Meklit Hadero is a singer, musician, arts organizer and Director & Resident Artist at the Red Poppy Art House in San Francisco. Born in Ethiopia, Meklit has since lived in twelve cities, on three continents, and brings her international, inter-cultural experience to all her creative work.
SOLO MUSIC
As a solo artist writing original compositions, Meklit draws on her folk, jazz, blues, and Ethiopian roots to create her songs. Lyrically focused with intimate, spare arrangements, the music imparts a kind of tenderness towards life, a sweetness that soars.
In late December, 2007, Meklit released a limited edition pressing of her first recording titled "Eight Songs." An incredible group of Bay Area visual artists, including Adrian Arias, Caleb Duarte, Juan Carlos Quintana, Todd Brown, Michelle Muennig, Tania Padilla, Clara Cheeves, Ella Noe, Ashlee Ferlito, Carlos Castillo, Indira Urrutia, Luis Vasquez-Gomez, and came together to handpaint/create the covers for this edition. Each individual album is a unique piece of artwork, drawing the visual arts and music into a single, cohesive framework.
NEFASHA AYER
In April of 2007, the Red Poppy Art House received a grant from the San Francisco Foundation and the Fund for Artists to commision a group of musicians - including Meklit, Todd Brown, Prasant Radhakrishnan, Sameer Gupta, Eliyahu Sills, and Gabriel Teodros- on the composition of a body of music titled "Nefasha Ayer: The Space of In-between." Nefasha Ayer, loosely translated from Amharic as "the wind that travels" is an in-progress body of music inspired by traditional Ethiopian melodies/rhythms and American idioms. Through its tones and colors, poetic texts and trans-cultural melodic scores, Nefasha Ayer joins the continents of Africa, South Asia, and America to explore the most essential and universal qualities shared among individuals worldwide whose identity no longer fits within the boundaries of one country, culture, or tradition.
As a band, Nefasha Ayer plays regularly in the Bay Area.
RESIDENCIES
Meklit has been a Resident Artist at the Red Poppy Art House since June of 2006.
In september of 2008, the Red Poppy art house will engage in a residency at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for Bay Area Now, a trienneal showcase of the Bay Area arts scene.
In early 2009, Meklit and Todd Brown are set to do a month-long residency at the De Young Museum. Through creating a “works-in-progress†studio in the Kimball Gallery, the two will engage the public, as well as the external galleries in a cohesive program of community arts intervention.
THEATER
Meklit is being commissioned by the Brava Theater and Director Raelle Myrick-Hodges to write music for the new Brian Thorstensen play “Over the Mountain,†which tells the story of artists and dissidents who disappear in politically tumultuous times. The play will premier in April of 2009.
THE RED POPPY ART HOUSE and the MISSION ARTS AND PERFORMANCE PROJECT (MAPP)
The Red Poppy Art House (RPAH) is an interdisciplinary, inter-cultural community arts and performance space, dedicated to the development and presentation of visual and performing arts within a diverse, intimate and accessible community context. RPAH believes that the arts should be fully integrated into the fabric of residential life, rather than existing solely in centers located on a commercial strip or business district. The RPAH is committed to developing projects and programs that bring this vision to light. Meklit has Director of the RPAH since June of 2006. Founder Todd Brown established the space in February of 2003, and the two now run it together.
The MAPP is a bi-monthly collaboration between visual artists, musicians, poets and performers that puts art and performance on the street level by transforms alternative spaces, such as private garages, basements, and studios, into gallery and performance spaces. It’s a block party of the arts for inspiring in ourselves, and others, the desire for a creative existence, an ever widening experience of life. MAPP happens the first Saturday of every even-numbered month (February, April, June, August, October and December). Meklit has been a MAPP organizer since July of 2005, curating spaces with both visual and performing arts for the past two and a half years.
VENUES and PRESS
Meklit has played in many venues, including: the Red Poppy Art House, the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC Davis, the Brava Theater, the Mission Arts and Performance Project (MAPP), La Pena Cultural Center, the Bumbershoot Music Festival, the De Young Museum, the Cowell Theater, the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, the Performing Arts Center of the University of the West Indies (Barbados), Revolution, Baobob, Madrone and Amnesia. She has been profiled twice by the San Francisco Chronicle (with a third article set to come out this spring), once by the quarterly arts journal Hoboeye, and has interviewed/performed on the KPFA morning show.
Meklit, "...sings of fragility, hope and self-empowerment, and exudes all three. What's irresistible, above all, is her cradling, sensuous, gentle sound. She is stunning." -SF Chronicle
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