After a worldwide tour and the release of his latest album, Ike Moriz will have his first performance at the Oude Libertas amphitheatre on Saturday 5 December.
The Love Swings performance, a celebration of his love for swing music, features 15 carefully selected songs celebrating musical legends Frank Sinatra and Michael Bublé as well as his new album.
“The material on this album reflects my journey of the past three years, both literally and metaphorically,” he says.
“Love Swings was mainly inspired by love.
“Getting married, the love for my wife and children, getting married, witnessing the birth of our daughter Sofia and the first 2 years of her life, my recent tour of 11 European countries doing what I love doing.
“Visiting some of the most beautiful places in the world, such as the Greek Isles, France, Spain, Italy and Turkey, has been an incredible inspiration. The world has such wealth in history, culture and art. You can’t help but getting inspired.”
Love Swings is written in the style of the great American songbook and the golden era of swing, but unlike many of the swing legends Moriz has written a number of the songs on his 16th album himself.
“Great crooners like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Tom Jones hardly ever wrote their own material,” he points out. “This album contains seven of my own compositions as well as my interpretations of six classic standards.
“This album and an earlier album of mine (Siren Terpsichore, released in 2013) was written to create original standards in the style of the old classics X catchy, timeless and uplifting songs to capture the human condition.”
Moriz completed music degrees in jazz and popular music, but feels swing music seems to like him.
“The music has a strong uplifting and calming effect on me. I love how it makes me feel, even though I’ve always thought of it as being too ‘old-school’ for me to sing in public, as I always wrote and performed rock and pop music in the past.
“I never thought I’d be doing so many albums in this style, but I’ve listened to the feedback from my fans who have again and again begged me to do this kind of music on stage. My voice seems to be suited for the style and people love it when I sing songs from this genre.”
Friday promises to be an evening filled with great music performed by a band of legendary performers of the Cape jazz scene, featuring Navy Big Band leader Willie van Zyl on sax, guitar virtuoso Darryl Andrews, the lovely Amanda Tiffin on piano and a fabulous rhythm section.
Tickets for the show, which starts at 20:15, costs R180 and can be booked at Computicket.
