Abraham Mennen is a South African multi-award winning saxophonist, improvisor and composer. 

 

Abraham Mennen performed his debut concerto (Scaramouche by Darius Milhaud) with the Johannesburg Symphony Orchestra at the early age of 12 years. 

 

Abraham Mennen attended the Royal College of Music in London obtaining a BMus First Class Honours under Kyle Horch with the support of the Jane Melber and Michael West Scholarship, where he won the Concerto Competition as well as the June Emerson Woodwind Ensemble Prize with the Kudo Saxophone Quartet. 

 

During his studies in London he was a member of the London Saxophone Ensemble, performing at the World Saxophone Congress 2009 and UNESCO Bangkok, and a member of the Roundhouse Music Collective, being recorded by Nick Mason (Pink Floyd). He performed regularly with the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (of Great Britain), performed as concerto soloist with the London Contemporary Orchestra and the Royal College of Music Chamber Orchestra and performed in many masterclasses in London and Europe with international artists including Claude Delangle, Arno Bornkamp, Frederick Hemke and Vincent David. 

 

In 2011, he won Gold Medal at the ATKV Muziq Competition, a prestigious multi-instrumental classical music competition in South Africa. In 2012 he won First Prize and Overall Winner at the inaugural Wakkerstroom Music Bursary Competition.

 

In 2014, Abraham Mennen was awarded a double scholarship to attend the New England Conservatory in Boston where he completed a MMus in Jazz Performance. He was further awarded the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Scholarship to aid his studies in the USA. 

 

While in Boston, he performed with bassist John Lockwood, a Berklee College of Music and New England Conservatory faculty member, at the world famous Beehive Jazz Club. He served as director and arranging composer for the Korean music group Hapum Haneun Hama, with highlight performances being a showcase at the Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston. He also performed several times with the Luther Gray Quartet and was a member of the ThinkinBig Band.

 

In April 2016, the guitarist Joe Morris brought Abraham Mennen to New York to perform alongside him at the Evolving Festival. Legendary double bassist, William Parker, was also in the audience and this led to Abraham being hired for his second New York performance in the bands of William Parker at the prestigious Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola/Jazz@Lincoln Centre. 

 

While living in New York, Mennen performed at premier venues including Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, the Stone, Poisson Rouge, Roullette Intermedium, Rockwood Music Hall and BB Kings Blues Club. He has performed with luminaries such as Oliver Lake (founding member of the World Saxophone Quartet, Guggenheim Fellow, Melon Jazz Living Legacy Award), Hamid Drake (2017 DownBeat Percussionist of the Year) and Kidd Jordan (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres 1985, France’s highest cultural award), to name a few. In May 2017, Abraham Mennen recorded an album with William Parker, which also featured the South African drummer Kesivan Naidoo. He has performed in multiple Jazz festivals in New York, performed many times for the concert series Brooklyn Raga Massive, produced a lecture/concert for the organisation ThinkOlio hosted at the Strand Bookstore, recorded for multiple well established bands (Escarioka, Speakeasy Streets), recorded for films and advertisements (for the company Fall On Your Sword) and being an integral member of the collective NoLandBands (documenting the plight of Syrian refugees through multimedia with university performances, radio broadcasts and live streamed shows). 

 

Abraham Mennen regularly performs and records his original compositions with his quartet and released two albums in 2019, The Really Revered Whole Story and Three Improvisations. Abraham was a founding member and musical programme contributor of the intersectional creative and educational space, The Interim, in Cape Town South Africa. He is also a member of Uthingo, a Nelson Mandela Foundation endorsed original music ensemble. He currently lives in Johannesburg and is a Jazz Performance, Composition and Classical Saxophone Performance lecturer at the University of Pretoria.

 

Other notable artists Abraham has worked with include Louis Moholo, Joe Morris, Herbie Tsoaeli, Hilton Schilder, Kyle Shepherd, Kesivan Naidoo, Cooper-Moore, Shabaka Hutchins, Sibusile Xaba, Siya Makuzeni, Reza Khota, Dizu Plaaitjies, Mandla Mlangeni and The Brother Moves On amongst others.