I DIDN’T really choose the trombone," says this year’s Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz, Siya Makuzeni. "It chose me." Encouraged into a jazz band audition by her recorder teacher, the teenage Makuzeni decided to try her skills on clarinet: "Well, it seemed like the closest thing to recorder."But nerves, and the relative unfamiliarity of the instruments on offer, meant, "I could not get a sound — literally, not a sound — out of anything until I got to the trombone." The audition was successful, but "it was a lesson for me", she reflects."Embouchure isn’t something you can ever take for granted."Embouchure is the use of facial muscles and the shaping of the lips to the mouthpiece of woodwind instruments or the mouthpiece of the brass instruments. Drawing that technical lesson from the experience says a lot about Makuzeni’s approach to her music. She breaks new ground in jazz not only by breaching the barriers between approaches and traditions — something that is no longer such a n...
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