Ensemble Rustavi

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Ensemble Rustavi · The Rustavi Ensemble, also called the Georgian State Academic Ensemble, is a Georgian folk music ensemble founded in 1968 by Anzor Erkomaishvili. He was a singer and folklorist from a Georgian musical family going back seven generations. Since its founding, Rustavi has performed in more than fifty countries. The ensemble sings and dances: songs and dances for work and war, in splendid costumes and with elaborate choreography.

Music and breakthrough

Its hallmark is Georgian polyphonic singing, in which voices slide over one another and harmonies are constantly in motion. The ensemble's sacred hymns also have those overlapping sounds. Erkomaishvili wanted to break through the boundaries between the regional styles and yet present ethnographically authentic music from all over Georgia. In this way Rustavi combines the powerful, rough sound of the traditional regional choirs with a newer, cleaner aesthetic aimed at the concert stage. The singers try to preserve, and sometimes recreate, the original vocal colours, but they simplified the complicated scales of the older choirs to obtain firmer, clearer harmonies. Sometimes a smaller group sings, so that the structure of a song is easier to hear.

Influence

In 2001 the ensemble received the UNESCO Pacha Prize for the preservation and dissemination of Georgian polyphonic singing in Georgia. Rustavi has also made that vocal heritage known outside Georgia.

Listening

• 
  Mravalzhamieri · Ensemble Rustavi, 2016

Discography

Studio albums

• 1980Народные песни Грузии
• 1989Georgian Voices
• 1994Georgian Sacred Music
• 2001Georgian Lyric Songs
• 2026Ex contrario, Middelheim & Tsutisopeli
• ?An Oath at Khidistavi: Heroic Songs & Hymns Form Georgia
• ?Gurcistan Halk Sarkilari
• ?Heroic Songs & Hymns from Georgia
• ?Mirangula: Georgian Folk Songs

See also

• Georgian polyphony