Borjomi hosts first gala concert of International Music Festival Night Serenades

Georgia's central-western resort town of Borjomi on Wednesday hosted the first gala concert of the International Music Festival Night Serenades named after its founder, acclaimed violinist and conductor Liana Isakadze, with the world-renowned Georgian and foreign artists performing at the festival.

Seven concerts will be held in total during a month within the festival, which will also include exhibitions of Georgian artists, masterclasses, and workshops for students, young persons and people with disabilities, Nina Tsagareli, the director of the Night Serenades said.

Borjomi Mayor Otar Arbolishvili noted that the citizens of the town “have been looking forward to the festival year after year,” and the Borjomi City Hall “is happy to be a host of such a high-level festival”.

Over the next few days, on 23 and 25 August, the concerts will be hosted at the Ilia Chavchavadze State Drama Theatre in the Black Sea coastal city of Batumi, after which the festival will be concluded by the concerts to be held from September 15 to 20 at the Tbilisi State Conservatoire in the capital city.

The internationally recognised late Georgian violinist Liana Isakadze, who passed away at the age of 78 this July, first established the festival in the 1980s in a resort town of Bichvinta in Georgia’s Russian-occupied Abkhazia region, in the north-west of the country. However, it was suspended during the civil war and economic crisis of the 1990s in Georgia but was relaunched in 2009 in the seaside Adjara region.