Pianist-composer Surendran Reddy died on 22 January 2010 after a long illness, in Germany. He is survived by his parents Y.G. and Leela Reddy, his brother Rajen, and daughter Leela. After the cremation ceremony in Konstanz on 3 February Surendran’s ashes will be flown back to Durban where his family are holding a private ceremony. Later this month there will be a public celebration of his life and work in Durban.

Surendran Reddy was a larger-than-life figure on both the South African and German musical scenes, a passionate exponent of a style of composing and playing (and theorising) that he called “clazz”, that mixes Western classical music, mbaqanga jazz, rock and Indian classical music. He wanted to create musically a new kind of South African crossover that could not be pigeon-holed but embraced the best of many worlds, a musical aspiration motivated by his strong belief in political equality and artistic freedom.

He was widely known through concerts, broadcasts and CDs, including the two eclectic solo albums Reddy, Steady, Go! (1994) and Rough ’n Reddy (1996), a mix of original compositions with arrangements and improvisations. He had a vast knowledge of music and was a great improviser in styles that went way beyond ‘jazz’. He was a brilliant teacher at the University of Durban-Westville in 1983-84, and after he moved to Johannesburg, at the Fuba Centre in the late 1980s to early 1990s, later heading this organisation. He also had many private students in piano, music theory and composition.

Surendran worked with great musicians such as Sibongile Khumalo, Allen Kwela and Johnny Fourie in South Africa and internationally Kiri Te Kanawa and the Harlem Dance Company. His work as a dance composer-pianist began at Napac in the mid-1980s and his works were performed in Russia, Canada, the United States and Germany. Reid Anderson, Artistic Director of the Stuttgart Ballet and the world’s foremost exponent of John Cranko’s ballets, choreographed Surendran’s Four Romantic Piano Pieces, which became a hit of the Alberta Ballet.

Surendran was often commissioned to compose pieces for competitions. He wrote several works for SAMRO Overseas Scholarship Competitions, among others Go for it (1993), Game1 for Lila (1996), Mayibuye (2001), Ballad for Thomas and African Funk for Felix (2005). UNISA commissioned Toccata for John Roos for the 11th Unisa International Piano Competition in 2008. In 1996 SAMRO commissioned Surendran to contribute to an oratorio addressing the Human Rights Treaty and intended as a gift from South Africa to the Olympic Games (Atlanta). His movement is entitled Masakane (Let Us Build Together) and the orchestral version was premiered on March 23, 2000 by the KZNPO in Durban. He has a long work-list, which can be seen on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surendran_Reddy#Partial_discography, and a website that can be visited on http://www.surendranreddy.com/.

Active on the executive committee of the South African Musicians’ Alliance during the apartheid years, Surendran was also a member of SAMRO, the South African Composers’ Guild, and New Music SA, and was an adjudicator at the Roodeport International Eisteddfod, SAMRO Overseas Competition, and UNISA’s piano and organ competitions. His contribution to South African music and musical life will be remembered with affection and admiration, as will his wonderful sense of humour, artistic irony and that posh upper-class British accent he sported (he liked to called himself Sir Rendran, with a twinkle in his eye). He was a perfectionist, sometimes too big for us to see and too hot to handle, and he lived ten lives in the span of 47.