SENZO

The incredible artistry and life of the South African septuagenarian pianist/composer Abdullah Ibrahim reads like a Hollywood movie: Born in Apartheid, growing up listening to church hymns, indigenous music and American jazz, he becomes one of his country s most accomplished musicians, and most famous, when Duke Ellington discovers and records him on his Reprise label in the sixties. He then lives in exile from his embattled homeland, redefines the parameters of jazz piano, before returning to a free South Africa after the fall of Apartheid as an esteemed world artist.

Ibrahim s magnificent life story unfolds in full aural splendor on this Sunnyside release, Senzo, a riveting and reverent twenty-two track solo piano studio recording that ranks among the all-time jazz piano masterpieces, including Thelonious Monk s Alone in San Francisco, and Bill Evans Alone. A practitioner of Japanese martial arts for four decades, Ibrahim has chosen Senzo as the CD s title (it means "ancestor" in Japanese and Chinese, and is the also Ibrahim s father's name). Ibrahim s otherworldly, pensive, yet propulsive pianism moves as it meditates; and grooves as it soothes, drawing from native African sonic syncopation and sources, as well as African-American religious themes, and of course, Ellington and Monk.

The nearly two-dozen tracks are an incredible potpourri of standards and original compositions that sing and swing in a number of tones and tempos: Banyana, Children of Africa, is a zesty dance, while Third Line Samba, a ditty inspired by the New Orleans street parades, reflects the experiences of the African Diaspora, contrasted by For Coltrane, a heartfelt tribute to the saxophone giant on par with Ibrahim s very personal take on Ellington s In A Sentimental Mood, and Ocean & The River open and close the CD and display Ibrahim s hypnotic sonic storytelling.

With enough stories to cover several lifetimes, told through eighty-eight keys, Abdullah Ibrahim s Senzo reveals that his ...uninhibited, intimate relationship with sound combines the sage wisdom of an ancient shaman with the insatiable curiosity of a little boy ...[the pianist] not only catches up with his ancestors, the widely traveled nomad also finds himself.