Nduduzo Makhathini is an improvisor, scholar, and musicologist at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s School of the Arts. He earned his PhD in music from Stellenbosch University. He focuses on constructing alternative sites for practicing and theorizing jazz studies in South Africa that consider Bantu cosmologies as points of departure.

Makhathini is a multiple award–winning artist and internationally acclaimed musician from Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal. As a bandleader, he has released 12 albums and features on many as a sideman and producer. He is currently signed to Blue Note Records in the US and enjoys a busy tour schedule. Makhathini has collaborated with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, Richard Bona, Hamilton de Holanda, Zim Ngqawana, Omagugu, Shabaka Hutchings, Black Coffee, Thandiswa Mazwai, Mbuso Khoza, and most recently the WDR Big Band. He has performed around the globe, including the jazz festivals of Umbria, Jarasum, Chicago, Montreal, Cape Town, and Joy of Jazz.

Earlier this year, Makhathini’s uNomkhubulwane was released on Blue Note Records, celebrating a mythical rain Goddess who regulates fertility through the language of water. The album is underpinned by an understanding of mythical institutions of Nguni peoples of Southern Africa, their connection to the cosmos, and how that relates to ingoma (sound making and healing strategies).

Originally from Johannesburg, South Africa, Zwelakhe-Duma Bell le Pere relocated to Connecticut to study with Jeff Fuller at New Haven’s Educational Center for the Arts, before receiving both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the New England Conservatory (NEC) in Boston. It was there that he studied acoustic bass with Cecil McBee and Donald Palma, as well as improvisation and composition with Jason Moran, John McNeil, and Jerry Bergonzi. Zwelakhe-Duma has since performed and recorded with acts such as Christian Scott, Dave Holland, Randy Weston, Dave Liebman, and Jason Moran, as well as at the Monterey, Charlie Parker, Panama, Lagos, and Osaka jazz festivals. He has also been part of Joy of Jazz and MoMA’s Summergarden series. He was a 2011 recipient of the Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead fellowship and is also a teaching artist for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Jazz for Young People, Litchfield Jazz Camp, and NEC’s Jazz Lab.

Francisco Mela is a favorite among jazz’s elite instrumentalists, among them the McCoy Tyner Trio, Joe Lovano Us Five, Kenny Barron, Quincy Jones All Stars, Esperanza Spalding, John Scofield, Cooper-Moore, William Parker, Ingrid Laubrock, Gary Bartz, Bobby Watson, and George Garzone and The Fringe. Mela moved to Boston in 2000 and soon after joined the faculty at the Berklee College of Music. He also became the house drummer at the legendary Wally’s Cafe Jazz Club, where he began developing a concept for his own band—one that would feature the sounds of modern jazz with the traditional music he grew up with in Cuba.