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Dialogues: A Conversation and Performance is a series of events in which we invite someone to discuss their creative process and present an aspect or aspects of their work. For the eighth edition we present violinist and composer Kaethe Hostetter.
Having spent more than two decades immersed in Ethiopian music — including eleven years living in Addis Ababa as well as leading the highly acclaimed band Qwanqwa, Kaethe is now performing a solo show called Woradj Alle (Impressions of Ethiopia) which is also the title of her debut solo album.
Built from live-looped violin and electronics, the album unfolds as a ritual performance: hypnotic, textural, and immersive—Ethiopian melodic systems refract through dub minimalism, psych abstraction, and avant improvisation. Not fusion, but more transmission— music that blurs memory, place, and time. Each composition functions as a vignette: portraits of people, fleeting encounters, and atmospheres from the years she called Ethiopia home.
A conversation with the artist will follow the performance.
Studio 34 is a mixed-use yoga/healing/arts spot in West Philly named for the trolley that stops
out front. All year long we host art, comedy, dance, music, poetry and theatre in our gallery,
lounge, and studio spaces, as well as healing services, 30 weekly yoga classes. And a wide array of workshops.
4522 Baltimore Ave
General Admission: $20
PWYC Options
Kaethe Hostetter is an American violinist, bandleader, composer, and educator, whose music was shaped as much by immersion as by training. Classically trained and forged in the avant-jazz and improvisation scenes in Boston and New York, many years as a circus musician, and deep forays into a variety of folk traditions, she spent twelve years living and collaborating in Ethiopia, absorbing its melodic systems, song forms, and everyday musical life. Her debut solo album Impressions of Ethiopia transforms that experience into a solo, ritual-like performance for violin, live looping, and electronics, where Ethiopian songs are re-imagined and performed as a one-woman show and often accompanied by projections drawn from Ethiopian textiles and street life.
Contact the Fringe Festival Box Office for up to date accessibility information.
This event does not require masks to be worn