Tuffus Zimbabwe is a pianist, composer, and educator from the Roxbury area of Boston. He completed his Bachelors’ degree at Berklee College of Music and received a Master of Music degree from New York University. Mr. Zimbabwe is a keyboardist in the Saturday Night Live house band, pianist, and assistant musical director for Trilogy: an Opera Company.
Music has been a part Tuffus' family as his grandmother Mildred Jenkins was a professional vocalist in the Operatic and Spiritual styles. She earned a bachelor’s from Benedict College, master’s from Boston University and a music diploma from the Sorbonne in Paris. Mildred was also the sister of Edmund Thornton Jenkins (1894-1926) composer, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, (primarily a clarinetist, saxophonist, and pianist).
Tuffus restored, edited, and arranged Edmund Thornton Jenkins' music from handwritten manuscripts into printed score.
From early on Edmund received private training and got his professional start playing, directing, and arranging music in his father’s Orphanage Band and Church. He furthered his studies at Avery Institute, Morehouse College, and the Royal Academy in London. Mildred would later inherit his music manuscripts, then passed down to her son, Jomo Zimbabwe. Tuffus Zimbabwe restored, edited, and arranged Edmund's music from handwritten manuscripts into printed score.
Mildred and Edmund Thornton Jenkins’ parents were Rev. Daniel Joseph Jenkins and Lena James, who founded the Jenkins Orphanage in 1891 in Charleston, SC. To help fund the orphanage as it grew, Rev. Daniel Jenkins would soon create the Jenkins Orphanage Band. At its height, there were multiple Jenkins bands performing nationally, including a residency on Broadway for DuBose Heyward’s original play Porgy debuting in 1927 (which preceded and influenced Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess which debuted in 1935), and in Europe, most notably performing for the Queen of England.
Rev. Daniel Jenkins, founder of the Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston, SC and one of the world-famous Jenkins Orphanage Bands.
Thanks to the distinctive African American culture and style of the Gullah people of South Carolina, Charleston is one of America’s early cradles of jazz. The Jenkins Orphanage Band was a key component in the development of the Charleston style of jazz music and dance. Edmund Thornton Jenkins was one of the earliest major innovators of the Charleston Jazz style which rose to global prominence in the 1920's during the Harlem Renaissance and in Paris.
