Winner of this year’s Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Jazz is trombonist Siya Charles, who grew up in Gqeberha. We are very pleased to welcome her home as she attended the NYJF from the age of 15, performing repeatedly in the National Schools and Youth Jazz bands. She studied at UCT and last year completed her Jazz Master’s degree in New York at The Julliard as a FirstRand Laurie Dippenaar laureate and is a Jerome L. Greene Fellow and a National Arts Council scholarship recipient. The compositions and arrangements of the Siya Charles Sextet are inspired by a combination of classic jazz, South African jazz, the bebop and post-bop era, alongside Brazilian jazz, while the sound of the collective is held together by the combination of a rock-solid rhythm section and a tight horn section of trombone, sax and trumpet.

This performance is one of two presentations of the Siya Charles Sextet.  Find more about the other performance here.

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