Meditations

A bravura performance from the late South African jazz musician, Meditations was recorded live in 1992 at Bath International Festival. It’s a solo performance, Mseleku on piano for the entire set, sometimes joining in with vocals, sometimes playing tenor saxophone and piano simultaneously. He’s clearly taken with the spiritual sonorities of the likes of Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane – you can hear echoes of their music in the way “Meditation Suite” seems continually to expand on itself, the centripetal structure giving way to lovely flurries of notes that tumble from the piano like steam. But there are significant connections with township jazz in the way Mseleku lets melodies unfurl, and his shadowing of the piano with wordless vocal extemporisations. The simplicity of the structures here – most of the material bobs and sways on two or three chords – belies the remarkable depth of Mseleku’s playing, the way he’s able to tease gorgeous waves of delicate melodicism from these simple means.