Bheki Mseleku
b. 1955, Durban, South Africa. Proper recognition of pianist/composer/vocalist/saxophonist Bheki Mseleku's jazz talents seemed long overdue, but since 1991 this this modest and dignified performer has been very much in the limelight, touring internationally and releasing an album annually. One of a number of supremely talented improvising musicians who have left South Africa and its oppressive apartheid system to take up residence in London, Mseleku made the move relatively recently, touring out of South Africa in the late '70s, moving to Sweden in 1980 and finally settling in London in 1985. A Ronnie Scott's club debut in 1987, with some of the more prominent figures from London's jazz revival, including Courtney Pine and Cleveland Watkiss, did much to bring his talents to the notice of the local scene, and helped pave the way for CELEBRATION—a star-studded, major label debut featuring London-based musicians Pine, Steve Williamson, Eddie Parker and Jean Toussaint and a high-power American rhythm section comprising Michael Bowie and Marvin Smitty Smith. A lively and enthusiastic record, it mixed gentle, township-inspired compositions with modal, post- John Coltrane burnouts, and was marked by a hectic touring campaign and a deserved nomination for British Mercury Music Prize for Album Of The Year. After the media furore had died down, Mseleku resumed the solo performances in which he excels, accompanying overtly spiritual and dedicatory vocal-lines with gently rocking, township-inspired piano voicings, and punctuating the whole with sparkling, McCoy Tyner-style runs and one handed riffs on the tenor saxophone. MEDITATIONS, a live recording from the Bath International Music Festival, captured this absorbing style on two long tracks. Signing to the Verve/Polygram label at the end of 1993, Mseleku's TIMELESSNESS found him in the company of some top American heavy-weights, including Joe Henderson, Pharaoh Sanders, Abbey Lincoln and Elvin Jones, and was accompanied by another media furore.