Gamsachurdia Demetre

 

Demetre Gamsachurdia was born in Tbilisi, 1988. 1992 he emigrated to Switzerland with his family in order to escape the civil war in Georgia. He started playing piano aged 6. Few years later he began to compose pieces for piano and for orchestra. Today, Demetre Gamsachurdia lives and works in Basel, Switzerland. He is currently studying at the prestigious High School of the Musik-Academy of Basel. His former composition teachers were the famous Swiss composers Rudolf Kelterborn and Roland Moser. Since 2009, he has been a student of Georg Friedrich Haas.

As pianist, he focuses on contemporary solo and chamber music, especially in collaboration with the cellist and conductor Wiktor Kociuban and percussionist Bastian Pfefferli. The music of Demetre Gamsachurdia focuses not only on dramatic gestures and a certain simplicity of musical form (for example the usage of loops) but on a very specific handling of microtonal and spectral harmonies, which can be traced back to the time of ancient Kolchis and Iberian kingdoms in Caucasus.

To be experimental is not the aim, but human nature asks for the new and the newest which has never been heard before. By connecting the ancientknowledge and feeling with modern day’s media and possibilities, Demetre Gamsachurdia aims for an art which is not intellectual but sensual.

Demetre Gamsachurdia performed in countries such as Georgia, Switzerland, France, Germany and Poland. His pieces have been played also in Italy, Austria, Russia and Brazil, at the Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele as well as at the Davos Festival.

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