Panel discussion: “Petit à petit, l’oiseau fait son nid” – On Emahoy’s archive

Only a fraction of Emahoy’s musical legacy has yet been represented on recordings and sheet music publications made available to the public. This panel will discuss Emahoy’s vast collection of home recordings and manuscripts, ongoing efforts to steward them (including those here at Cornell), and what we music we might hear from them in the future.

Featuring Tre Berney (Director of Cornell DCAPS), Desi Alexander (Audiovisual Collections Coordinator, Cornell DCAPS), and Cyrus Moussavi (Producer and Owner, Mississippi Records), moderated by Prof. Ben Piekut (Cornell Department of Music).

This event is part of a two-day symposium, titled Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru at 100, celebrating the music and life of the legendary Ethiopian composer, pianist, and nun, Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru. The events will include panel discussions about Emahoy’s life and archive, and presentations of Emahoy’s music (some never yet performed) in live concert performances, and from her personal recordings. All events will be free and open to the public, and hosted on Cornell’s campus.

This symposium is generously co-sponsored by the Cornell Music Department, Cornell Council for the Arts, the Institute for Comparative Modernities, Cornell Africana Studies and Research Center, the Institute for African Development, the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, Society for the Humanities, the Jian and Tran Family Charitable Fund, the Music Graduate Association, and Cornell Centers for Equity, Empowerment, and Belonging.

Laidlaw Scholars at Cornell will share their summer research and leadership-in-action experiences at this annual symposium.

Beginning in the Klarman Hall Auditorium, a panel of scholars will share their work and experiences. The presentation will be followed by poster presentations throughout the Groos Family Atrium.

The Laidlaw Undergraduate Leadership and Research Scholarship Program provides generous funding to first- and second-year undergraduates over two years as they pursue internationally focused research, engage in leadership training and a leadership-in-action experience, and join a global network of like-minded peers.

Learn more about the program, which is administered by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies with leadership training support from the David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement.

Register

The seminar series for fall 2023 explores the future of African land, agriculture and food, digging into the contestations, conflicting and converging visions from a wide range of perspectives. How might land be used, valued and lived in, across cities, rural communities, forests, deserts and grasslands on the continent in the future? Who is proposing different visions of land futures in Africa, what are the histories, politics, socio-cultural, environmental and economic implications of these potential visions? In one of the regions with the most youthful populations, how are young people considering possible futures? What are ways that land, agriculture and food systems could be resilient, healthy, ecological, thriving and just? Can there be a decolonial agriculture and food future in Africa that celebrates Indigenous and local foodways?

Recital: “Story of the Wind” – Piano music by Emahoy and Chopin

Music DMA candidate Thomas Feng performs well- and lesser-known works by Emahoy, interspersed with music by her admired Chopin, for which scores were found in Emahoy’s room following her passing this past spring. Following Ghanaian musicologist Kofi Agawu’s proposed analytical framework of “strategic sameness”, this program seeks to illuminate parallels between the two composers, challenging the conception of Emahoy’s music as exotically, incommensurably “Other”, while also destabilizing received understandings of Chopin’s music as canonically unmarked. An alternation of laments, reminiscences, mazurkas, and (especially) waltzes culminates in a performance of Emahoy’s sprawling, unrecorded “Grande Valzer Improvisata”, inspired by Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and composed at the outset of the Ethiopian Revolution.

This event is part of a two-day symposium, titled Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru at 100, celebrating the music and life of the legendary Ethiopian composer, pianist, and nun, Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru. The events will include panel discussions about Emahoy’s life and archive, and presentations of Emahoy’s music (some never yet performed) in live concert performances, and from her personal recordings. All events will be free and open to the public, and hosted on Cornell’s campus.

This symposium is generously co-sponsored by the Cornell Music Department, Cornell Council for the Arts, the Institute for Comparative Modernities, Cornell Africana Studies and Research Center, the Institute for African Development, the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, Society for the Humanities, the Jian and Tran Family Charitable Fund, the Music Graduate Association, and Cornell Centers for Equity, Empowerment, and Belonging.

Listening Party: Souvenirs

Emahoy sings poignantly of faith, family, and Ethiopia on Souvenirs, a record forthcoming on Mississippi Records. Following a panel discussion about Emahoy’s archival materials, this listening party offers an exclusive chance to hear music from Emahoy’s only full-length vocal album, transferred and mastered from Emahoy’s own home cassette recordings, before its release in the coming spring.

