Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru played by Maya Dunietz & String Ensemble, Live in Paris
Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru
Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru played by Maya Dunietz & String Ensemble, Live in Paris
Boomkat Product Review:
Performed earlier this year in Paris by pianist/composer Maya Dunietz and a nine-piece string ensemble, this incredible set is the first orchestral interpretation of Ethiopian classical pianist-turned-nun Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru's uniquely melancholy jazz and blues-inflected pieces.
Emahoy's incomprehensible, life-altering, elevated solo piano reveries initially appeared on rare-as-hens-teeth private press releases that emerged in Germany in the early 1960s, and since then, her reputation has steadily grown. In 2006, some of her compositions were presented on Buda Musique's 21st 'Éthiopiques 21' release, and it was this anthology that first piqued the interest of Dunietz and conductor Ivan Volkov, as well as a whole slew of new listeners around the world desperate to hear more.
Dunietz and Volkov were eager to find out more about Emahoy, and tracked her down to a monastery in Jerusalem, where she'd been living since civil war had made her life in Addis Ababa too hazardous. The trio struck up a friendship and Emahoy eventually asked Dunietz to help her compile her manuscripts. At some stage in the process, Emahoy suggested that the songs might be arranged for an orchestra, hinting that Dunietz might handle the project herself. And this April, a year after her death (aged 100) Dunietz presented her orchestral interpretations at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, the result of years of collaboration and mutual admiration.
It's a touching project that re-imagines a slew of favorites from 'Éthiopiques 21: Ethiopia Song', bundling them with 'Spring Ode' from 1972's 'Yet My King Is From Old' and it's fascinated to hear the material in a new light. Emahoy's heartfelt compositions, incorporating Ethiopian traditional music with Coptic liturgies and the European romanticism of Debussy and Chopin, are a testament to her wide-ranging experiences of loss, war and exile, and this intimacy isn't lost even for a moment. Dunietz plays piano, flanked by four violinists, two cellists, two cello players and a double bassist, and the additional instrumentation adds a dramatic dimension. With lavish, ornamented flourishes, the touching, Satie-like 'Ballad of the Spirits' becomes more theatrical without losing its blues-y lilt, while 'Presentiment', played in an Ethiopian five note pentatonic scale, is slowed down and rendered by Dunietz in solo, with the rustling of the audience standing in for Emahoy's grounding room sounds.
The orchestra are more muted on 'Evening Breeze', playing elastic bowed tones that blossom into glassy, resonant clouds of dissonance that subtly mirror Emahoy's nimble runs, and the piano vanishes altogether on 'Spring Ode', one of the performance's most grandiose pieces - and its least well-known. Here, the orchestra captures Emahoy's emotional weight without lashing themselves to her aesthetic signifiers; it's still struck through with her wide range of experiences - from her early life in Switzerland, deportation to Italy and work as the musical director of Haile Selassie's Imperial Body Guard band to her later life helping orphaned children - but re-contextualised with care and empathy by a team of artists who clearly cherish her work.
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Boomkat Product Review:
Performed earlier this year in Paris by pianist/composer Maya Dunietz and a nine-piece string ensemble, this incredible set is the first orchestral interpretation of Ethiopian classical pianist-turned-nun Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru's uniquely melancholy jazz and blues-inflected pieces.
Emahoy's incomprehensible, life-altering, elevated solo piano reveries initially appeared on rare-as-hens-teeth private press releases that emerged in Germany in the early 1960s, and since then, her reputation has steadily grown. In 2006, some of her compositions were presented on Buda Musique's 21st 'Éthiopiques 21' release, and it was this anthology that first piqued the interest of Dunietz and conductor Ivan Volkov, as well as a whole slew of new listeners around the world desperate to hear more.
Dunietz and Volkov were eager to find out more about Emahoy, and tracked her down to a monastery in Jerusalem, where she'd been living since civil war had made her life in Addis Ababa too hazardous. The trio struck up a friendship and Emahoy eventually asked Dunietz to help her compile her manuscripts. At some stage in the process, Emahoy suggested that the songs might be arranged for an orchestra, hinting that Dunietz might handle the project herself. And this April, a year after her death (aged 100) Dunietz presented her orchestral interpretations at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, the result of years of collaboration and mutual admiration.
It's a touching project that re-imagines a slew of favorites from 'Éthiopiques 21: Ethiopia Song', bundling them with 'Spring Ode' from 1972's 'Yet My King Is From Old' and it's fascinated to hear the material in a new light. Emahoy's heartfelt compositions, incorporating Ethiopian traditional music with Coptic liturgies and the European romanticism of Debussy and Chopin, are a testament to her wide-ranging experiences of loss, war and exile, and this intimacy isn't lost even for a moment. Dunietz plays piano, flanked by four violinists, two cellists, two cello players and a double bassist, and the additional instrumentation adds a dramatic dimension. With lavish, ornamented flourishes, the touching, Satie-like 'Ballad of the Spirits' becomes more theatrical without losing its blues-y lilt, while 'Presentiment', played in an Ethiopian five note pentatonic scale, is slowed down and rendered by Dunietz in solo, with the rustling of the audience standing in for Emahoy's grounding room sounds.
The orchestra are more muted on 'Evening Breeze', playing elastic bowed tones that blossom into glassy, resonant clouds of dissonance that subtly mirror Emahoy's nimble runs, and the piano vanishes altogether on 'Spring Ode', one of the performance's most grandiose pieces - and its least well-known. Here, the orchestra captures Emahoy's emotional weight without lashing themselves to her aesthetic signifiers; it's still struck through with her wide range of experiences - from her early life in Switzerland, deportation to Italy and work as the musical director of Haile Selassie's Imperial Body Guard band to her later life helping orphaned children - but re-contextualised with care and empathy by a team of artists who clearly cherish her work.
