Thandi Ntuli’s unique offering
It has been a vintage year for original South African jazz on record, so much so that it has been hard for reviewers to keep up with the output. Pianist Thandi Ntuli launched her debut The Offering (available from www.cdbaby.com) back in September, following a fundraiser in August: a business model that could with advantage be adopted by other aspiring recording artists.
University of Cape Town graduate Ntuli has been playing since she was four. She has rapidly become support pianist of choice for many artists, from other young-generation players such as trumpeter Lwanda Gogwana to relative elder statesmen such as saxophonist Steve Dyer. She co-founded the electronic outfit Deluge with young lion, reedman Sisonke Xonti, and composes prolifically.
On The Offering, leader Ntuli showcases her arrangements of 11 of those compositions. Collaborators include guitarist Keenan Ahrends, saxophonists Xonti and Mthunzi Mvubu, trumpeter Marcus Wyatt, and vocalist Spha Mdlalose.
Striking album artwork by Mzwandile Buthelezi irresistibly recalls the era of albums like Did You Tell Your Mother? and Underground in Africa, when musicians and visual artists formed a community of co-inspiration. Too many recent dull photographic CD covers make it worth commending.
As for the music, it announces a very distinctive vision. If there is a point of reference, it has to be the late Bheki Mseleku in the way it employs spare, almost meditative themes that spiral outwards, gaining ever more lush and ornate harmonic underpinnings as they progress. There’s a lyrical joy in the development of the arrangements (as on Love Remembers) that Mseleku would also have recognised and appreciated. Ntuli’s music, like his — and with the root reference point for both being African traditional music — swirls around richly textured repeating motifs.
That shared feel will make The Offering a winner for Mseleku fans — but the melodies are wholly Ntuli’s own.
Source: Business Day Live