Accordion Cover of “Jerusalem”
Tiago Alexandre Marques shares a cover of Emahoy’s song, ‘Jerusalem.’ The sheet music for his arrangement is also available now on our store!
Tiago shared with us how he found Emahoy’s music, and talked about his process in arranging her work for accordion:
“I discovered Emahoy’s music by accident in 2024, when Spotify recommended it to me at the end of a long playlist. I was immediately struck by the piece Song of the Sea. The first time I heard it, I was almost moved to tears. It transported me to a distant, almost imaginary place from childhood: one filled with melancholy and hardship, but also with hope.
After listening to the Éthiopiques recordings on repeat countless times, I eventually explored the Jerusalem EP. There I felt a different kind of connection with the music, and I immediately began to imagine the possibility of arranging some of these pieces for my accordion.
Technically speaking, the writing in these works seemed particularly suited to the instrument. The left hand often takes on a more rhythmic role rather than serving purely as counterpoint. There is less repetition and less sense of teleological deferral, and the musical narrative feels stronger, while still carrying Emahoy’s distinctive sense of rubato (though perhaps in a slightly more controlled way). It felt closer to a classical language, though I would not claim expertise in saying that. These are not necessarily better or worse compositions; rather, they seemed to resonate naturally with my own musical language and with the possibilities offered by the standard-bass accordion, the instrument I play.
From that moment, I began working on arrangements of two pieces from the EP: ‘Movement from Rainbow Sonata,’ and ‘Jerusalem.’
For two weeks, night after night, I listened to the pieces and wrote the scores note by note. Then came the challenge of making them work on the accordion. At times I had to make difficult decisions: whether to remain faithful to the score and to the spirit of certain moments, or to allow myself to drift away from it so the music could live more naturally on the accordion.
Since I do not consider myself a virtuoso musician and like to always have other people's opinions, I brought these pieces to my accordion lessons and worked on them week after week. Gradually, the arrangement was refined through interpretative guidance: adjusting dynamics and using accordion-specific elements such as register switches to shape the color of the music. The goal was to evoke Emahoy’s spirit in a way that felt true to the connection I experienced in her music.
I took the time to let the pieces and the interpretation mature. From beginning to end, the process took nearly a year before the final video was completed. In fact, it could have happened a few months earlier, but I had been hoping to record in a monastery near my home. Unfortunately, that permission never came.
In the end, I realized that you do not need a grand or sacred place to celebrate someone’s legacy. All you need is something humble and sincere. That is what I tried to do here, grounded in my own effort, sensibility, and limitations.”