HE IS often celebrated overseas, particularly in Germany and New York, where he holds frequent shows, and but back home it is not so often that one will see an artist of his musical calibre on stage.

It is the this context that fans of Abdullah Ibrahim, one of South Africa's most accomplished musicians, must be happy that the artist has now confirmed a two-city tour showcase with the 18-piece Jazz Orchestra Big Band.

The shows, set to take place next month, will be at the Cape Town Convention Centre on February 11 and the Linder Auditorium, Johannesburg on February 17.

Ibrahim is an artist who personifies innovation and mastery of his craft, with his performances always making for an incredible experience.

He will be accompanied by the 18-piece Jazz Orchestra Big Band, which features Andile Yenana, Feya Faku, Barney Rachabani and international artists Tony Koti and Andrae Murchison.

Ibrahim says his latest album, Senzo, is a journey through sound - striving towards our individual and collective home.

Senzo means "ancestor" in both Chinese and Japanese. Senzo also echoes the name of Abdullah Ibrahim's Sotho father, in whose language the word translates as "creator".

Ibrahim, South Africa's most distinguished pianist and a world-respected master musician, was born in 1934 in Cape Town and baptised Adolph Johannes Brand.

His early musical memories were of traditional African Khoi-San songs and the Christian music he heard from his grandmother, who was a pianist for the local African Methodist Episcopal Church, and his mother, who led the choir.

The Cape Town of his childhood was a melting pot of cultural influences, and the young Dollar Brand, as he became known, was exposed to American jazz, township jive, Cape Malay music and classical music.

Out of this blend developed the distinctive style, harmonies and musical vocabulary that are inimitably his own.

He began piano lessons at the age of seven and made his professional debut at 15, playing and later recording with the Tuxedo Slickers.

He was in the forefront of playing bebop with a Cape Town flavour and 1958 saw the formation of the Dollar Brand Trio.

His groundbreaking septet, the Jazz Epistles, formed in 1959 (with saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi, trumpeter Hugh Masekela, trombonist Jonas Gwanga, bassist Johnny Gertze and drummer Makaya Ntshoko) recorded the first jazz album by South African musicians.

That same year he met and first performed with vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin. They were to marry six years later.

After the notorious Sharpeville massacre of 1960, mixed-race bands and audiences defied the increasingly strict apartheid laws, and jazz symbolised resistance, so the government closed a number of clubs and harassed the musicians.

Some members of the Jazz Epistles went to England with the musical King Kong and stayed in exile.

In 1962, with Nelson Mandela imprisoned and the ANC banned, Dollar Brand and Benjamin left the country, joined later by the other trio members Gertze and Ntshoko, and took up a three-year contract at the Club Africana in Zürich.

There, in 1963, Sathima persuaded Duke Ellington to listen to them play, which led to a recording session in Paris - Duke Ellington presents the Dollar Brand Trio - and invitations to perform at key European festivals, and on television and radio during the next two years.