Bheki Mseleku‘s (right) new album is called Home at Last (Sheer). The pianist returned from abroad and, at his Civic Theatre launch on March 22, had to wait until midnight to perform. This was unfortunate for the musician, his publisher and the audience. Many left after a mammoth session by Musa Manzini launching Memories and Tributes.But when Mseleku arrived on stage he was met with incredible warmth — cheers from a public obviously empathetic to his life’s experience. There was ample acknowledgement that having gone overseas, Mseleku achieved what many South Africans before him had: excellence in a foreign country, against all odds.And so he sat at the piano, back to the audience, immersed in the sweeping tunes of his new work played pretty much in the same order that they appear on the recording. Mseleku isn’t big on outreach. His personality is found in the deep resonance of his music that journalist John Matshikiza describes in the liner notes of the album as “not strictly what you could define as ‘jazz’. Nor can it be confined to any other sphere of music.”Rumour had it that the band — consisting of Mseleku, Herbie Tsoaeli (bass), Morabo Morojele (drums), Feya Faku (flugel) and veteran Winston Mankunku Ngozi (tenor sax) — was under-rehearsed. But nobody would’ve guessed. The album moves from tunes that are personal to the musician to those that clearly reference the township roots of local jazz.Launch concerts have become extravaganzas in Johannesburg and perhaps Sheer Sound, which launched three, and Gallo which launched one, over-economised on the event. It began with Darius Brubeck and Afro Cool Concept (including Barney Rachabane) flighting Still on My Mind (Sheer) — a collection of rather staid old songs. These include a cute, to-the-point-of-banal number by Thailand’s King Bhumipol that the band picked up at a festival in Bangkok.In keeping with what probably happens at most jazz concerts at present (and you can bet that the North Sea Jazz Festival is going to be inundated with this), the night provided a chance to speak out against war. Brubeck took the opportunity to work John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance into the Ellington-Hodges number Jeep’s Blues. Radical, man!Then came Voice, with Andile Yenana on keyboards and, on trumpet, local jazz’s answer to Leonardo DiCaprio, Marcus Wyatt. As Gwen Ansell says in the liner notes to Quintet Legacy Volume 2: Songs for Our Grandchildren (Sheer), the classics that this band play “aren’t merely covers. Kippie Morolong Moeketsi’s Scullery Department gets an almost West Coast edge from Wyatt’s acid trumpet tone.”One feels a little guilty complaining that a concert is too long. It must have been tough going for Mseleku who, at the witching hour, had to turn into the belle of the ball.