Abel Selaocoe (ZA)
From South Africa
Popularity
Abel Selaocoe has 4 upcoming shows in the Netherlands. The next one is on October 21, 2026 at Wilminktheater en Muziekcentrum Enschede, Enschede. All 4 tour dates
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About
Abel Selaocoe plays cello unlike almost anyone else working today. The South African cellist, singer and composer fuses classical training with traditional South African vocal styles, drawing on Xhosa throat singing and weaving in township rhythms, ancestral anthems, and lyrics in Sotho and Zulu. The result sits somewhere between chamber music, African folk tradition, and jazz inflected improvisation, and it is entirely his own. He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, completed his International Artist Diploma in 2018, and has been a restless creative force ever since. His debut album Where is Home (Hae Ke Kae), released in 2022 on Warner Classics, brought him well deserved wider attention. He performs with his Chesaba trio and the Bantu Ensemble, and has collaborated with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Art Ensemble of Chicago among others. He won the Royal Philharmonic Society Instrumentalist Award in 2023, and his 2025 release Hymns of Bantu only added to the sense that he is doing something genuinely irreplaceable.
