We recently attended a classy and great evening filled with great Jazz music, good food and drinks hosted at the trendy Katzy’s Rosebank, in Johannesburg. The event, called Emirates Pursuit of Jazz, is formulated to find the next big thing in the jazz music scene and is a joint effort by Emirates (the world’s largest airline) and Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s leading music company. The event we attended last week Wed (7 Nov) saw the announcement of the top 5 finalists.
After 14 weeks and over 500 entries, the top 5 participants performed live in front of the judges that comprised of Brenda Sisane (broadcaster and social entrepreneur), Sipho Dlamini (Chief Executive Officer of SAMRO) and Nduduzo Makhathini (Winner of the SA Music Award for Best Jazz Album and Standard Bank’s Young Artist Award in 2015).
The top 5 finalists include a combination of two songstresses and three instrumentalists from Johannesburg and Pretoria, they are:
- Casper Mofokeng – Saxophonist (Johannesburg)
- Viwo Kulati – Singer (Johannesburg)
- Siya Charles – Trombone (Johannesburg)
- Gally Ngoveni – Bassist (Pretoria)
- Nkosazana Mashinini – Singer (Johannesburg)
The top 5 finalist will battle it out for the big prize – a recording deal with Universal Music Group (UMG) and an opportunity to perform at the Blue Note, one of the most iconic jazz clubs in New York City, during the NYC Winter Jazzfest in January 2019.
The finale will be hosted on 04 December at Katzy’s Rosebank with voting being also open. The cool thing is when you vote you stand a chance to win a trip to New York. Voting as well as the fan competition closes on 3 December 2018, so be sure not to miss out! We look forward to the finale, should be mad fun.