Vazha Kalandadze

“Since my childhood I have been a great admirer of Georgian choral singing. In the Soviet Union, where I grew up, this sort of music was hard to overlook: flamboyant, virtuosic, sometimes melancholy, but never sentimental. Already in my teens I collected LPs of Georgian male choirs as well as solo singers accompanied by duduki (a kind of folk clarinet). More than with any other repertoire I was attracted to the nuances of melancholy and humor, tenderness and vitality, but most of all to the irresistible beauty of Georgian vocal polyphony. And yet, this interest seemed doomed to passivity, for even in my dreams I could not imagine myself a part of this extraordinary music making. “ (Oleg Timofeyev)