The songs of Georgia are part of Unesco’s World Cultural Heritage. This Songbook of Georgia, which focuses on the female repetoire of traditional songs, is the product of two singers and music ethnologists who have been working together for many years: Tamar Buadze (Georgia) and Imke McMurtrie (Germany). It combines their knowledge and experience of Georgian song culture and their special arrangements of the songs and explains what potential this song treasury with its polyphony and special harmonies has in music therapy, music teaching and for the international choral music scene.
The aim of the book is not only to present the individual songs as authentically as possible but also to convey their genesis and their meaning in the context of community singing, thus preserving their roots and ensuring their continuing use today.
Tamar Buadze studied choral conducting and singing at the State Conservatory V. Sarajishvili in Tbilisi. In 2003 Tamar Buadze met the Laz singer, Nazi Memeshishi, from whom she learned many Laz folk songs which she then re-arranged into three-part singing. She founded the Tutarchela (Moonlight) Women’s Choir in 2004 which gained international recognition a year later through Ruth Olshans documentary “Wie Luft zum Atem” (“Like Air to Breathe”). She was made director of the JPOR Folklore School in 2006, where she founded the second and third generation of the Tutarchela Ensemble and the Tutarchela Youth Choir. Since its founding this choir has reached a wide public not only in Georgia but also internationally with its lively interpretation of Georgian folk music. In 2008 she won prizes for excellence in leading choirs and for her musical arrangements.
In 2010 the Festival Concert “From the Alps to the Caucasus” was staged for the first time in collaboration with Imke McMurtrie and the Femmes Vocales Women’s Choir. On the initiative of the German ambassador, Maia Frank-Henning, she founded Tutarchela International in 2011 in which women from other countries living and working in Georgia sang with members of the Tutarchela Ensemble. Tamar Buadze holds regular international seminars and workshops on Georgian song. She also gives concerts and advanced training groups in Germany and Switzerland as as a singer and teacher. She arranges musical exchanges with German and Swiss musicians such as Franziska Welti, Ralf Sochaczewsky and Fraua Kruse-Zaiss. In 2012 she received a medal of honour from the Georgian President in recognition of her cultural activities in Georgia and Europe. 2013 on the holiday of the city of Rustavi, Rustavkalakoba, she was nominated honorary citizen.
Imke McMurtrie is a singer and vocal coach, music ethnologist and author. She studied education, music and theatre in Munich and Berlin. From 1976 to 1982 she was a member of the Living Theatre (USA) under Judith Malina and Julian Beck about which she wrote a book: “Living heisst Leben”. She has worked with international vocal ensembles, singers and composers: John Cage, Alvin Curran, Michiko Hirayama, Meridith Monk and Dieter Schnebel amongst others. She has been trained in breathing-, voice and movement studies according to the working practices of Elsa Gindler by Frieda Goralewski and Miriam Goldberg (Concentrative Movement Therapy). In 1997 she met Edisher Garakanidze and the ensemble Mtiebi at the festival for Sacred Voice in Wales. Ever since then she has been working with Georgian singers and music ethnologists and studying Georgian Harmony Singing for use in social harmonisation and healing. Imke McMurtrie gives solo and ensemble concerts. She lectures internationally at theatres and at universities (department music therapy) and gives seminars and advanced trainings in breathing awareness and voice production and the healing properties of harmony singing. She leads the Femmes Vocales women’s choir from Lueneburg, giving concerts and doing cultural exchange projects with i. a. Georgia. She has a private teaching practice near Hamburg.
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