The Bob Collymore Foundation (BCF) has announced the inaugural BC Jazz Lounge, which is part of the BC International Jazz Festival Series (BCIJF) series. The Lounge will feature the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis.
Grammy and Pulitzer Prize-winning trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis, music director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, will headline two events in Nairobi on 1st and 2nd October 2025. The Orchestra will also lead an education day for emerging artists and students, including a master class for local Jazz artists as well as a selection of students from Ghetto Classics and other schools in Nairobi.
Nairobi is one of the key stops for the inaugural multi-country Africa tour by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, which comprises of an ensemble of 15 virtuoso instrumentalists, unique soloists, composers, arrangers, and educators.
Marsalis, who is a world-renowned trumpeter, bandleader, and composer, currently serves as Managing and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Director of Jazz Studies at The Juilliard School, and President of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation. Since his recording debut in 1982, he has released 127 jazz, classical and alternative recordings and won several awards.
“We are incredibly honoured to be able to host the Orchestra as they take on their first multi-country Africa tour. The Tour indicates that our Festival has achieved yet another milestone in its quest to become an integral part of Africa’s growing jazz ecosystem,” said Wambui Collymore, Festival Director, BCIJF.
BCIJF will host two shows at the Tamarind Gardens on 1st October and 2nd October respectively. The show on 1st October will be a VIP show, while the 2nd October show will be a general event following a special performance for schools.
On this tour, the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis also includes special guests: drummer Herlin Riley, percussionist Weedie Braimah, and vocalist Shenel Johns. They will perform Marsalis’s new work, Afro!, which will premiere right before their tour to Africa. Afro! will build on Marsalis’ previous opuses as Blood on the Fields (1996), Congo Square (2007), Ochas (2014), the fresh big band arrangements comprising JALCO’s The South African Songbook concert (2019) as well as Kenya, a song launched in 2023.
“The JLCO’s first tour of Africa is deeply profound,” JALC’s Managing and Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis says. “In the globally influential music and dance concepts of Africa, we can perceive how to find harmony and balance with nature, how to perceive and interact with the supernatural, and how to create endless variations on fundamental themes in pursuit of a good time.”
Tickets are available for sale at mookh.com.
- 1st October: Dinner and Show – Tickets: Ksh 12,500
- 2nd October: Fan Show – Adult Ticket: Ksh 3,500 (increases to Ksh 4,000 from 1st September
- 2nd October: Education Day (school show for select schools and artistes). For an invitation for a school group, please email: bcinternationaljazzfestival@gmail.com