Composer, pianist, teacher, and healer Nduduzo Makhathini, one of the most exciting live artists on the international jazz scene today, is coming to HKW for a concert. Born into a musical family in uMgungundlovu near Pietermaritzburg, the son of musicians, he received his first musical training at home and his second in school and church choirs. He later studied music at the Durban Institute of Technology. Since 2006, he has played in various bands and quickly gained recognition as one of the leading voices of South African jazz—at least since his album Ikhambi won Best Jazz Album at the South African Music Awards in 2018. The 2020 Blue Note release Modes of Communication: Letters From The Underworlds, hailed by the New York Times as one of the best jazz albums of the year, helped him achieve a worldwide breakthrough. 

Makhathini’s compositions and improvisations, his piano playing and his chanting are deeply rooted in Zulu traditions. He is a teacher and a healer who seeks and establishes a connection to the ancestors and to creation in his concerts. His three-movement suite uNomkhubulwane is dedicated to the daughter of God of the same name, who stands for prosperity and fertility, but also for balance and equilibrium. Prosperity here does not come at the expense of others—a very important principle in Zulu philosophy.

Makhathini is both an archivist and a visionary: He surrenders himself to his improvisations as if they were a healing ceremony, using the piano like an oracle that illuminates the past and looks into the future through the present. Uhuru Phalafala from Stellenbosch University describes it as follows: ‘Pianist and sangoma Nduduzo Makhathini views his piano as ivory bones of divination. His practice on the piano entails full submission to the unknown to access alternative modes of knowledge and modes of communication … In breaking his piano into bones of divination Makhathini interrogates the ancestors’ modes of communication, their modality of expression, and transcribes it on his piano.’ (from: Home Is Where the Music Is, Chimurenganyana, 2021)

As head of the music department at Fort Hare University, Makhathini is also a renowned musicologist, and he regularly speaks out on political issues, whether in the lecture hall or on the concert stage. International collaborations have brought him together with Wynton Marsalis, Shabaka Hutchings, Hamilton de Holanda, Black Coffee, and other musicians. In 2025, he was awarded the German Jazz Prize for ‘Live Act of the Year International’. In the Miriam Makeba Auditorium at the HKW, he will perform in a trio with Lukmil Perez on drums and Dalisu Ndlazi on double bass.