Batumi Black Sea Music and Art Festival to take place in September
By Mariam Chanishvili
Monday, July 8
UNESCO-supported Batumi Black Sea Music and Art Festival will take place in Western Georgia on September 1-10.
The seventh Batumi International Music Festival is the only Georgian cultural project to benefit from the status of UNESCO patronage as it fully meets the objectives of the Organization, promotes arts education and music, especially among young people, and emphasizes its role in strengthening tolerance.
The President of Georgia Salome Zurabishvili supports the event.
The festival was founded by Elisso Bolkvadze, Georgian pianist and UNESCO Artist for Peace. She will personally travel to Batumi from 1 to 10 September 2019.
The main goal of the festival is to promote Georgian culture and discover young talents. The festival is a platform for young musicians to perform internationally.
This year, a camp for young artists "Artcamp" that will host up to 300 young people from different parts of Georgia will also be organized.
Elisso Bolkvadze, a Georgian classical pianist, has won numerous famous international piano competitions, such as International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig (1983), Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in United States (1989), Vianna da Motta International Music Competition in Lisbon (1987), Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition in Paris (special prize for the best interpretation of French music, France, 1995), Axa International Piano Competition in Dublin (1997), etc.
After moving to Paris, she continued her musical and intellectual education with the composer and philosopher Michel Sogny in France and Austria. She recorded a live recital at the Festival Michel Sogny in August 2007 for the Cascavelle label.
Michel Sogny is a pianist, composer, and doctor of philosophy who developed a new approach to teaching the piano.
His method turns the hard learning of piano playing into a very simple and motivating process, felt like a source of personal fulfillment.
She is engaged in charitable concerts and activities in Georgia. In 2013, she founded her music foundation, Lyra, to inspire and promote the young generation of Georgian classical pianists.
