July

Osvaldas Grinius
www.kamane.lt , 2007 07 27

In brief: Pažaislis Music Festival enlarges its geography every year. Therefore, the ones who were eager to enjoy Georgian traditional sacral music performed in an original manner on July 24 had to visit Žeimiai in Jonava region. As the acoustics of Žeimiai church is simply astounding, the festival uses this space rather often.

The Georgian folk ensemble “Basiani” headed by George Donadzes could become persuaded of the wonderful acoustics. Singing without any instrumental accompaniment in a capella style is a hard task to any ensemble, and the live performance of these musicians was bright and clear, exact intervals were maintained, the sound was even more spiritual and warmer than in a compact disk.

Ten men who gave a concert in the chancel of the church were dressed in national costumes and let the audience enjoy original harmony of Georgian sacral music for an hour. Their singing was based on three-voiced polyphony – two voices (tenor and baritone) performing solo parts were constantly accompanied by the continuous line of the third voice (bass).

The musicians performed every song in a different composition showing that they could sing harmoniously in a group of three or ten people. The vocal of performers singing in higher notes could be described by the term of throaty singing. Meanwhile, the performers of the second voice parts demonstrated a wider and more open vocal. The eleventh singer of extremely deep voice joined the ensemble only at the end of the show. And listeners could hear another type of singing at the end of the concert – one performer appeared to be an owner of extremely high male voice, he sang in falsetto.

The audience which arrived from Kaunas, Jonava and Žeimiai as well as surrounding towns flooded the rather large church of the town. Evidently, good aura, intriguing programme and some advertisement may attract the audience to the remotest corners of our country.