Laboratory of Sonic Arts: opening
By Mariam Chanishvili
Tuesday, February 19
Laboratory of Sonic Arts opened on February 15. The event took place at Stamba Hotel Tbilisi.
It began with a small presentation of laboratory program and continued with an improvisational session.
The live performance was offered by TBA Beridze, Giorgi Zagareli, Ben Wheeler and Vazha Marr offered the live performance.
The evening was powered by Propaganda and supported by Artarea, Radio Tempo and 9 Mta.
The event was curated by Vazha Marr, who is a music producer from Tbilisi. His experimental pieces study a variety of genres from ambient to glitch or conventional melodic structures. Inspired to re-define the legacy of past decades, Marr’s multi-directional narratives may often unite under the tag of IDM. However, with a weapon of choice being live instruments and aleatoric flow, especially during his performances.
In past, Marr was part of the indie-electronic duo ‘Me and my Monkey’ (MAMM) and performed various lives in Europe. Outside his solo-projects, he actively collaborates with musicians and artists of different backgrounds.
Natalie Beridze, a Georgian music composer and songwriter talked about the event and her upcoming plans with The Messenger.
She noted that periodically, different sessions are going to take place in this space.
“I have worked with Vazha so many times and we’ve been through so many things, we keep together. I am proud of this thing that musicians can keep together and not be competitive over one another. I love this new project with this setting and environment,” said Beridze.
She also stated that she has just gotten back from the tour, where her piece for piano string quartet was performed, on which she had been working on for two years.
“I am going into that direction right now, I love electronic music though. And it’s always going to be in my blood, my albums. But right now I am absolutely doing stuff for acoustic instruments,” she said.
Beridze was born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1979. After graduating from college she started making short films and music videos. Her video 'Game' received the 2nd price at Oberhausen short film festival in 2002. Shortly after that, she started focusing on music, ultimately becoming a full-time composer. She landed a record deal in Germany and moved to Cologne until 2008 and produced music under the artist name TBA.
Since 2004 Natalie Beridze has been performing live concerts worldwide and is known as first female electronic music artist from Georgia, having released music in Europe on Max.E, Monika Enterprise, CMYK, Laboratory Instinct, Chainmusic, DADO Records and Apollo Records.
Giorgi Zagareli is one of Georgia’s greatest soloist performers (viola Player). He also performed along with other musicians during the opening of the Laboratory of Sonic Arts.
He said that artists will meet here and share experience and ideas.
Born in Tbilisi, Georgia, in 1986, Zagareli studied viola at Tbilisi State Conservatoire from 2003 till 2007. He continued his studies in Detmold, Leipzig and Basel until 2013. In 2014 he recorded Giya Kancheli's “Miniatures for Viola and Piano“ with Nikoloz Rachveli as dedicatees and performed the European premiere with celebrated pianist Mikhail Muntian in Siena, Italy.
Ben Wheeler, a musician, composer, and ethnomusicologist based in Tbilisi noted that this space will serve for different musical experimentation and education, run by Vazha Marr.
“I will definitely be doing some workshops here in the future. The environment they are trying to foster here is complete accessibility. This space should be open to anyone who wants to visit and attend workshops,” said Wheeler.
A graduate of the University of Oregon and Tbilisi State Conservatoire’s program in Georgian Folk Music, Ben has also studied ethnomusicology at the University of Illinois and spent the last year as an international student in Tbilisi State Universities’ anthropology department.