Boomkat Product Review:
Performed earlier this year in Paris by pianist/composer Maya Dunietz and a nine-piece string ensemble, this incredible set is the first orchestral interpretation of Ethiopian classical pianist-turned-nun Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru's uniquely melancholy jazz and blues-inflected pieces.
Emahoy's incomprehensible, life-altering, elevated solo piano reveries initially appeared on rare-as-hens-teeth private press releases that emerged in Germany in the early 1960s, and since then, her reputation has steadily grown. In 2006, some of her compositions were presented on Buda Musique's 21st 'Éthiopiques 21' release, and it was this anthology that first piqued the interest of Dunietz and conductor Ivan Volkov, as well as a whole slew of new listeners around the world desperate to hear more.
Dunietz and Volkov were eager to find out more about Emahoy, and tracked her down to a monastery in Jerusalem, where she'd been living since civil war had made her life in Addis Ababa too hazardous. The trio struck up a friendship and Emahoy eventually asked Dunietz to help her compile her manuscripts. At some stage in the process, Emahoy suggested that the songs might be arranged for an orchestra, hinting that Dunietz might handle the project herself. And this April, a year after her death (aged 100) Dunietz presented her orchestral interpretations at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, the result of years of collaboration and mutual admiration.
It's a touching project that re-imagines a slew of favorites from 'Éthiopiques 21: Ethiopia Song', bundling them with 'Spring Ode' from 1972's 'Yet My King Is From Old' and it's fascinated to hear the material in a new light. Emahoy's heartfelt compositions, incorporating Ethiopian traditional music with Coptic liturgies and the European romanticism of Debussy and Chopin, are a testament to her wide-ranging experiences of loss, war and exile, and this intimacy isn't lost even for a moment. Dunietz plays piano, flanked by four violinists, two cellists, two cello players and a double bassist, and the additional instrumentation adds a dramatic dimension. With lavish, ornamented flourishes, the touching, Satie-like 'Ballad of the Spirits' becomes more theatrical without losing its blues-y lilt, while 'Presentiment', played in an Ethiopian five note pentatonic scale, is slowed down and rendered by Dunietz in solo, with the rustling of the audience standing in for Emahoy's grounding room sounds.
The orchestra are more muted on 'Evening Breeze', playing elastic bowed tones that blossom into glassy, resonant clouds of dissonance that subtly mirror Emahoy's nimble runs, and the piano vanishes altogether on 'Spring Ode', one of the performance's most grandiose pieces - and its least well-known. Here, the orchestra captures Emahoy's emotional weight without lashing themselves to her aesthetic signifiers; it's still struck through with her wide range of experiences - from her early life in Switzerland, deportation to Italy and work as the musical director of Haile Selassie's Imperial Body Guard band to her later life helping orphaned children - but re-contextualised with care and empathy by a team of artists who clearly cherish her work.
Boomkat Product Review:
Performed earlier this year in Paris by pianist/composer Maya Dunietz and a nine-piece string ensemble, this incredible set is the first orchestral interpretation of Ethiopian classical pianist-turned-nun Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru's uniquely melancholy jazz and blues-inflected pieces.
Emahoy's incomprehensible, life-altering, elevated solo piano reveries initially appeared on rare-as-hens-teeth private press releases that emerged in Germany in the early 1960s, and since then, her reputation has steadily grown. In 2006, some of her compositions were presented on Buda Musique's 21st 'Éthiopiques 21' release, and it was this anthology that first piqued the interest of Dunietz and conductor Ivan Volkov, as well as a whole slew of new listeners around the world desperate to hear more.
Dunietz and Volkov were eager to find out more about Emahoy, and tracked her down to a monastery in Jerusalem, where she'd been living since civil war had made her life in Addis Ababa too hazardous. The trio struck up a friendship and Emahoy eventually asked Dunietz to help her compile her manuscripts. At some stage in the process, Emahoy suggested that the songs might be arranged for an orchestra, hinting that Dunietz might handle the project herself. And this April, a year after her death (aged 100) Dunietz presented her orchestral interpretations at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris, the result of years of collaboration and mutual admiration.
It's a touching project that re-imagines a slew of favorites from 'Éthiopiques 21: Ethiopia Song', bundling them with 'Spring Ode' from 1972's 'Yet My King Is From Old' and it's fascinated to hear the material in a new light. Emahoy's heartfelt compositions, incorporating Ethiopian traditional music with Coptic liturgies and the European romanticism of Debussy and Chopin, are a testament to her wide-ranging experiences of loss, war and exile, and this intimacy isn't lost even for a moment. Dunietz plays piano, flanked by four violinists, two cellists, two cello players and a double bassist, and the additional instrumentation adds a dramatic dimension. With lavish, ornamented flourishes, the touching, Satie-like 'Ballad of the Spirits' becomes more theatrical without losing its blues-y lilt, while 'Presentiment', played in an Ethiopian five note pentatonic scale, is slowed down and rendered by Dunietz in solo, with the rustling of the audience standing in for Emahoy's grounding room sounds.
The orchestra are more muted on 'Evening Breeze', playing elastic bowed tones that blossom into glassy, resonant clouds of dissonance that subtly mirror Emahoy's nimble runs, and the piano vanishes altogether on 'Spring Ode', one of the performance's most grandiose pieces - and its least well-known. Here, the orchestra captures Emahoy's emotional weight without lashing themselves to her aesthetic signifiers; it's still struck through with her wide range of experiences - from her early life in Switzerland, deportation to Italy and work as the musical director of Haile Selassie's Imperial Body Guard band to her later life helping orphaned children - but re-contextualised with care and empathy by a team of artists who clearly cherish her work.
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