Addis festival 2005

The band `Jump to Addis´ will be the featured artist at the Ethiopian International Music Festival in Addis Ababa, January 10-21, 2005. In its fourth year, the Festival is produced by the Alliance Ethio-Francaise, who expand its scope beyond Ethiopian musicians this year by inviting `Jump to Addis´. The band will be in Ethiopia for the third time. The concerts will be performed together with some of the best Ethiopian singers. The trip also features some workshops of the band at the university of Addis Abeba. Jump to Addis is based in Amsterdam. It has started its musical exchange with Ethiopia in 1999. The band travelled through Ethiopia, working together with lots of ethiopian musicians and performing a row of concerts, combining ethiopian music, jazz and improvisation. In 2001 the band came back to Ethiopia to record a cd and to perform concerts with their favourite ethiopian singers and instrumentalists.

This cd has been released in 2003 on the french label Buda Musique among the serie Ethiopiques (vol.15) of the french editor and music-promoter Francis Falceto. It is one of the first cds in the serie with recent recordings. Jump to Addis get in contact with Francis Falceto during their first stay in Ethiopia while staying in the same hotel. Falceto found a group of high-caliber musicians who were taking the ethiopian music as a source of inspiration.

In 2003 the band brought some of their ethiopian colleages to the Netherlands, performing a row of nine concert and presenting their cd successfully.

Participation of `Jump to Addis´ in the Ethiopian International Music Festival has been made possible in part through support from The Dutch Foundation of Arts (Fonds voor de Amateur- en Podiumkunsten).

musicians of the group:

singers: Genet Masmresha, Asnake Gebreyes, Ermyas Tsegay
saxophone: Olaf Boelsen
guitar: Damien Cluzel
bass: Jasper de Beer
drums: Udo Demandt