Monday 16^th May 2005

Abyssinia Infinite tour UK

Abyssinia Infinite, a cross-cultural collaboration between producer Bill Laswell and Ethiopian singer Ejigayhu ‘Gigi’ Shibabaw, have begun their six date tour of the UK. 

The group, which has been the subject of much acclaim and were runners-up for the Critics Award in the 2003 BBC Awards for World Music, performed at the Brighton Gardner Arts Centre on Saturday and at the Coventry Warwick Arts Centre on Sunday.

Tonight the group will be playing at the Dartington Hall in Totnes, before moving to the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London on Tuesday, the Sage in Gateshead on Thursday and then the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester on Friday 20^th May.

A preview of Abyssinia Infinite appeared in The Guardian newspaper on Saturday. John Fordham of the newspaper’s The Guide, described Ejigayhu ‘Gigi’ Shibabaw as “one of the most conspicuously talented figures to have emerged from the renaissance in Ethiopian music since the early 1990s.”

“Abyssinia Infinite mingles an Ethiopian outlook with a wide range of world-music, and this tour offers a unique chance to sample a very unusual chemistry working at close range,” he concluded.

ENDS