Caucasus Georgia

August 12 -26, 2024

  • Leaders: Ketevan Mindorashvili, Patty Cuyler, Zedashe Ensemble

  • Venue: Sighnaghi, Republic of Georgia

  • Price: $2100 / $1900 youth

Set in the historic town of Sighnaghi overlooking the Alazani Valley, with singing, dance lessons, instrumental instruction and much more. Experience Georgian culture from the inside.

We aim to make this and our other international camps more affordable for high school & college student participation by offering an automatic youth discount.

Tuition is based on double or triple occupancy. A limited number of single rooms for the camp will be available for a $500 supplemental fee.

“In the time that I have known VH, I have been astounded by the breadth of the musical and cultural experiences I have had with you and as a knock-on effect of participating… With VH, one thing leads to the next and to the next and to the next, and it is all so positive and exhilarating. The vast breadth of intensely positive experiences was so unexpected for me. Every interaction I have with VH feeds my soul and expands my mind and musical knowledge. I am so grateful and so glad I found you.”
- International camp participant

 

This will be Village Harmony’s 20th singing workshop in Caucasus Georgia, a small mountainous country about the size of West Virginia between the Black and Caspian Seas. Georgia boasts one of the world’s most ancient—and exciting—polyphonic singing traditions, with a dark, sonorous vocal quality, untempered intervals and striking harmonic convergences unlike anything in European music.

In this camp we will learn songs from both western and eastern Georgia, with specific focus on the highly melismatic and improvisational folk songs of K’akheti region.

The 15-day long camp will be based in Sighnaghi, Kakheti, a historic walled hill-town with a breathtaking view of the Alazani Valley and the Caucasus Mountains about 1-1/2 hours’ drive east of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital.

Housing and rehearsals will take place in Village Harmony’s “own” retreat center—a cluster of three renovated historic homes on a side street near the old center of town, amidst winding cobbled streets and hillsides flecked with persimmon, walnut, fig and pomegranate trees.

Participants will work on tuning, ornamentation and vocal projection under the instruction of Ensemble Zedashe director Ketevan Mindorashvili. Long-time Zedashe member Tamila Sulkhanishvili will teach the group a set of east Georgian Orthodox chants. Daily instruction in Georgian dance will be led by choreographer Vano Chincharauli. Instrumental instruction (panduri, chonguri, drum) will also be offered. Village Harmony director Patty Cuyler will coach the group in a set of American and Corsican songs to add variety to our concert program.

The program will begin with a welcome feast at Pheasants Tears restaurant. Extra-curricular activities while in residence in Sighnaghi will include cooking lessons, a bread-baking (tonis p’uri) session, hikes and picnics, workshops with singers from Telavi, and wine-tastings. We will also take a multi-day trip into the mountains to meet with master singers and experience the wonder of Georgia’s geographic diversity.

Meet the teachers

  • Ketevan Mindorashvili VH teacher

    Ketevan Mindorashvili

    Ketevan Mindorashvili was born in Sighnaghi in the eastern province of Kakheti in (the Republic of) Georgia. She was raised in a traditional singing family. Founder and director of the Zedashe Ensemble, Keto showed a gift for singing since childhood and continued to study music technique extensively in university. She devoted herself to preserving traditions on the brink of disappearance, and has become known as a singer and a teacher of Georgian folk music, particularly the fluid ornamentation of eastern folk songs. She has a deep knowledge of ancient church chant, and is a master of the panduri, the three-stringed lute from the eastern Georgian region of Kakheti.

    Keto has searched valleys and mountains for ancient polyphony, collecting folk songs and chants, as well as writing her own music within the tradition. Today she hosts students from all over the world in her native Sighnaghi and travels internationally leading tours of Zedashe and teaching workshops. She has appeared on all Zedashe recordings to date, and has participated in numerous tours to the United States, United Kingdom, and throughout Europe. Keto has been teaching VH groups in Georgia (and twice in Corsica) since 2003.

  • Zedashe Ensemble

    Zedashe Ensemble, directed by Ketevan Mindorashvili, was founded in the mid-1990s to sing repertoire that had been largely lost during the Communist era.

    The group is known for their performance of ancient three-part chants from the Orthodox Christian liturgy, folk songs from the Kiziqian region as collected from village song-masters and old publications, and folk dances from the region.

    The group’s name is taken from the special earthenware jug, or zedashe, that was buried under the family home for the purpose of making wine.

    Listen to some of the ensemble’s recordings on Bandcamp.

  • Patty Cuyler

    Patty Cuyler, born in California, educated at Princeton University, long-time resident of Vermont, is an energetic, dynamic workshop leader and choral director and is internationally-renowned for her expertise in teaching Corsican, Georgian and South African music. Partnering with Larry Gordon directing Village Harmony since 1995, she is now VH’s sole director.

    Over the years it was Patty who spear-headed the expansion of the organization’s reach into the four corners of the globe. Later it was primarily Patty’s vision and labor that shaped VH’s response to the covid epidemic and launched our online programs, which we are carrying on even as we emerge from the isolation of these past few pandemic years.

Rehearsal Location

A medieval fort-town and 19th-century administrative center, Sighnaghi is a beautiful and deceptively quiet hill-town perched at the edge of the lower Caucasus mountains in eastern Georgia.  Sighnaghi is home to ancient Bodbe Monastery, and has long been a hot-bed of cultural activity, renowned as a refuge for artists and artisans of all sorts.

Sighnaghi is a compact little town and you can get everywhere you want within the town by foot. In the summertime the town bustles with tourists, but our neighborhood on the hillside facing Tsnori and the Alazani Valley remains a quiet oasis. Stroll around the city walls, follow trails in the forests on the outskirts, take a footpath shortcut to Bodbe Monastery.
We will use three traditional homes on a quiet historic lane, together comprising Village Harmony’s ‘retreat center’ in Sighnaghi, for our lessons, housing and most meals. When we eat out we will do so in some of the best restaurants in the country.