"Some of these people refer to me as a legend," he says with a chuckle.

"A legend is someone walking with a white stick and who is at the end of their life," adds Ibrahim.

The master pianist, composer and arranger - at the "young age" of 77 - sees no difference between himself and a seven-year-old.

"If you put together a bunch of seven-year-olds, as is done at the beginning of a school journey, they don't have the same energy or intelligence. The same thing applies to 70-year-olds," he says.

It is very possible that many of his disciples - the purists who speak of jazz as the only sound - will be gravely disappointed, nay dismayed, to learn that all that he's ever done is improvise.

After World War 2, the New York jazz scene was famous for its jam sessions where musicians played - or rather jammed - by improvising, without extensive preparation or pre-defined arrangements.

Many legends of jazz cut their teeth in these sessions. They included pianist Thelonious Monk, saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, all of whom Ibrahim quotes incessantly - if rather passionately - during our leisurely chat at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Rosebank, Johannesburg.

In 1963 Gillespie got to hear Ibrahim play in Zurich. He was so impressed he set up a recording session called Duke Ellington presents The Dollar Band Trio.

The rest is history.

"The key of our work is spontaneity. We are not artists. We are improvisers. Charlie Parker used to say you practise and practise for 20 years, but ultimately what you have to do is play."

Ibrahim debunks another cliché about jazz being a business of very serious men (and women), who spend as much time creating and reviewing their work in a bid to get better with time.

"I never listen to my own music," he says without a hint of being funny or cynical.

"The principle is, if you listen to what you played, you fall into the trap of being clever because 'it felt good last night'."

He clearly takes his cue from saxophonist John Coltrane, whom he quotes as having said: "When I play a solo and realise that I am repeating myself, I stop."

The man who was known in former days as Dollar Brand, before converting to Islam, is an unusual South African jazz artist who has achieved worldwide recognition, acclaim and success.

Many of Ibrahim's contemporaries died paupers; some could not get beyond being more than celebrated buskers, while others achieved fame, but little fortune.

This, he says, despite the fact that South Africa is still the only country with a black-owned jazz record company and it has the biggest jazz audience in the world - mainly concentrated in the townships.

He has bought a farm in the Kalahari in the Northern Cape, where he hopes to combine his musical influences, martial arts, spirituality and consciousness, in a bid to give back to young people.

It will be a holistic centre where they will work with a local Bushman tribe to help musicians understand and interact with the natural environment. But, before taking on his Kalahari project, Ibrahim and his band, an 18-piece jazz orchestra, is involved in a two-city showcase.

"We have been practising for 25 hours a day," he says.

But one thing is for sure, the tour - named project Morolong, after his hero, saxophonist, composer and arranger, Kippie Moeketsi - will be about one thing, namely playing.

Ibrahim and his band perform tomorrow at the Cape Town Convention Centre and in Johannesburg on February 17 at the Linder Auditorium