The University of KwaZulu-Natal boasts the oldest tertiary Jazz department in the country, having been founded in 1981 by Darius Brubeck, and has an impressive lineage of alumni. The Stellenbosch Jazz Certificate Programme has grown impressively over the past two decades, and large numbers of students have joined to learn the theory and skills of improvisation on a practical basis. Jazz students from the two universities – with two very different cultures and sounds – get a chance to show the reason they took jazz as a career.