The ten-piece Either/Orchestra returned to action after a six year hiatus with sold-out shows for an ecstatic audience at the R-bar in December. It was as much a reunion for the listeners as the band! Since then, they have played the prestigious New York Winter Jazz Fest and the Big Ears Festival, as well as other tour dates.
The crew returns to the R-bar with a special guest, Ethiopian singer Munit Mesfin. A star in Ethiopia and in the Ethiopian community around Washington DC, Munit will be singing classic songs from the catalogs of Mahmoud Ahmed, Teshome Mitiku and others, as popularized by the fantastic éthiopiques album series from France. Munit is truly bi-cultural and does a fabulous job of explaining the meaning of the songs to American audiences.
The E/O will also play music from their vast 40 year catalog, ranging across a wide range of jazz and Latin styles, always done their own way. Also expect music from their new album, Ethiopiques 32: Nalbandian the Ethiopian, in which they play music by a unique world music pioneer. Nerses Nalbandian was a refugee of the Armenian genocide who arrived in Ethiopia in 1939 to teach band instruments so that Emperor Haile Selassie (aka Ras Tafari) could have military bands. Nerses rose up in the Emperor’s favor and helped introduce American jazz and Latin music to the people of Ethiopia, which provided the foundation for the Ethio-jazz that has become a touchstone around the world in recent years.
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