Meklit Hadero

TED Senior Fellow Meklit Hadero performs at Mayne Stage!

“Hadero’s sound is a unique blend of jazz, Ethiopia, the San Francisco art scene and visceral poetry; it paints pictures in your head as you listen.” NPR

Invited to open for Angelique Kidjo at the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor, MI on Feb 1 2012. This will be on the tale end of her January residency in Luxor, Egypt, in anticipation of her Nile Project (touring summer 2013). Born in Ethiopia, raised in the U.S. and nurtured by San Francisco’s richly diverse arts scene, this acclaimed singer embodies worlds. Joining her soul-filled phrasing to a songwriter’s craft, her music’s influences range wide – from the jazz and soul favorites she grew up on; to the hip-hop and art-rock she loves; to folk traditions from the Americas and her forebears’ East African home. But this singular artist’s sound, drawn of multitudes, is hers alone.

Named a TED Global Fellow in 2009, Meklit has served as an artist-in-residence at New York University, the De Young Museum, and the Red Poppy Art House. Meklit has also completed musical commissions for the San Francisco Foundation and for theatrical productions staged by Brava! For Women in the Arts. She is the founder of the Arba Minch Collective, a group of Ethiopian artists in diaspora devoted to nurturing ties to their homeland through collaborating with both traditional and contemporary artists there.

“Soulful, tremulous and strangely cinematic, Hadero’s voice will implant scenes in your mind — a softly lit supperclub, a Brooklyn stoop, a sun-baked road. Close your eyes, listen and dream.” – Lynn Jacobson, Seattle Times