Special Events

ZEDASHE ENSEMBLE
MUSIC FROM THE REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA
Saturday, November 6, 8pm
Glen Echo Town Hall
6106 Harvard Ave., Glen Echo, MD
Tickets $15 (Glen Echo town residents free)
Info and tickets: Betsy Platt 301.717.4641
glen.echo@erols.com

“Beware Zedashe. Their impeccable tuning and the casual air with which they deliver small choral gems to your unbelieving ears will, at the very least, afford you glimpses of the High Caucasus in the times of warrior knights and mountain fortresses.”
–Susan Miller-Coulter, Burlington, VT

Hailing from the Republic of Georgia, Zedashe Ensemble presents a concert of traditional Georgian music, both secular and religious featuring the (ancient) haunting three-part harmony unique to the Caucasus Mountains of Georgia. Returning for their third US tour, Zedashe Ensemble commemorates the upcoming 20th anniversary of Georgian independence with an evening of song and dance.

Accompanied by traditional Georgian instruments and two virtuosic dancers, the ten-person ensemble promises to transport you from the crags of the Caucasus Mountains in Svaneti to the shores of the Black Sea in Adjara to the vineyards of Kakheti. Their songs reflect a range of rituals, from grape harvesting to the teaching martial arts, to hymns from the Georgian Orthodox service.

The music features a dark, sonorous vocal quality and startling, unexpected harmonies. Directed by Ketevan Mindorashvili, Zedashe was founded in the mid 1990s to recover a repertoire suppressed during the Communist era. This was a turbulent time in Georgia’s struggle for national unity and the country had little access to electricity. Much of Zedashe’s early development as a group occurred in trying circumstances when they gathered in their homes to sing together by candle-light. Currently, Zedashe also works to preserve and revitalize a way of singing threatened by modernization. With five men and three women singers, and two dancers, Zedashe is one of the few mixed gender performing ensembles in Georgia and they have developed a highly distinctive sound, which captures the traditional way of singing in the home.

This concert tour represents two years of research, in which the chorus gathers field recordings from various singing-masters and families throughout Georgia. From these recordings, Zedashe develops a concert program that preserves the integrity of the singing context from which songs are gathered. These are sometimes accompanied by the chunir (Svan bowed lute), panduri (Kakhetian lute), chonguri (Gurian lute), doli (drum), chiboni (goat-skin bagpipes), and accordion.

Dance is an integral part of traditional family singing, and all the members of Zedashe are trained as dancers and several of their songs include traditional dances. Zedashe is joined by solo dancers, Eka Taralashvili and Erekli Kanchurashvili, who show off the intricate footwork and gestures of varied traditional Georgian dance styles, both lyric and martial.

With her rich and flexible, low-contralto voice, Ketevan Mindorashvili has won a wide reputation for her mastery of the intricate, melismatic ornamentation of the traditional songs from her native region of Kakheti. Ketevan is joined by long-time singing partner and brother, Shalva. The brothers Shergil, Shmagi, and Betkil Pitskhelani come from a large family with a long tradition of singing in the highland region of Svanetia. They bring knowledge of the remarkable archaic singing styles of this remote, high north-eastern region where non-tempered tunings of the old Georgians remain alive in current practice. Because the group is made primarily of singers from these two families, their sound is authentically familial and in performances it is evident that their friendships extend beyond the stage. This unique configuration of voices led Theodore Levin, Chair of the Music Department at Dartmouth College to remark: “The Zedashe Ensemble is unquestionably one of the top two or three ensembles in the world performing the culturally unique traditional vocal music of Georgia”

The group's name is taken from the special earthenware jugs — zedashes —used for making wine. The wine made in zedashes was especially for the veneration of ancestors and the tapping of the zedashe every year carried great ritual significance.