Where Did Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou Come From?
A remarkable Ethiopian nun named Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou is renowned for her amazing piano skills and original compositions. Guèbrou trained in Cairo after the war under Polish violinist Alexander Kontorowicz. Kontorowicz and Guèbrou traveled back to Ethiopia, where Kontorowicz was chosen to lead the Imperial Body Guard’s band as its musical director. Guèbrou worked as…
A remarkable Ethiopian nun named Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou is renowned for her amazing piano skills and original compositions.
Guèbrou trained in Cairo after the war under Polish violinist Alexander Kontorowicz. Kontorowicz and Guèbrou traveled back to Ethiopia, where Kontorowicz was chosen to lead the Imperial Body Guard’s band as its musical director. Guèbrou worked as an assistant in administration. Her debut album was published in 1967.
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou was transferred to a boarding school in Switzerland when she was six years old to study violin. She and her family were captured as prisoners of war by the Italians during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and sent to a prison camp on the Italian island of Asinara before being transferred to Mercogliano, close to Naples.
Guèbrou’s music has been characterized as blues piano with intricate rhythmic phrasing.
To celebrate her 90th birthday in 2013, three memorial performances were staged in Jerusalem, and a collection of her musical compositions was published. For three decades, she led a solitary life.
Where Did Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou Come From?
Ethiopian native Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou is from Addis Abeba.
