Thandi Ntuli’s new album, “Rainbow Revisited,” recorded with Carlos Niño, feels much bigger than the sum of its parts. It’s hard to believe there’s only two people playing on this album. The playing, the shifts in execution and mood, the imagination—it barely seems credible that this emerged from just Ntuli and Niño, but it did. In only the first third of the album, from “Sunrise (California)” to “Breath and Synth Experiment,” you hear, first of all, Ntuli’s wild chops on piano, her gorgeous singing, her gift for melody, and her willingness to play around, to revise and reconsider, to venture out. It’s so easy and so pleasant to get lost in Ntuli’s piano playing: she has such talent for ripping off these complex-sounding phrases, little labyrinths of notes, that nevertheless lead somewhere satisfying.
“Sunrise (in California)” exhibits the dual pleasures of this album: Ntuli’s playing and her beautiful voice. This track starts with a stuttering phrase on the piano, delivered with the same kind of verve you’d see from a character actor putting some extra oomph into a line. You can almost feel Ntuli playing this, you can picture it in your mind, the liveliness with which she’s playing, the inventiveness of movement. Her playing on this track is almost like something expanding; at first it’s compressed into tight parentheticals, but then it opens out, it’s expressed fully. Ntuli starts singing around the middle of the track and only sings for about a minute, wordlessly vocalizing along with her own playing—it all feels so sweet and surprising. The tracks downshifts a bit after that, but Ntuli’s always moving, playing tricky little bits to carry the song to its proper end.
As Ntuli tells it, “Rainbow Revisited” was prompted by Niño’s interest in her song “Rainbow” from her 2018 album “Exiled.” Niño urged her to play around with “Rainbow,” to see where it would lead, and he would suggest different approaches to it. What an incredible result: Ntuli’s playing on this one is a little more fluid, and her vocals demand attention. She sings, “Rainbow/I see a rainbow” and countless iterations of that throughout the song, plaintively, defiantly, hopefully.
And then right in the middle of the album, Ntuli drops “Nomayoyo,” a staggeringly pretty song that sounds at once like a lullaby and like a lost classic from Scott Joplin. Ntuli’s piano playing here is delicate and considered, and her singing too is quiet and tender. Ntuli said that “Nomayoyo” was written by her grandfather, and it’s a song her family often sings at gatherings. What a boon, to have a song like this as a treasure in your family, and what a gift too for Ntuli to share it like this.
“Sunset (in California)” feels really special too, like an ideal vehicle for both Ntuli’s piano playing and singing. The tracks starts off with what sounds like backwards vocals, and then it starts in earnest, with Ntuli’s piano and voice, which seem like they mesh together especially tightly on this song. There’s something so reassuring about her singing, about the tone of her voice—it makes you feel like you’re in good hands. The latter part of this track features more of her inventive playing, like Ntuli wants to adorn the track as fully as possible with beautiful sounds before she relinquishes it.
“The One (first part)” and “The One (second part)” form an eight-minute suite toward the end of the album. Ntuli kicks off the first part with some of her most rollicking and upbeat playing. This one she speeds along with her singing, conjuring whole worlds from just her piano and voice. The second part, at least at the start, is a sort of continuation: the same sorts of phrases, the same speed, but then pretty quickly it shifts. There’s a further evolution of the ideas from the first part, but these ideas come stumbling, tripping, with little skips, little hiccups. More pensive playing in the second part, as opposed to the free-flowing jam of the first part. Ntuli basically plays a solo backed by her own self in the latter part of “The One (second part),” which you really need to hear to believe. The studio erupts into applause and cheers when she finishes, the only natural reaction you could have to hearing something so magical.