georgian

Lisa Batiashvili (born Elisabeth Batiashvili, in 1979) is a Georgian violinist, the daughter of a violinist father and a pianist mother. Her father was her first teacher from age 4. She later studied at the Hamburg Musikhochschüle. In 1995, she was a prize winner in the Sibelius Internationl Violin Competition. She was one of the first of the BBC "New Generation Artists", from 1999-2001. She has collaborated in chamber music and concerto performances with cellist Alban Gerhardt and pianist Steven Osborne, both BBC New Generation Artists exactly contemporary with Batiashvili.

Giya Kancheli (გია ყანჩელი), born 10 August 1935 in Tbilisi, is a Georgian composer resident in Belgium. Kancheli is his country's most famous living composer and arguably its best-known cultural export. His music is very communicative and immediate and often has a spiritual quality, which leads some to compare him (not always helpfully) to composers such as Arvo Pärt and John Tavener. There are several instances of folk and religious inspiration in his music, notably in the opening to the Third Symphony or his more recent work Magnum Ignotum...