Born into an aristocratic family in 1923 in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, Emahoy Tsege Mariam Guebru was exiled from the age of 6, sent to Europe to study, where she began her musical education studying violin and piano. Back in Ethiopia, after a second exile on the island of Asinara during the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, she obtained a musical scholarship from the Royal Academy in London. Unfortunate circumstances prevented her from pursuing this quest and Emahoy remained in Ethiopia. Annihilated, she retired to a monastery at the age of 19, where she was ordained as a nun. She decided to continue studying music, writing compositions for violin, piano and organ and, after twenty years, published her first recordings, blending European influences and classical structures with her Ethiopian tradition, with a unique freedom of form, in a tempo that obeys no strict rules, slowing down and speeding up as chance dictates. Long unknown, her ethereal, melancholy musical work, delicately fusing classical piano, ragtime, gospel and Ethiopian folk music, was revealed in 2006 by the Ethiopiques record collection. Composer Maya Dunietz then discovered her and, fascinated by her timeless pieces, decided to look for her. She traced her to the Ethiopian Monastery in Jerusalem, where Emahoy had been living since the 1980s. They forged such a close bond that Emahoy entrusted her with her scores - a veritable work of musical archaeology for Dunietz, who patiently and meticulously worked on deciphering them for months, proposing in 2013 a first publication of her piano pieces and beginning a series of concerts in which she performs her work. Emahoy passed away in March 2023, having practiced music for the rest of her life on her piano.
