CURATION
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from this page:
by Title Holder
Network Node
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Name:
Giorgi Mikadze გიორგი მიქაძე
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City/Place:
Los Angeles, California
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Country:
United States
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Hometown:
Tbilisi, Georgia
Life & Work
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Bio:
Giorgi Mikadze is Georgian pianist, composer and arranger.
Born in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, Giorgi first sat down on the piano bench at the age of five. Playing the music seemed to come effortlessly to him and by the time he was 12, he was performing piano concertos with symphonies in his native Tbilisi, Georgia.
Giorgi absorbed his classical music studies and began composing at 14. In high school, he became more fascinated with jazz, after discovering Errol Garner, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock. He has won numerous classical piano competitions and has received awards in many different countries.
Giorgi’s concerts have been broadcast on radio stations and television in Europe, Asia, and Americas. He has appeared at major festival venues such as: Newport Jazz Festival, Montreux Jazz Festival, Tbilisi Jazz Festival, Young Euro Classic, Bean Town Jazz Festival, Kavkaz Jazz Festival, Black Sea Jazz Festival, “Autumn Tbilisi” Festival, and Berklee's high school jazz festival. He recently finished American concert tour with Lee Ritenour and recorded album with Jack DeJohnette.
His current jazz composition work explores the microtonalities of traditional Georgian folk music and reimagines those structures in innovative new musical motifs.
Currently, Giorgi is directing his project VOISA which is fulfilled together with his all-star band and ensemble BASIANI which has an enormous experience performing old and historic Georgian songs and chants. The Project represents the transformation of traditional Georgian culture in the midst of globalization and represents a cultural dialogue – combining Georgian folk music, jazz, funk, fusion, hip- hop, R&B, electric-acoustic music and micro-tonal directions. It is an unprecedented musical product that caters to a wide range of musical tastes.
Noted for his supreme technical skills as a pianist and composer, Giorgi has performed with the Tbilisi Symphony Orchestras, Berklee Symphony Orchestras and MSM Jazz Philharmonic Orchestra. He has also composed for plays at the Rustaveli National Theatre.
Giorgi was a musical director for Berklee’s tribute to Quincy Jones and a Berklee Commencement Concert. He has played together with number of renowned artists, including: Jack DeJohnette, Roy Hargrove, Dave Liebman, Lee Ritenour, Meshell Ndegeocello, Chris Potter, Matt Garrison, Nils Landgren, Tia Fuller, Patti Austin, Jojo Mayer, David Fiuczynski, Brett Dennen, Siedah Garrett, Stefon Harris, Melwin Davis, Tom Kennedy, Phil Wilson and Mulatu Astatke.
Giorgi won prizes in many national and international competitions and was awarded a full-tuition scholarship at the International Festival-Institute in Round Top Texas, Berklee College of Music and Manhattan School of Music.
He has also won scholarships from the president of Georgia, Eteri Andjapharidze, Giya Kancheli, Emmanuel Zambelli and 18th street arts center.
Giorgi graduated from Berklee in May 2014, and holds Master of Music from Manhattan School of Music. In summer of 2017, he was invited as a visiting professor at Berklee College of Music where he was teaching 7 different courses that included jazz ensembles, theory, ear training, and private piano lessons. With his groups, Mikadze plays a repertoire that includes his genre-hopping compositions and clearly shows how he’s become in-demand as a sideman and musical director.
Clips (more may be added)
Uncoiling from an Indigenous, African, Sephardic and then Ashkenazic, Arabic, European, Asian cultural matrix...
EX TERRA BRASILIS
Millions of short-path connections uniting creators worldwide by means of the extraordinary mathematics of:
The Small World Phenomenon
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
Take an artist... from Salvador, Havana, Brooklyn, Cape Town...
Writer, musician, filmmaker, painter, choreographer, architect, academic, fashion designer, chef...
Integrate that artist into a network of other artists around the world.
In the manner that most human beings are within some six degrees of most others, our artist will tend to within a small number of steps of all others in the network.
The creative universe becomes a creative village in which all have access to all.
Inspired in the sensorial immanence of Borges' transfinites-inspired Alephs.
The Aleph / O Aleph
O God! I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space...
Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
www.salvadorbahiabrazil.com
Linking to the Matrix from your media (to the Matrix in general / to your Matrix Page from your Instagram) plugs your people in.
https://linktr.ee
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; recorded "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): World's premier klezmer violinist
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
Conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
Sodré
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Thus A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until Sodré was silenced, threatened with death and forced into exile...
And thus a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (seat of the Integrated Global Creative Economy* and where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
Assis Valente's (of Santo Amaro, Bahia) "Brasil Pandeiro" filmed by Betão Aguiar
Betão Aguiar
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
*Darius Mans holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT, and lives between Washington D.C. and Salvador da Bahia.
Between 2000 and 2004 he served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Mozambique and Angola. In that capacity, Darius led a team which generated $150 million in annual lending to Mozambique, including support for public private partnerships in infrastructure which catalyzed over $1 billion in private investment.
Darius was an economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he worked closely with the U.S. Treasury and the IMF to establish a framework to avoid debt repudiation and to restructure private commercial debt in Brazil and Chile.
He taught Economics at the University of Maryland and was a consultant to KPMG on infrastructure projects in Latin America.
Replete with Brazilian greatness, but we listened to Miles Davis and Jimmy Cliff in there too; visitors are David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR/WXPN
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
Susan Rogers
Alicia Svigals
Julian Lloyd Webber
Kamasi Washington
Clarice Assad
Randy Brecker
Herbie Hancock...
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
Darius Mans
Sparrow/Pardal Roberts
RÁDIO MATRIX