Georgian Folk Music

An unprecedented historical recording of Georgian vocal music that peels away a century of Soviet academic polish and Western classical influence to reveal a folk music of searing lyricism and breathtaking complexity. In Georgia, polyphonic vocal music, usually associated with early modern Western melody, dates back to the 4th century and is as essential to the wedding table as to the church choir. These recordings from before the Russian Revolution, culled from gramophone archives in England, include a field labor song in 4 vocal parts, a rare early example of liturgical chant, and numerous banquet toasting songs featuring masterfully controlled dissonance and free-meter improvisation. An important document of a pre-Soviet era that few Georgians themselves can remember, and of a legacy that scholars and lovers of traditional folk music will cherish.

The folk music of Georgia is one of the earliest and richest polyphonic traditions in the world, despite being little known to the rest of the modern world. Combining a sense of national pride, musical invention and exploratory spirit, pianist/composer & arranger Giorgi Mikadze has created a striking new hybrid of traditional Georgian folk music and progressive microtonal jazz on his breathtaking debut album, Georgian Microjamz. This album discovers unexpected common ground between the ancient traditions of Mikadze’s native Georgia, where the Orthodox Christian church featured only vocal music in its services, and the very modern microtonal innovations of guitar great David “Fuze” Fiuczynski, with whom the keyboardist studied while at Boston’s Berklee College of Music…

Following the success of his solo release of the Complete Late Piano Music of Scriabin, James Kreiling returns to Odradek with cellist Liubov Ulybysheva in RISE, a recording of Russian music for cello and piano that represents revolutionary Russian voices whose music rose from the ruins of conflict to create powerful testimonies of hope and peace.

George Oakley is a Georgian-born American composer and a prize-winning concert pianist. The solo piano pieces on this recording, Toccata and Sonata-Fantasia, are technically demanding works which exhibit a range of styles from jazz to classical and Georgian folk music. Oakley’s Sonata for Cello and Piano takes us from an initial state of struggle and doubt to a cheerful and victorious conclusion. For his Four Songs on Shakespeare Sonnets, Oakley “drew inspiration… from the musical language of Shakespeare’s era, so that each song would somehow become a bridge connecting the Renaissance with modernity.” His mentor and friend Richard Danielpour has written that “George Oakley’s music is always highly expressive, inevitable without ever being predictable, and speaks to the heart as well as the mind.”

The pianist George Vatchnadze was born in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi but now lives and works in Chicago as Professor of Piano at DePaul University School of Music, having studied with several renowned artists from his homeland such as Alexander Toradze. As winner of prestigious competitions including the Gina Bachauer Competition in 1994, he has given concerts across Europe and the US with the likes of Valery Gergiev and Gianandrea Noseda. For this album he has gathered together 33 short pieces drawn from the huge oeuvre of film music composed by the greatest Georgian composer of our time, Giya Kancheli.