Vocalist

Melanie Scholtz is a South African-born, multi-award-winning jazz singer and composer. She started playing the piano from the age of 5 and went on to study opera at The University of Cape Town Opera School. Since then, she has released five successful solo albums and was named the Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz and won all three prizes at the prestigious Jazz Revelations competition as part of the Jazz a Juan Festival in Nice, France in 2012. Scholtz has performed all over the world including her native country, South Africa, plus the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. Her Jazz Underground concert will be a mixture of jazz standards celebrating Nancy Wilson and also celebrating her seven years in New York City with my original compositions. A meeting of North and South, they will also play some South African jazz.

Melanie Scholtz

The Underground at Jaffe Drive

When band leader Scott Kettner looks at a map, he sees a direct line that connects the rivers of northeastern Brazil to the parishes of New Orleans and the streets of NYC. It’s a connection that came to him in 1999 amid the swirling dancers, ecstatic musicians, and powerful percussionists parading in the streets during Carnival in Recife, Brazil. He was there at the urging of his mentor, NEA Jazz Master Billy Hart, to study maracatu, the region’s complex, dance-inducing rhythm. He came home with a vision, a vision that achieves its highest, funkiest, and most expansive expression to date with the release of Nation Beat’s latest offering, Archaic Humans (Ropeadope Records, May 30). It’s Nation Beat in overdrive

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Nation Beat: "Archaic Humans" CD Release

Joe's Pub

Night three of our week celebrating South African Freedom Day showcases a sublime performance featuring South African vocalist and composer Melanie Scholtz and Nairobi-born pianist Aaron Rimbui, honoring the memory of the legendary vocalist, songwriter, and social activist known around the world as “Mama Africa,” Miriam Makeba.

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 2013 collaboration with the iconic poet and anti-apartheid activist James Mathews, Freedom’s Child, featured SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director Soweto Kinch.

Melanie Scholtz

Vocalist

Events

Past events

Jul 7, 2024

Melanie Scholtz · Jazz at Lincoln Center

Jun 15, 2024

Nation Beat: "Archaic Humans" CD Release · Public Theater

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