Caucasus Georgia Camp

August 3 - 17, 2025
(15 days)

  • Leaders: Ketevan Mindorashvili, members of Zedashe Ensemble & Sinead O’Mahoney

  • Venue: Sighnaghi, Republic of Georgia

  • Tuition: $2400, shared accommodations; $2550 double room; $2900 for single room

Post-camp trip:
August 17 - 24, 2025 (8 days)

An optional 8-day post-camp trip to Svaneti in the far northwest to meet up with master singers, do some hiking and exploring, and generally experience the wonder of Georgia’s geographic diversity as we make our way there and back.

  • Tuition: $1000, shared accommodations; $1500 single room

This will be Village Harmony’s 21st 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 alumna and teacher Sinead O’Mahoney will coach the group in a set of American and other genre 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. 

Transportation to and from Tbilisi, Georgia are not included in the tuition.

We will be offering an optional 8-day post-camp trip to Svaneti in the far northwest to meet up with master singers, do some hiking and exploring, and generally experience the wonder of Georgia’s geographic diversity as we make our way there and back.

  • 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.

  • Sinead O'Mahoney

    A native of Montpelier, VT, Sinead O’Mahoney has been singing with Village Harmony and Northern Harmony for over a decade. She has traveled abroad with Village Harmony in Corsica, France, Switzerland, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and has made three trips to Caucasus Georgia, including an intensive Georgian language course. She has been active in Sacred Harp and other shape-note singing throughout New England, and became a co-director of VH’s community choir Boston Harmony in 2018. She co-led the Mettabee Village Harmony choir with Larry Gordon in 2019-20 and helped host many Village Harmony online workshops. She has been praised for her sure command of rhythm and clear and efficient teaching style. Sinead earned her bachelor’s degree in music education from the University of Vermont in 2016. She currently lives in Boston, Mass. USA.

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.