Benjamin Jephta

Bassist and composer Benjamin Jephta (30) has made a name for himself as one of South Africa’s premier double and electric bass players. A graduate of the jazz program at the University of Cape Town in 2013 he has performed both nationally and internationally since the age of 14 and he has worked with notable South African jazz musicians including Hugh Masekela, Sibongile Khumalo and many others. With two albums as a bandleader, multiple award nominations and wins, Jephta, the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans list recipient also received the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz award in 2017.

Benjamin regularly sessions with various South African hip-hop and pop artists, as well as on TV programs including The Voice SA, Dancing with the Stars SA and musical directs the ‘late night’ show The Bantu Hour on SABC 2. After graduating from The Berklee Global Jazz Institute in Boston, USA, with a Masters degree he moved and lived in New York City where he has since performed with Danilo Perez, Terri-lyne Carrington, Jason Palmer and Dianne Reeves among many others. He is currently based in Johannesburg, working as a performer, film/TV composer and lecturing in Jazz Studies and Film Composition at the University of Witwatersrand.

Jephta is representative of the now-generation kind of musician, wrote The Mail and Gaudian. About his Sophomore album ‘An Evolution of an Undefined’ in late 2021, Downbeat online says: “...This new recording plays like contorted sketches from the notepad of an artist hell-bent on defining a sound and identity of his own. Yet, it’s a sound that brandishes remnants of the jazz tradition.”

Source: www.benjaminjephtamusic.com/about