Most of the buzz surrounding this year’s Cape Town International Jazz Festival was generated by the news that one of the most influential pianists in the history of jazz will be paying a visit to the Mother City. McCoy Tyner burst onto the jazz scene in 1960, when he joined John Coltrane’s band. Since then, his bluesy, melodic approach – which eventually clashed with the atonal, modal direction taken by Coltrane, causing them to part ways in 1965 – has made an indelible mark on successive generations of jazz pianists. The 71-year-old remains an energetic and vibrant recording and touring artist. His trio will be accompanied by a special guest, saxophonist Gary Bartz, a longtime collaborator of Tyner’s. His appearance at the Cape Town Jazz Festival comes as a result of audience demand after his performance at last year’s Luanda Festival. Evidently, South African fans felt that, if the Angolans can get McCoy Tyner, then why can’t we? The organisers of the Cape Town event were happy to oblige.

Although Tyner’s signing up for the Festival is more than enough to get excited about, the event has much more to offer. Another American star set to feature at Africa’s Grandest Gathering, as the event has become known, is violinist Regina Carter. Considered to be the genre’s finest living exponent of the instrument, she effortlessly crosses over from Western classical music to jazz to pop and is the first jazz musician – and the first African-American – to play Paganini’s famous Il Cannone Guarderius violin. She first rose to prominence as a member of the all-female quintet Straight Ahead, before going solo and establishing a quintet of her own.

Read more in the March 2010 issue of CLASSICFEEL magazine