Melanie Scholtz & Aaron Rimbui Ensemble

A Cape Town native, Melanie Scholtz has been a major artist on the South African scene since the early 2000s, releasing five acclaimed albums, working with jazz legend and Miriam Makeba’s one-time husband Hugh Masekela, and touring the world with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 2019. Her 2013 collaboration with the iconic poet and anti-apartheid activist James Mathews, Freedom’s Child, featured SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director Soweto Kinch.

Dubbed “the greatest pianist in East Africa” by the major African newspaper Daily Nation, Kenyan multi-instrumentalist and composer Aaron Rimbui is a rising force on the international scene, having collaborated with a global roster of major artists including Deitrick Haddon, Bobby Ricketts, Emmanuel Jal, Suzanna Owiyo and Eric Wainaina. He’s released five superb albums and was music director of the wildly popular East African reality competition show Tusker Project Fame.

A timeless artist and towering figure Nelson Mandela called “South Africa’s first lady of song,” Miriam Makeba was pivotal in bringing African music to a Western audience and was a symbol of resistance to minority white rule in South Africa during apartheid.