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

Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, an Ethiopian nun, composer and pianist, has died at the age of 99.

As a child, she spent time as a prisoner of war and went onto study under the Polish violinist Alexander Kontorowicz in Cairo.

Guèbrou released her first album in 1967, donating proceeds to those in need, and continued to use money made from her music to help raise aid for Ethiopian children orphaned by war.

Over her life, she composed more than 150 original works of music for piano, organ, opera, and chamber ensembles.

Journalist and author Kate Molleson made a documentary about her for BBC Radio Four called The Honky Tonk Man.

She described her as “a woman whose choices were determined by religious self-exile, maverick gender struggles and Ethiopia’s dramatic 20th-century political history – and who became a singular artist in the process”.