| Jazz |
Summary: A richly textured blend of Ethiopian traditions and modern jazz, Abate Berihun & The Addis Ken Project deliver a timeless, spiritually charged album that bridges cultures and eras.
Where Jazz Meets Memory: Abate Berihun’s Global Soundscape
Cultures, you said cultures? Then you have come to the right place. The spirit of One Thousand and One Nights, that vast tapestry of stories shaped between the 17th and 18th centuries, lingers here, not in narrative form, but in sound. Within those tales, music, often centered on the tambourine and lute, evokes deeply interwoven cultural traditions, including threads of Jewish musical heritage that speak to a long history of exchange across regions and identities.
Centuries later, Abate Berihun & The Addis Ken Project seem to follow a similarly expansive path. Their music unfolds as both journey and invocation. The group draws from Ethiopian Jewish liturgical traditions, pan-African rhythmic structures and the fluid grammar of modern improvisation. The result is a sound that feels at once ancient and immediate, suspended between memory and urgency.
The instrumentation belongs firmly to the present, and improvisation is central to the ensemble’s voice. Yet the music’s elusive, almost mystical beauty continually recalls those older worlds, as though these musicians might have been ideal interpreters for Scheherazade’s imagined stage. There is a strong sense of dramaturgy here, shaping an opening statement that is both deliberate and deeply evocative.
Listeners who have traveled, particularly in times when the world felt less hurried, through parts of Africa or the Arab world may recognize a constellation of impressions: textures, atmospheres, structural echoes of lived experience. The discovery of this quartet is striking. Their sound resists easy categorization, yet its intellectual depth emerges clearly through both instrumental interplay and vocal presence. Berihun’s saxophone tone, at once airy and incantatory, often hovers above the ensemble before cutting through it with sudden urgency. As a voice within global jazz, he stands out all the more given how underrepresented this region remains on the international stage. Each such emergence feels like the lighting of another lamp across the vast landscape of jazz.
These musicians offer far more than a stylistic proposition; they present a spectrum of tonal colors and emotional registers. Their approach invites reflection, on the world, on cultural difference, and on the quiet enrichment that comes from listening across boundaries. If the album occasionally leans toward abstraction, it is never at the expense of emotional clarity. Such enrichment carries no price, except perhaps that of adding a measure of beauty to the world.
When the rhythm section asserts itself, it does so less as a fixed identity than as a shifting current—less a color than a flavor. It is the interplay of the four instruments that ultimately defines the ensemble’s voice. At times, faint echoes of Spyro Gyra, Weather Report or Yellowjackets surface, not as direct influences, but as distant reference points within a broader, more globally rooted vocabulary. Credit is also due to Origin Records, whose curatorial sensibility continues to spotlight such compelling voices across the international jazz landscape.
Certain moments stand apart. The deeply moving “Behatitu Kadus Kadus,” featuring vocalist Rudi Bainesay, transports the listener into a sacred dimension. Elsewhere, pieces such as “Addis Ken” and “Jerusalem” balance introspection with a forward-looking momentum. Rich in texture, imbued with spirituality, and grounded in a blues-inflected intensity, Addis Ken unfolds less as a collection of compositions than as an experience, one that honors the past while speaking with vibrant immediacy in the present.
With each listen, new details emerge, quietly embedded in the arrangements. It is less an album to consume than one to return to. One name, then, to remember: Abate Berihun & The Addis Ken Project, a compelling and increasingly essential voice in the evolving language of global jazz.
Thierry De Clemensat
Member at Jazz Journalists Association
USA correspondent for Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief – Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, March 23rd 2026
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Musicians :
THE ADDIS KEN PROJECT is:
Abate Berihun – vocals, tenor sax, soprano sax
Roy Mor – piano
David Michaeli – upright bass
Nitzan Birnbaum – drums, percussion
Featuring Guest:
Rudi Bainesay – vocals (8, 9)
Track Listing :
1 Tefila 8:32
2 Des Des 4:13
3 One for Roy 5:22
4 Geshem 6:01
5 Ya Zaman 2:42
6 Addis Ken 3:49
7 Ashrei Haish 6:20
8 Behatitu Kadus Kadus 8:22
9 Adam (Human) 4:13
10 Anchi Jazz 4:21
11 Jerusalem 6:52
12 Prayer from the Heart 3:35
13 Batti 5:54
All compositions by Abate Berihun, Roy Mor, David Michaeli & Nitzan Birnbaum (PRS for Music, ACUM), except: (3) by David Michaeli; (13) Traditional
Production Info:
Produced by Roy Mor
Recorded by Lars Nilsson at Nilento Studio, Gothenburg, Sweden, except:
(8, 9, 13) recorded by Ronen Roth at Pluto Studios Tel Aviv, Israel,
(8) Recording of Kessim (Ethiopian priests) by Moshe Bar-Yuda, Tel Aviv
Recorded in August 2021
Additional engineering & editing by Bill Tsur
Mixed & mastered by Dave Darlington at Bass Hit Studio, New York City
Band photos by Ronen Goldman
Back cover photo by Gaya Saadon
Cover design & layout by John Bishop