Hear about Georgia's history, culture in British Georgian Society talk

The history and culture of both urban and rural life in Georgia will be introduced to interested viewers via an online meeting organised by the British Georgian Society next week, with Michael Bloom, founder of the Georgian Harmony Association in Britain, leading the subject.

In the remote meeting to be run on the Zoom videoconferencing platform, Bloom, United Kingdom representative of the International Centre for Georgian Folk Song, will speak about the country's geography, architecture of cultural sites as well as its renowned polyphonic singing culture.

An original member of the BGS, Bloom, who has formed choirs in the UK and performed Georgian polyphonic repertory as part of them, will also talk about urban and countryside areas in his illustrated talk, while also playing examples of traditional Georgian polyphony. These examples will involve "both sacred and secular songs", a preview for the meeting said.

Entitled 'The History, Land and People of Georgia', the wide-ranging talk will be held on June 25 on the platform, and will be accessible using information provided by the BGS to their social media followers.

Michael Bloom has been involved in promoting Georgian polyphonic singing in the UK since the 1990s, after first discovering it on a visit to Tbilisi in 1988. Attending workshops for the choral  tradition, he founded the Georgian Harmony Association in 1998.

Bringing Georgian choirs and teachers from Georgia to the UK, Bloom also delivered a paper entitled 'Georgian Singing in the United Kingdom - Joys and Pitfalls' at the First International Symposium on Traditional Polyphony in Tbilisi in 2002.