Pianist and composer Nishlyn Ramanna first became interested in jazz on hearing an album with Oscar Peterson and Joe Pass in his last years of high school. He enrolled in a BMus course in jazz at the University of Natal, Durban, where he took piano lessons with Darius Brubeck. Ramanna became a founding member of the intercultural improvisation group Mosaic - a quintet of flute, piano, guitar, bass and tabla - which drew together aspects of mainstream jazz, African music and western classical music.