Tbilisi Wind Festival to bring local, foreign performing talent to Georgian capital

Classical artists including Belgian flutist Aldo Baerten, Dutch conductor Lev Markiz and Georgian oboist Giorgi Gvantseladze are part of a line-up of performers set to perform at the ninth edition of Tbilisi Wind Festival next month.

Hosted at two venues in the capital, the festival will launch on November 1 with the Norwegian Music Academy Wind Ensemble.

Comprised of students playing classical and contemporary works, the ensemble will offer their rendition of the Strauss Serenade op. 7 and Sonatine No. 1 at the event.

See a profile for cellist Ketevan Roinishvili, featured among the festival artists:

The group will also premiere a new work by Anders Kroeger, a contemporary composer of classical music, at the Jansug Kakhidze Tbilisi Centre for Music and Culture.

Changing the setting of performances, the festival will then move to Fabrika, a Tbilisi venue of creative cultural events set in a former Soviet sewing factory building.

Joined by students of the Tbilisi State Conservatoire, the Norwegian ensemble will again go on stage, this time to perform music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, George Enescu and Augustin Lehfuss.

The concluding event of the festival will then see Georgian artists and their foreign counterparts play Joseph Haydn at the Kakhidze Centre.

The show will include Aldo Baerten on flute, Giorgi Gvantseladze on oboe and Dutch-based Georgian cellist Ketevan Roinishvili.

Artists of the Norwegian Music Academy Wind Ensemble. Photo: Tbilisi Wind Festival.

Belgian flutist Baerten is principal flutist at the Royal Flemish Philharmonic and professor for flute at the Royal Conservatoire in Antwerp.

A prize-winner of the Maria Canals music competition in Barcelona, Baerten has also been awarded the Alex de Vries prize and the SABAM award.

He was also nominated for the BBC Music Prize of best chamber-music recording of 2010 for a recording with pianist Martin Helmchen.

Giorgi Gvantseladze graduated from the Tbilisi State Conservatoire before winning the Francois Leleux competition named after the celebrated French oboist.

He continued his studies at Munich’s High School for Music and Theatre under Leleux and has performed as principal oboist with the Berlin Philharmonic and Mahler Chamber Orchestra, among other ensembles.

Belgian flutist Aldo Baerten is in the roster for the festival. Photo: aldobaerten.com.

Amsterdam-based cellist Ketevan Roinishvili studied at the Tbilisi conservatoire under the tutorship of professor Tamara Gabarashvili.

From 2012 she studied at the Vienna University for Music and Performing Arts and the Amsterdam Conservatory.

Roinishvili has won awards at competitions including the Servais International Competition and was granted a tour of the Netherlands at the Dutch Classical Talent Competition in 2013.

Founded in 2009 by clarinettist Levan Tskhadadze, the Tbilisi Wind Festival aims to "encourage an interest in wind instruments and chamber music in the region and to improve the Georgian school of wind playing”.