About this product

Product Identifiers

Record LabelAwtp, Awesome Tapes from

UPC0843563164846

eBay Product ID (ePID)19071190704

Product Key Features

Release Year2023

FormatCD

GenreJazz

ArtistMergia, Hailu

Release TitlePioneer Works Swing (Live)

Dimensions

Item Height0.60 in

Item Weight0.08 lb

Item Length5.59 in

Item Width4.92 in

Additional Product Features

Number of Discs1

Number of Tracks8

Country/Region of ManufactureUnited States

Tracks1.1 Yegle Nesh (Live) 1.2 Hari Meru Meru (Live) 1.3 Monalisa Nesh (Live) 1.4 Tizita (Live) 1.5 Belew Beduby (Live) 1.6 Anchihoye Lene (Live) 1.7 Abichu Nega Nega (Live) 1.8 Yetewat Hilm (Live)

NotesIt's been a little over ten years since Hailu Mergia re-emerged on the international music scene. Following the first in a series of his classic recordings reissued in collaboration with Awesome Tapes From Africa, Mergia assembled a band and began performing live again after many years driving a cab in Washington, DC. His first show back appeared on the front page of the New York Times along with a stellar review and he took off from there performing his flavor of Ethiopian jazz all over the world in the years since, including Radio City Music Hall and Montreal Jazz Festival.Finally, we have a recorded document of the keyboard player's powerful DC-based trio-which practices each weekend in his basement-featuring Kenneth Joseph on drums and Alemseged Kebede on bass. Beautifully captured at one of their fiery live shows at the venerable Brooklyn non-profit cultural center Pioneer Works on July 1, 2016, the concert was recorded by PW staff and mixed by Ted Young with mastering by ATFA's expert audio extraction collaborator Jessica Thompson. The performance clarifies what many people across the globe already know: in his fifth decade of music-making Hailu Mergia continues to push the boundaries of his remarkable abilities.Mergia and his veteran band energetically and playfully unpeel layer after layer of harmonic and rhythmic interest out of a spectrum of Ethiopian repertoire. Modern jazz demands constant reinvention and improvisation, night after night creating new works out of known modes and classic standards. This band is unstoppable when it comes to turning age-old melodies (like "Tizita" or "Anchihoye Lene") upside down and inside out until they emerge as molten new works, often spontaneously. Mergia's original compositions (like "Yegle Nesh") shine brighter than ever here as well. Moving from keyboard to organ to accordion to melodica, he deftly switches instruments-often during the same song. Mergia at 77 years old seems to be working harder than musicians half his age.