Carlo Mombelli

n his 40-year career as a bass player, band leader and composer, the South African Carlo Mombelli currently living in Johannesburg has bridged gaps between genres, musicians and the audiences.

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Concerts

A self-taught musician, he has recorded and performed at many respected festivals, including the Roma Villa Celimontana Jazz Festival, the Stockholm Jazz Festival, the German Moers Festival, the ‘On the Edge of Wrong’ festival in Norway and the Banlieues Bleues festival in Paris, Festival Mundial in the Netherlands and the JazzWerkstadt in Bern to name a few, with amongst others, Mick Goodrick, Charlie Mariano, Jeroen van Vliet, Malcolm Braff, Jorge Rossy, Wolfgang Muthspiel, Dejan Terzic, Wolfgang Haffner, Samual Blaser and Adrian Mears. He has also recorded for Enja Records with Egberto Gismonti as well as with Lee Konitz, and has contributed music and played on the 1989 tribute for Jaco Pastorius, ‘Basstorius’, that also features the bassists Mathew Garrison and Carles Benavent. Back home in South Africa he can be heard as a bassist on many recordings with amongst others, Marcus Wyatt, Zim Ngqawana, Simphiwe Dana, Sibongile Khumalo, and Miriam Makeba.

In 2018 the Swiss/Italian 15 piece ‘Euregio’ Large Ensemble spent the year performing Carlo’s music at festivals around Europe.

In 2021 the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York presented Carlo performing his music together with the Grammy award-winning New York String Quartet ‘Ethel’.

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Commissions

In addition to his over 100 recorded works and performances with his own projects, his composition commissions include more than 14 films/ documentaries and animations, music for a mobile game for the London gaming company ‘The Secret Police’, commissions for Zim Ngqawana’s Zimphony Ourchestra, (which Mombelli also conducted with Zim), commissions for the ‘Stockholm Saxophone Quartet’, and his piano music for the art film Exquisite Corps by Jonah Sack presented at the New York Jewish Museum.

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Books

Pulses in the Centre of Silence – Composition Scores and Artistry Concepts’ is published by Real African Publishing.

Mombelli’s Intergallactic Bass Book is published by Real African Publishers and Internationally by Hal Leonard.

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Teaching

Carlo, a self-taught musician, has been involved in music education for many years. Starting in 1998 he held a teaching post at the Richard-Strauss Conservatoire in Munich, Germany. Since then he has taught and run ensembles at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and bi-annually at the Jazz Musik Akademie in Basel, Switzerland. In 2015, he led the DKSJ-all-star-project with 13 Masters students studying jazz in Switzerland.

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Mombelli is a N.R.F Rated Associate Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.