Mulatu Astatke spent two weeks at RAK Studios in London in October 2024, recording his first album in over a decade. During those sessions, the cameras rolled for a stripped-back take on “Tezeta”, one of his signature pieces reimagined for piano trio.
“Tezeta” has been in Mulatu Astatke’s repertoire since the late 1960s, first recorded in Addis Ababa for Amha Records and later reissued on sets like Éthiopiques and New York–Addis–London. The piece takes its name from the Ethiopian tezeta scale, a mode associated with memory and longing, and has become one of the key reference points in Ethio-jazz. He has recorded it with full bands and larger ensembles over the years. This version strips everything back: piano, saxophone, cello. Mulatu at the keys, James Arben on sax, Danny Keane on cello. No rhythm section, no brass section, just three voices moving through the melody with plenty of air between the notes.
That focus sits inside Mulatu Plays Mulatu, released on Strut Records on 26 September, which revisits fifty years of Ethio-jazz by reworking pieces shaped through touring and regular performances at Jazz Village, Mulatu’s club in Addis Ababa. Recorded between London and Addis with his long-standing UK band and musicians from the club, it folds instruments such as krar, masenqo, washint, kebero and begena into new versions of pieces like “Yekermo Sew”, “Netsanet” and “Azmari”, produced by Dexter Story with contributions from Carlos Niño and Kibrom Birhane.
Within that wider project, the RAK trio video shows something else: how the eighty-year-old bandleader approaches one of his most famous compositions when everything else is stripped away. Isobel Gracefield engineered, Matty Deveson filmed. The result is chamber Ethio-jazz, quieter, more exposed, the piano carrying what a full ensemble once held. The RAK sessions caught that process in the studio, and this trio take on “Tezeta” shows how far the material can move while staying grounded in Ethiopian modes and phrasing.
Stream and purchase a copy of Mulatu Plays Mulatu through THIS LINK