Tbilisi Wind Festival 2016 attracts world talent

Celebrated classical musicians from all over the world are coming to Tbilisi to showcase their talents at a four-day festival of wind instruments, starting later today. 

The Tbilisi Wind Festival will be hosted at three venues in Georgia's capital and will feature over a dozen Georgian and foreign performers from November 29-December 2.

The artists will play pieces by famous classical and contemporary composers on a variety of wind instruments to mark the eighth annual event.

Watch festival founder Levan Tskhadadze and Dutch guitarist Izhar Elias perform at the 2014 Tbilisi Wind Festival below:

Opening later today in the Recital Hall of the Vano Sarajishvili Tbilisi State Conservatoire, five performers and a quartet of musicians will entertain guests with a show titled An Evening of Mozart.

The evening's program will feature five pieces by the famous late Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, including his pieces for oboe and clarinet.

The performing musicians will be Polish flutist Agata Igras-Sawicka, French oboist Celine Moinet, Italian clarinet player Paolo Beltramini, British bassoonist Amy Harman and French horn soloist Herve Joulain.

Acclaimed Polish flutist Agata Igras-Sawicka will perform in the festival's opening event. Photo from the Frederic Chopin University of Music in Warsaw, Poland.

In addition, the opening show will feature the Ruysdael Quartet from the Netherlands, a four-member award-winning band who performs on string instruments. 

The opening event will be followed on November 30 with a performance by the festival's founder and artistic director Levan Tskhadadze on clarinet, accompanied by Dutch guitarist Izhar Elias.

Elias was the first-ever guitarist to receive the Dutch Music Prize, while Tskhadadze has received other prestigious awards including the Francois Leleux Wind Competition Prize in Tbilisi and a grant from Solo, founded by well-known Austrian pianist and teacher Elisabeth Leonskaja.

The show by Tskhadadze and Elias will be hosted at the TBC Bank Gallery in Georgia's capital city.

On December 1, the third evening of the festival will see the Ruysdael Quartet perform works by late French composer Henri Dutilleux and famous 19th Century German composer and pianist Ludwig van Beethoven.

The Ruysdael Quartet from the Netherlands will play twice at the 2016 festival. Photo supplied from the quartet.

The eighth annual Tbilisi Wind Festival will conclude on December 2 with a concert in the Grand Hall of the Tbilisi Conservatoire. during which many of the musicians already involved in shows will be joined by nine more performers for an evening of works by classical composers Richard Wagner and Johan Strauss. 

The group will include Germany-based soprano Anahita Ahsef and Iranian double bass performer Javad Javadzadeh along with Georgian classical musicians Irakli Zandarashvili, Tamar Licheli, Nino Shamugia, Ana Tigashvili, Mariam Chikvaidze, David Shamanauri and Mariam Makarashvili.

The Tbilisi Wind Festival founded in 2009 by Levan Tskhadadze, who said the purpose of the festival was to "encourage an interest in wind instruments and chamber music in the region and to improve the Georgian school of wind playing."

The full program of the 2016 Tbilisi Wind Festival can be found here.