DATE: Wednesday 24th September 2025
TIME: 19h30

VENUE: The Linder Auditorium

CONCERT
Wednesday 24th September 2025
PROGRAMME: SA Symphonic Jazz Songbook (Chapter 3)

Presented by renowned South African trumpeter, conductor and SAMA Award winner Marcus Wyatt.

The South African Jazz Songbook was first commissioned by The BBC as part of their 2022 Proms concert series (Prom 56), to be performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall. This arose as a result of celebrated South African musicians Marcus Wyatt and Siyabonga Mthembu’s prior collaboration with multiple Grammy Award winning Dutch Metropole Orkest, on a tour of the Netherlands as part of the Afrovibes Festival 2021. For this première performance, Wyatt was tasked with curating a bespoke programme of South African Jazz, to be performed by the Metropole Orkest, featuring Mthembu and specially selected UK-based guest soloists. In 2023, Wyatt and Mthembu brought the Songbook home, and it was performed in Johannesburg’s Linder Auditorium, with the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra (JPO), and Wyatt’s ZAR Jazz Orchestra. Tonight sees the continuation of this living heritage series dedicated to the performance, preservation and archiving of these most precious cultural works, for both current and future generations.

The Songbook is orchestrated for a full orchestra with big band and rhythm section and the setlist contains compositions from some of the country’s most influential and globally renowned jazz musicians, including Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba and Abdullah Ibrahim, alongside the young giants such as Feya Faku, Benjamin Jephta and Wyatt’s own ZAR Jazz Orchestra.