We learned last month of the death, at the age of 99, of the Ethiopian composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, one of the most singular pianistic voices of the XXe century of which Mississippi Records undertook to reissue the work, still little known. Trained in the classical violin and destined for a great musical career, this daughter of a notable chose instead to become a nun at the age of 21, and it was not until the early 1960s that her first recordings appeared. The composer provokes the encounter between Western music and the Ethiopian modal and pentatonic tradition, giving her work colors that we associate as much with jazz and blues as with the melodic reflections of Erik Satie. A music between two worlds, interpreted with this unpredictable touch, these fine notes following an elastic tempo which characterize Guèbrou’s playing. Jerusalem brings together beautiful unreleased recordings, however less captivating than those of his first two splendid original albums reissued last year, to discover without delay.
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