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Jazz’s greatest artists trace the evolution of a composition from conception to performance, and you’re invited on the journey – backstage and on-stage.
South African singer Melanie Sholtz and Kenyan pianist Aaron Rimbui take us through his reharmonization of Tanzanian songwriter Adam Salim’s classic 1945 standard “Malaika” – a song first recorded by Kenyan artist Fadhili William and most associated today with “South Africa’s First Lady of Song,” Miriam Makeba. They share the story behind the composition and perform it on the Joe Henderson Lab stage during the week of their concert honoring Makeba in April 2024 during the 2023-24 Season.

ABOUT MELANIE SHOLTZ & AARON RIMBUI

A Cape Town native, Melanie Scholtz has been a major artist on the South African scene since the early 2000s, releasing five acclaimed albums, working with jazz legend and Miriam Makeba’s one-time husband Hugh Masekela, and touring the world with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 2019. Her celebrated 2013 collaboration with the iconic poet and anti-apartheid activist James Mathews, Freedom’s Child, featured SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director Soweto Kinch.

Dubbed “the greatest pianist in East Africa” by the major African newspaper Daily Nation, Kenyan multi-instrumentalist and composer Aaron Rimbui is a rising force on the international scene, having collaborated with a global roster of major artists including Deitrick Haddon, Bobby Ricketts, Emmanuel Jal, Suzanna Owiyo and Eric Wainaina. He’s released five superb albums and was music director of the wildly popular East African reality competition show Tusker Project Fame.