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Tbilisi's largest musical festival of the year

By Messenger staff
Friday, June 7
Tbilisi Open Air Music Festival, the biggest music festival in the South Caucasus took place on June 5th at Dinamo Arena in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. The event featured internationally famous artists, “The Subways”, “Kid Jesus”, “Modeselektor” “Black Strobe”, “Infected Mushroom”, “Tricky” and the legendary rock band from England, “Deep Purple.”

The Deep Purple members arrived in Tbilisi on June 4th and stopped for only a few minutes at the airport to meet their fans. Some fans even managed to take pictures and get their CDs and guitars autographed by members of the band.

Later the same day, a 20 minute press conference was held at the Sheraton Metekhi Palace. Ian Gillan, the band's frontman said he was pleased to be back to Georgia. (Gillan visited Georgia earlier in 1990)

The festival started behind schedule on June 5th, but the crowd still enjoyed the music and waited patiently for Deep Purple to take to the stage.

The legendary rock band’s performance was made up of two parts. The band performed old and well-known singles, as well as songs from their new album. The second part of the performance was based on listeners’ choices and reactions, which excited the crowd. The band usually improvises a lot during their performances. As the members of the band said at the press conference in Tbilisi, they are “still in the process of learning how to play new music on stage,” and therefore they are never quite sure about the order of play.

After an exciting performance by the world famous British rock band, the musician and producer, Tricky took to the stage, with his rich, layered, and dark music, which is a blend of different music styles.

Tbilisi Open Air Music Festival went on until the early hours of June 6th.

The festival was first organised in May, 2009 by the Altervision group. During the next four years, 23 bands from 9 countries have performed at the festival, four of which were world famous artists - Jazzanova, Transglobal Underground, The Dhol Foundation and Fred Falke.

Tbilisi Open Air Music Festival brings together many different genres of music and gathers musicians from all over the world.