The Irish Times: Ethiopian pianist and composer Girma Yifrashewa: he says his recital at
Farmleigh in Dublin on Wednesday evening will be “very, very special”
for him, “very spiritual”.
Girma Yifrashewa – for it is he – will visit Ireland, home of his benefactors, for the first time next week. Yifrashewa was born in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia,
in 1967 and saw his first piano at 16. That was at the Yared School of
Music in Addis Ababa, where his musical talent had brought him. He
played the kirar then, a harp-like traditional Ethiopian instrument.
After an introductory phase, Yifrashewa chose the
piano, which he studied for four years before winning a scholarship to
Bulgaria’s Conservatory of Music in Sofia. It was a five-year programme
which came to an abrupt end in his second year with the fall of the
communist regime.
Everything collapsed in Sofia and Yifrashewa himself
was destitute. Through the Ethiopian diplomatic community, he raised the
train fare to travel to Rome where he arrived at the central train
station Termini “with not a penny”.
There were “a lot of Ethiopians there” who helped him
out in those first days and a Dutch nun called Sr Pauline who helped
him find accommodation. She was “very, very surprised” to find that he
wanted to return to Sofia. “Bulgaria,
she used to say, was not in a good condition,” Yifrashewa says. She
knew the Irish Christian Brothers in Via della Maddalena had a piano and
arranged for him to practise there.
“It was the beginning of change in my life,” he says.
He was offered a place to stay and “was accepted as part of the family.
I played [piano] all day.”
The brothers also couldn’t believe that he wanted to
return to Bulgaria, pointing out the news on television to him.
Yifrashewa took part in a Christmas concert and made a big impression.
The Christian Brothers then sent him back to Sofia in 1991, funding all
his expenses. He remembers the late Brother Austin Connolly as one of
his main benefactors. “He had a great love of my talent and treated me
just like a parent would.” He was “from Dublin, with relatives in
Kilkenny”.
In 1994 Yifrashewa graduated with a master’s in piano
from Bulgaria’s music conservatory. He returned to the Christian
Brothers in Rome and gave his first public concerts there. However, he
wanted to return home as he hadn’t seen his family in seven years and
planned to base himself in Addis Ababa.
One day Br Connolly said he wanted Yifrashewa to come
to the centre of Rome as he had to buy a piano for a relative and
needed advice. They could not decide which piano to pick. Then Br
Connolly said: “Select whatever you like. It’s for you.” Yifrashewa says
he became “very, very emotional”. The shop-owner recommended a Petrof
piano for the classically trained, which was then shipped to Addis
Ababa. “It arrived before me,” he says.
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