This event is part of a two-day symposium, titled Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru at 100, celebrating the music and life of the legendary Ethiopian composer, pianist, and nun, Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru. The events will include panel discussions about Emahoy’s life and archive, and presentations of Emahoy’s music (some never yet performed) in live concert performances, and from her personal recordings. All events will be free and open to the public, and hosted on Cornell’s campus.

This symposium is generously co-sponsored by the Cornell Music Department, Cornell Council for the Arts, the Institute for Comparative Modernities, Cornell Africana Studies and Research Center, the Institute for African Development, the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, Society for the Humanities, the Jian and Tran Family Charitable Fund, the Music Graduate Association, and Cornell Centers for Equity, Empowerment, and Belonging.

From the Church of Kidane Mehret – Organ works by Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru

Three of Emahoy’s rarely heard original works for organ will resound afresh in Sage Chapel, performed by Professor (and University Organist) Annette Richards. Music DMA candidate Thomas Feng has prepared for this occasion new performance editions of these pieces, with reference to Emahoy’s manuscripts and an out-of-print 1972 record, Church of Kidane Mehret ­– Yet my king is of old…

This event is part of a two-day symposium, titled Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru at 100, celebrating the music and life of the legendary Ethiopian composer, pianist, and nun, Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru. The events will include panel discussions about Emahoy’s life and archive, and presentations of Emahoy’s music (some never yet performed) in live concert performances, and from her personal recordings. All events will be free and open to the public, and hosted on Cornell’s campus.

This symposium is generously co-sponsored by the Cornell Music Department, Cornell Council for the Arts, the Institute for Comparative Modernities, Cornell Africana Studies and Research Center, the Institute for African Development, the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, Society for the Humanities, the Jian and Tran Family Charitable Fund, the Music Graduate Association, and Cornell Centers for Equity, Empowerment, and Belonging.

Part of Cornell’s yearlong exploration of freedom of expression, this event from Global Cornell brings together the campus community to discuss how Cornell can protect academic freedom while collaborating with institutions and scholars in places with different political realities and views on free speech.

Allan Goodman, chief executive officer of the Institute of International Education, joins Vice Provost for International Affairs Wendy Wolford to discuss:

How can universities like Cornell provide a safe haven for scholars whose right to free expression is threatened?How can universities act to promote scholarship, free expression, and global collaboration?Cornell has worked with the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF) for over a decade to provide yearlong fellowships for displaced academics and human rights defenders. IIE also supports the Humphrey Fellows Program in the Department of Global Development and Fulbright fellowships for undergraduate students from across the university.

Goodman and Wolford will be joined by these panelists:

Sharif Hozoori (Afghanistan) | IIE-SRF fellow in the Einaudi Center’s South Asia ProgramPeidong Sun (China) | Einaudi Center’s East Asia Program and Associate Professor of History, A&SAzat Gündoğan (Turkey) | Florida State University, former IIE-SRF fellow in the Einaudi Center’s Institute for European Studies***

If you can't attend in person, register for a Zoom link to join the livestream here.

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About Allan Goodman

IIE’s CEO Allan E. Goodman is a Council on Foreign Relations member and serves on the selection committees for the Rhodes and Schwarzman Scholars and the Yidan Prize. He also serves on the Council for Higher Education Accreditation International Quality Group advisory council and the Education Above All Foundation board of trustees. Goodman has a PhD in government from Harvard, MPA from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and BS from Northwestern University.

About the Institute of International Education

For more than 100 years, the Institute of International Education has promoted the exchange of scholars and researchers and rescued scholars, students, and artists from persecution, displacement, and crises. IIE conducts research on international academic mobility and administers the U.S. Department of State’s Fulbright Program.

Supporting Scholars Under Threat

Learn more about how Global Cornell supports Scholars Under Threat.

November 3-4, 2023 Statler Hotel, Cornell University Open to the Public

The symposium will explore investment and development finance which is an important area of policy discussions in Africa and other developing areas of the world, as well as those that will give a brief overview of the scale of both Chinese and Middle Eastern investment in Africa. Multifaceted and multidisciplinary analytical approaches that will consider the role of Chinese and Gulf State investments in the development of Africa, especially Africa’s efforts to create a free trade area are welcomed. Furthermore, the symposium will look at the role foreign investment can play in resource mobilization for infrastructure development as well as the links between law, trade, and regional integration.

Sponsored by the Institute for African Development and the Clarke Initiative for Law and Development in the Middle East and North Africa

Co-sponsored by the East Asia Program

Funded by the Einaudi Center for International Studies Cross Program Initiative