show.

At the NMMU auditorium, Makhathini and his band in devastating form reminded me of that day at the National Arts Festival in 2006.

-Gqugesi Melbekho, Port Elizabeth