Ramon Alexander Cape Jazz Pianist · Composer · Educator
A leading exponent of Cape Jazz — a pianist, composer and educator whose music carries the goema rhythms, Khoi and Moravian heritage, and District Six lineage of the Cape into concert halls and festivals around the world.
- Montreux Jazz Festival Franschhoek, March 2026
- Cape Town Int'l Jazz Festival debut, 2016
- Toured Europe & Asia
- Lecturer, Stellenbosch University
A bridging figure in Cape Jazz
Born and raised in Mamre, a historic Moravian mission settlement near Cape Town, Ramon trained first as a winemaker before jazz claimed him. That sense of place — of rhythm, heritage and "balance" — runs through everything he writes and plays.
He is an award-winning pianist, composer, curator, producer and musical director whose work honours the elders who passed him the baton while shaping the next generation of South African players.
Selected career highlights
- Musical director of the Abdullah Ibrahim Memorial Concert, Artscape Opera House, Cape Town, June 2026 — the national tribute to the musician Ramon calls the father of Cape Jazz.
- Performed as the Ramon Alexander Trio with saxophonist Buddy Wells at the Montreux Jazz Festival Franschhoek in March 2026, on the festival's "Jazz Village" stage.
- Made his Cape Town International Jazz Festival debut in 2016.
- Has toured internationally across Europe and Asia, including the Borneo International Jazz Festival and a 2019 residency at the No Black Tie Jazz Club in Kuala Lumpur.
- Two solo albums — Picnic at Kontiki (2011) and Echoes from Louwskloof (2015) — alongside production and performance credits across Cape Jazz recordings, including Essence of Spring (2019) for Cape Town jazz icon Ibrahim Khalil Shihab.
- Heads the jazz division and lectures in Jazz Studies at Stellenbosch University, and mentors youth jazz bands across the Western Cape.
Bringing Cape Jazz into the classroom
Alongside performing, Ramon heads the jazz division at Stellenbosch University and is a scholar of goema rhythm and Cape Jazz history — a repertoire he teaches with the same seriousness he brings to playing it.
He regularly conducts jazz ensemble workshops for youth bands across the Western Cape, and in 2024 served on the National Youth Jazz Festival's selection panel for the National Youth Band.
Ramon is available to universities, conservatoires, festivals and youth programmes internationally for masterclasses and clinics, lectures on Cape Jazz history and goema rhythm, ensemble and combo coaching, short residencies, and student exchange collaborations.
It travels. In December 2023 Ramon was invited to Germany by Prof. h.c. Martin Zenker of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, playing across Germany and Belgium — Munich, Brussels, Reutlingen, Kempten, Mannheim and Steinhöring — with the Goethe-Institut supporting the travel. Concerts by night, faculty meetings by day: the visit ended with Stellenbosch University's conservatoire and HMTM Munich signing a Memorandum of Understanding.
That is the model he is happy to repeat — a residency that gives students something to hear as well as something to study, and leaves a working relationship between two institutions behind it.
The essentials for programmers
- Discipline
- Cape Jazz — pianist, composer, bandleader, producer, musical director
- Recent headline
- Montreux Jazz Festival Franschhoek, March 2026 (Ramon Alexander Trio ft Buddy Wells)
- Festival debut
- Cape Town International Jazz Festival, 2016
- International touring
- Europe · Asia
- Selected festivals
- Montreux Jazz Festival Franschhoek · Cape Town International Jazz Festival · Borneo International Jazz Festival · Journey to Jazz · National Arts Festival (Makhanda) · Darling Music Experience / Voorkamerfest
- Solo albums
- Picnic at Kontiki (2011) · Echoes from Louwskloof (2015)
- Education
- Heads the jazz division, Stellenbosch University
- Based
- Cape Town / Stellenbosch, South Africa
Available for festivals, concerts & masterclasses
Ramon Alexander is available for international and South African festival programming, concert performances, lecturing and masterclasses.
Email bookings@ramonalexander.co.za
Phone +27 72 418 1263