Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Ethiopian nun and piano virtuoso, dies at 99

The styles explored by Sister Guèbrou (the title Emahoy is equivalent to “Sister” for a nun) were so singular in sound and structure that music scholars often puzzled over the main source of her inspiration — seamlessly mixing forms such as jazz, chamber music and rhythmic flow from her homeland.

Sister Guèbrou did not offer much help as a guide. She rarely gave interviews or performances, mostly letting the music speak for itself in four albums and various compilations since the 1960s. Her work was brought to a larger audience in recent years on the soundtrack for the Oscar-nominated documentary “Time” (2020) about a two-decade saga for an inmate and his family; and as music on the Netflix race-and-prejudice drama “Passing” (2021).

Sister Guèbrou, meanwhile, spent long stretches in solitude inside the Ethiopian Monastery of Debre Genet, or Sanctuary of Paradise, in Jerusalem, where she lived since 1984 in a single room adorned with her artwork of icons and angels. There also were portraits of former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, whom Sister Guèbrou once sang for when she was a teenager.

In her few specific comments on her musical influences, she expressed admiration for the European classical canon including Frédéric Chopin and Johann Strauss. Yet she stayed rooted in the five-note melodic runs common in Ethiopian music, while also exploring the flowing richness of Eastern Orthodox chants or the distinctly American sounds such jazz or the old-timey snap of ragtime.

The overall effect was often bright and cascading but always reaching to bridge musical traditions. Sister Guèbrou said her main aspiration was to “praise God” with her music, including pieces such as “The Jordan River Song” (1970).

“Just within the first five or 10 seconds of the song, we have invocations of European modernism, of Ethiopian traditional music and of the links between Ethiopian Orthodoxy and a broader Judeo-Christian tradition,” said Ilana Webster-Kogen, an ethnomusicologist at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

“Getting all of that musical information within about five seconds of listening means that comparing her to anyone else wouldn’t make sense,” she added.

There was a decade, however, when Sister Guèbrou played nothing at all.

She was a rising young talent as a teen, studying for two years under Polish violinist Alexander Kontorowicz in Cairo and then was offered a scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Music. Sister Guèbrou never made clear what happened next. For some reason, she was blocked by Selassie’s government from traveling to London.

She was devastated. For nearly two weeks, she refused to eat. She ended up in a hospital in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Her family feared she was near death. Weak and ailing, Sister Guèbrou said she slept for an entire day.

“When I wake up, I had a peaceful mind,” she told the BBC in 2017. “I was changed. And I didn’t care for anything.”

She left music behind. At 19, she joined the Gishen Mariam monastery in Ethiopia’s northern highlands. For the next decade, she barely left the monastery grounds, where she slept in a hut on a dried-mud bed. She noticed many of the nuns and monks were barefoot. She gave up shoes as well.

She had already experienced huge swings in her life. She was raised in privilege in a family that had deep connections in the Ethiopian royal court, including her father’s work in diplomatic and liaison roles. She and her sister, Senedu, attended a Swiss boarding school and soaked in Western music and art.

After Italian forces under Benito Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Sister Guèbrou and her family were placed under house arrest and later sent to POW camps in Italy for two years. Three of her brothers were killed in the fighting. (She composed the 1963 piece, “The Ballad of the Spirit,” in their memory.)

After about a decade at the monastery, she returned to Addis Ababa. At nearly 30 years old, she decided to see how her fingers felt back on the piano keys. The music flowed. Now, however, it was more infused with the meditative sounds and chants from the monastery.

“I said to myself, `I have nothing. I have music,’” she recalled. “I will try to do something with this music.”

She traveled to Germany in the 1960s to make her first recordings. The piano she used, the studio technician said, was once played by Mozart. The sales from her 1967 album, “Spielt Eigene Kompositionen,” roughly “Plays Her Own Compositions,” were donated to Ethiopian charities.

In 1974, a coup toppled Selassie and ended Ethiopia’s monarchy. Anyone favored by the ousted royal regime, including Sister Guèbrou and her family, were now under suspicion and closely monitored. When Sister Guèbrou’s mother died in 1984, she moved permanently to the monastery in Jerusalem, always seen in public in the flowing religious garb that covered her head.

Sister Guèbrou’s few performances included a July 2008 recital at the Jewish Community Center in Washington, strengthening her ties to the area’s Ethiopian community. The Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Foundation helps cover the cost of musical study for children in Africa and the Washington region.

“We can’t always choose what life brings,” she told the BBC. “But we can choose how to respond.”

Yewubdar Gebru was born Dec. 12, 1923, in Addis Ababa and received her first violin as a Christmas present. After returning from boarding school, the extent of her musical talent was clear. Even in the POW camps, she hunted for any instrument to play.

Her music studies in Cairo — approved by Selassie — ended when she developed health problems blamed on Cairo’s summer heat. Back in Ethiopia, she practiced with the band of the Imperial Guard and received permission from Selassie to become a translator in Ethiopia’s foreign ministry, the first woman to such a post. She bought herself a car and became a common sights zipping around the city.

“Even as a teenager I was always asking, ‘What is the difference between boys and girls?’” she once said. “We are equal!”

She composed more than 150 pieces for piano, organ, opera and chamber ensembles. A compilation of Sister Guèbrou’s work was released in 2006, “Éthiopiques Volume 21: Ethiopia Song,” and some of her pieces were featured on albums including 2012’s “The Rough Guide to the Music of Ethiopia.”

In the 196os, her piece “Homesickness” became a popular instrumental version of the Ethiopian song form known as tezeta, or nostalgia, about longing and remembrance. Sister Guèbrou’s piece was featured in 2019 ad for Amazon’s Echo products. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

In addition to her niece Kebbede of Falls Church, Va., survivors include a nephew, Daniel Assefa, of Alexandria, Va. Both are affiliated with the Emahoy Tsege Mariam Music Foundation.

Sister Guèbrou said some nuns in the Jerusalem convent initially raised objections when they heard her practice on the piano, saying the music was a distraction from monastic life. Eventually, the complaints stopped.

“You can praise God with any instrument,” she said. “It is a classical music. It’s not a music for dancing or song. They shouldn’t be against it.”