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Either/Orchestra plays Either/Orchestra
Music from our deep catalog or originals and arrangements, created and refined over four decades of composing and performing. Many can be found on the bands dozen recordings, including the Grammy-nominated Calculus of Pleasure, and The Half-Life of Desire, recorded by the legendary engineer Rudy van Gelder.
Well known and obscure compositions by Duke Ellington, Mingus, Horace Silver, Monk, Roscoe Mitchell and more.
Unique takes on popular music: Bob Dylan, Burt Bacharach, the Beatles and more.
New and old originals by Russ Gershon and other band members, present and past.
Either/Orchestra recordings on YouTube
Either/Orchestra recordings on Spotify
Special for 2026: The Music of Nerses Nalbandian
The Either/Orchestra has a new album coming out in early 2026, our second on the prestigious Ethiopiques series of Ethiopian music from Buda Musique in Paris. Ethiopiques 33: Nalbandian the Ethiopian brings to life music by Nerses Nalbandian, an Armenian refugee who moved to Ethiopia in 1938 and rose to become the favorite musician of Emperor Haile Selassie. An eclectic musician with a great love for American music, he was essential in the creation of Ethiopian jazz, leading the Orchestra of the National Theater, configured as a jazz big band and featuring many of the future solo stars of Ethiopia.
Nalbandian’s music has seldom been played after Haile Selassie was deposed by the Derg dictatorship in 1974. In 2004, when the Either/Orchestra first played in Ethiopia, Nalbandian’s children heard the E/O and – together with Ethiopiques curator Francis Falceto – proposed that the E/O revive Nerses’s music. Bandleader Gershon reconstructed and rearranged the music from scores and recordings, and the band returned to Addis Ababa in 2011 to perform the music with Ethiopian guests.
Now at last, live and studio recordings of the Nalbandian music will be given proper release on éthiopiques, considered among the best world music recording series ever made.
Either/Orchestra plays éthiopiques
éthiopiques is the gold standard for world music series, more than thirty albums documenting classic Ethiopian music of the 1960’s and ‘70’s, curated by French producer Francis Falceto. The Either/Orchestra has been playing its own original take on Ethiopian music since the 1990’s, bringing techniques from modern jazz and Latin music into the exotic world of Ethiopian songs and scales.
Falceto and his Ethiopian colleagues invited the E/O to Addis Ababa in 2004, the only US band ever invited to play in the Ethiopian Music Festival, and the first US big band in Ethiopia since Duke Ellington’s Orchestra in 1973.
Their main concert was released on Ethiopiques as Live in Addis and received ecstatic reviews. It set in motion a series of collaborations with the old time greats of Ethiopian music, Mulatu Astatke, Mahmoud Ahmed, Alemayehu Eshete and Getachew Mekurya.
The enthusiasm of audience across the US and Europe for this music has led the E/O continue adding to this repertoire. Renowned singer Teshome Mitiku is a regular collaborator, appearing with the band at the Chicago Jazz Festival, Le Poisson Rouge in NYC and Tufts and Harvard Universities. Female vocalist Munit Mesfin and male vocalist Bruke Tesfaye have also been guests of the E/O.