Johannesburg — WHEN you listen to Kyle Shepherd at Saturday's Standard Bank Joy of Jazz Festival concert at Newtown's Bassline, he could sound very different from any of the music he has on record.

Shepherd's first album FineART, was released last year. His second, A Portrait of Home, has just been released, but was recorded only a few months after the first. It's a live recording (the first was a studio set), offering a good sense of how the pianist interacts with his audience. But though Shepherd feels Portrait represents a landmark in the development of the trio (which also includes bassist Shane Cooper and drummer Jonno Sweetman) as a unit, he also promises they have "already evolved from that point". Saturday's set will also feature saxophonist Buddy Wells, one of the country's most creative saxophonists, who often transforms the trio into a quartet.

During a festival that otherwise largely ignores our authentic new jazz, Shepherd is a good choice. On the one hand, he carries continuity with the Cape jazz tradition, redolent of influences from southeast Asian as well as African roots. He has often spoken of the necessity of "believing in the music" and of the importance to his own sound of the heritage of Abdullah Ibrahim, Hilton Schilder and the late Robbie Jansen.

On the album's closing track, Die Goema, Shepherd faithfully renders a carnival classic, connecting with sounds his listeners know. But he spices the chorus with interruptions and repeats, almost the way a DJ might handle it on the turntable.

That represents Shepherd's other aspect: the most inventive of the new. Shepherd pays homage in reworkings to mentor Zim Ngqawana, but takes the fragments deep into his own conceptual space. On perhaps the album's most interesting track, Dark Cities, he demonstrates a moving, personal sensitivity to melancholy space and silence. Dark Cities evokes "a musician's migration to the north"; Shepherd's own short stay in the Dark City was a musically discouraging one until he hooked up with the Zimology Institute.

Since then, northward migrations have been more rewarding: to Toulouse as part of Ngqawana's group, and with his own quartet to Switzerland and Denmark.

The album demonstrates empathetic teamwork and understanding by each player of the other's creative needs. Certainly, the 10 tracks also show the influence of Shepherd's heroes and teachers. That creative tension between steady rhythmic pulse and inventive cascades of notes characterises them all. But these are not tracks Ngqawana and Ibrahim would have written -- not unless, that is, they were 23 and living in Cape Town last year.

Shepherd performs as part of a bill that also features New York clarinetist Anat Cohen, New Orleans violinist Michael Ward and saxophonist Ravi Coltrane. The performance is part of a crowded weekend for jazz, starting with the Joy of Jazz opening concert tonight in Mary Fitzgerald Square. The event begins at 7pm, and this programme features the Gauteng Jazz Orchestra, Capetonian vocalist Auriol Hayes, London-based South African Brian Themba and visiting American R&B artist Rahsaan Patterson. Joy of Jazz continues on Friday and Saturday, featuring artists ranging from singers Malian Oumou Sangare and South African Melanie Scholtz to the highly contrasting saxophone styles of Sadao Watanabe, Kim Waters and Coltrane. Then, on Sunday afternoon, the annual Tribute to the Music Heroes concert is staged at Moretele Park in Mamelodi, with Lira and Hugh Masekela among others.

However, if the Joy of Jazz opener this evening does not appeal, there is also an opportunity to remember one of SA's most adventurous composers and players. Surendran Reddy died on January 22, and, at 7pm, pianist Jill Richards leads a team of musicians in a tribute at the Wits University Atrium. It will include performances of Reddy's work, spoken tributes, and film of Reddy in conversation. Admission is free.