Either Orchestra brings African sounds to Edmonton

Boston’s Either Orchestra with the revered Ethiopian singer Mahmoud Ahmed (in white) are shown in
performance at New York’s Lincoln Center. They play the University of Alberta’s Festival of Ideas on Thursday.

EDMONTON - Just consider the logistics of touring with a 10-piece band.

It was a rare thrill to witness Boston’s Either Orchestra here at the Jazz City Festival more than 20 years ago, and who would have guessed they would be back, and with an icon of African music in tow?

Reedman, arranger and composer Russ Gershon founded the band in 1985 to draw on a wide breadth of influences from Duke Ellington to Miles Davis and Sun Ra’s Arkestra, from the lush sounds of classic big bands to the avant-garde. Since the 1990s, Either Orchestra has grown even more exotic, dipping into Afro-Latin rhythms. In 2004 they even made it to a music festival in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Following that trip, E.O. formed friendships with some of the top names in East African music. Together, they have created an exciting hybrid of Ethiopian jazz on record (live on Ethiopiques 20, Buda Musique) and in concert across Europe and America.

In that spirit of adventure, the band performs for the University of Alberta’s Festival of Ideas on Thursday, Nov. 15, at the Citadel with special guest vocalist Mahmoud Ahmed, one of the most revered vocalists in East Africa. He is a master of Ethiopian song (see them at England’s Glastonbury Festival in 2008 on YouTube.


Gershon’s own interest in these sounds started when he stumbled on a recording of traditional Ethiopian music in the 1980s. But as he explained in a recent interview, it’s not such a stretch that E.O. has come to plumb tunes from Ethiopia’s modern era.

“From the beginning I liked it on the most fundamental level but the music had a lot of horns, it’s based on modal, pentatonic scales like a lot of modern jazz, and it inspires some really interesting harmonies that appeal to jazz ears.” The rhythms use a swinging African time and there was an urgency about the singing, adds Gerson, “even though I didn’t understand the language.”

He listened to Ethiopian music for years before he ever tried arranging it for E.O.

“As I got to know more about the history of the music I found out that western instruments had been introduced to Ethiopia from the 1930s through the ’50s, because Haile Selassie (the last emperor of Ethiopia) wanted to have marching bands, and those new instruments came with their associations to American music styles. So the foundation of modern Ethiopian music has jazz and Latin music in its DNA.”

He says the concert will be “kind of a primer in Ethiopian jazz” and Either Orchestra is the perfect group to explore that tradition. They’re one of the finest groups in North America to tap the versatility of a mid-size jazz band sporting three saxes, two trumpets, trombone, piano, bass, drums and percussion, so they can sound big and brash one moment, small and intimate the next.

Since the beginning, E.O. has drawn top players, many from the constant stream of graduates from Boston’s two famous jazz schools, Berklee College and the New England Conservatory of Music. Over the years, some 50 musicians have been through the band, including New York bandleaders John Medeski and Matt Wilson. But E.O. still hosts a few stalwarts, like saxophonist Charlie Kohlhase, who have contributed original compositions to the band’s 11 recordings, and to more than 1,000 performances in Europe and across North America.

Performing Ethiopian favourites in Addis Ababa was a real highlight.

“When we play Ethiopian songs for Americans or Europeans, they think it’s cool music but when you play these songs for 5,000 people who have known them their whole lives — even though you’re transforming them into jazzy versions — there’s this visceral feeling you get from the audience. It was fantastic.”

Singer Mahmoud Ahmed, known as the “voice of Ethiopia,” was born to humble circumstances before he fell into a musical career by chance, singing for Haile Selassie’s Imperial Guard. He eventually began recording and rose to international stardom in the 1970s, becoming one of the first Ethiopian artists to tour the U.S. He has several albums on the Ethiopiques series, among other labels. Ahmed won the BBC World Music Award in 2007.

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