Thandi Ntuli

Thandi Ntuli is a composer, pianist, and vocalist from South Africa. Her music puts South African folk, township musics, and gospel under a jazz and fusion umbrella. Ntuli possesses a sparse, spacy playing style that employs spare, almost meditative circular themes that often spiral outwards, building on lush underpinnings. Her playing has drawn favorable comparisons to late South African jazz piano legend Bheki Mseleku. Her debut album The Offering appeared in 2014 to glowing reviews. Four years later she self-released Exiled with legendary saxophonist Linda Sikhakhane in the studio lineup. Ntuli toured Europe and Asia, establishing herself internationally. In 2020 she released Thandi Ntuli (Live at Jazzwerkstatt), followed in 2022 by Blk Elijah & the Children of Meroë. In 2019, she traveled to Venice Beach, California where she recorded Rainbow Revisited with producer, percussionist, and mixing engineer Carlos Niño. It was released by International Anthem in November 2023. Ntuli, the youngest of five children, was born into a musical family in Pretoria, one of South Africa's largest provinces. Her father plays piano and guitar and sings. His love for choral music led him to teach choir at a center for the blind. Her grandfather, an elementary school principal, wrote songs he taught to students. Her namesake aunt was a classical singer, while her uncle, Selby Ntuli, was a member of legendary Afro-rock band Harari. That said, it was her mother's love of the piano that Ntuli credits with her becoming a professional musician. Raised in Soshanguve's underdeveloped Block AA, she began taking classical piano lessons at age four with Ada Levkowitz. Jazz was still on the horizon as the young Ntuli enjoyed learning the classical repertoire. Her interest in jazz was kindled during high school; she penned her first composition in the tenth grade. After graduating, she worked toward a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Performance at the University of Cape Town, where she graduated in 2010. What drew her to the study of jazz was hearing a pianist play something she considered beautiful -- without sheet music. She asked about the song and he told her it was simple improvisation; if she wanted to learn it, she should check out some jazz. After that encounter, Ntuli wanted to be a composer who consistently improvised. She met other jazz musicians gigging in clubs and through university contacts. Her first professional studio musician's gig was assisting legendary South African saxophonist/composer Steve Dyer in recording the albums Confluence (2014) and Genesis of a Different World (2019). 2014 was also the year that The Offering, Ntuli's self-released debut album, appeared. She composed all 11 tracks and enlisted a large band that included saxophonists Mthunzi Mvubu and Sisonke Xonti. Ntuli drew an abundance of positive critical notice for The Offering. That year, she was nominated for Mbokodo Award celebrating women in jazz. In 2015, she was nominated for a "Metro FM Award" for Best Urban Jazz Album. In 2016 she won the Arts & Culture Trust Impact Award for best jazz album. Ntuli began touring clubs and playing festivals in Europe and Asia. In 2018, she took home the Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz award, which gave her an enormous amount of publicity. The award reception coincided with the release of Exiled, her self-funded sophomore outing. The album's music went far beyond the confines of jazz as it integrated not only South Africa's jazz tradition but threaded in prime influences from the folk and traditional sounds of Mali and Ethiopia with socially and politically provocative lyrics. Before recording, she attended an acceptance speech by poet and writer Dr. Mongane Wally Serote upon receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Arts and Culture Awards. One sentence in that talk, "The story of Black men in South Africa still needs to be told," haunted her. She tracked him down and arranged a meeting. She desperately wanted to hear an elder's views on the many forms of Black love and healing within the Black family and in society. That conversation led to her composition of "The Void," featuring poet Lebo Mashile. It appeared on Exiled. Despite Exiled's limited physical distribution (it only appeared as a physical release in South Africa and Japan), its digital release sold exceptionally well, drawing positive acclaim globally for her singing and lyrics, as well as her composing and playing. She was selected by Apple Music as an "artist to watch." In 2019, Ntuli was nominated for Best Jazz Album at the South African Music Awards. She also returned to work with saxophonist Dyer playing on Genesis of a Different World that year (as did his son, breakout South African pianist/vocalist Bokani Dyer). She began touring the world, and one of her many transcontinental trips included a stop in Los Angeles (she'd been trying to get there to work with online acquaintance Carlos Niño for two years). The pair entered a Venice Beach recording studio and after a couple of days they'd cut enough material for an album. She continued to tour the globe for the remainder of the year -- including an appearance at Jazz at Lincoln Center as an invited guest of Wynton Marsalis. From that tour, the independently released Thandi Ntuli at Jazzwerksatt appeared in March 2020, at the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ntuli returned to recording in 2022 with Blk Elijah & The Children of Meroë for Next Music's Ndela imprint in July. She produced and arranged the eight-track set that featured her touring band -- Sphelelo Mazibuko (drums), Keenan Ahrends (guitar), Ndabo Zulu (trumpet), Mthunzi Mvubu (alto saxophone and flute), Shane Cooper (bass guitar), and Nompumelelo Nhlapo (percussion). She played piano and synth and sang. The title contains two references: "Black Elijah" is a fictional character created in admiration and tribute to Black Moses, organist for the Soul Brothers. Meroë is a name for the ancient city of Kush in Sudan. There, Ntuli imagines people who have done their inner work and achieved a state of harmony and freedom, come to dwell. The music, an exercise in South African jazz fusion, offered homage to the influence of Miles Davis by employing some of his fusion strategies, including an affected muted trumpet, electric piano, reedy synth, choppy fusion rhythms, and cadences, etc. For the first time, the set included only her vocals. Despite its powerful stories, adventurously beautiful music, and worldview, it was the least noticed -- yet most poignant -- title in her catalog. In November 2023, Rainbow Revisited appeared. It was assembled from the music that Ntuli and Niño cut and completed four years earlier. It was released by International Anthem. Among its contents were several previously issued Ntuli works that Niño wanted to re-record differently (including the title track).
© Thom Jurek /TiVo