Kyle Shepherd

Kyle Shepherd is a leading South African pianist and composer, celebrated for his distinctive style that transcends genres. Born in 1987 in Cape Town, Shepherd began playing piano as a teenager, drawing inspiration from the jazz and South African music he heard at Abdullah Ibrahim’s M7 music school where his mother, Michele Shepherd, was a teacher and administrator. He has garnered numerous accolades, including the 2014 Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz and the 2019 UNISA Piano Competition winner. Shepherd has performed in 41 countries, gracing prestigious venues such as The Sydney Opera House , Carnegie Hall's Zenkel Theatre and Théâtre de Châtelet in Paris. With a prolific output, Shepherd has released 8 jazz albums and composed for various film and television projects. His notable credits include popular Netflix series like Blood and Water and Unseen, which collectively amassed over 60 million hours of viewership. His score for Noem My Skollie earned him the 2018 South African Humanities and Social Sciences Award, while his work on Barakat and Fiela se Kind received Best Score awards at the Silwerskerm Film Festival. Recently, he collaborated on the acclaimed film Greytown Girl with Oscar-winning director Darrell Roodt and has been involved in significant theater productions, including the award-winning chamber opera Waiting for the Sibyl by William Kentridge for which Kyle co-composed the score with Nhlanhla Mahlangu.