The FINANCIAL — As Gilbert Hie Chief Executive Officer of Bank Republic says BR will be active in supporting art in 2010. “It will depend on the opportunities, but we will do our best in order to support Art,” Hie says.
“Last year we supported Jazz festival. Bank Republic will always try to encourage the Arts because it is a part of our constant support to the culture in frame of Corporate Social Responsebility,” Hie says.
Bank Republic has partnered with the well known Georgian Jazz singer Maia Baratashvili. Last year Bank Republic sponsored Baratashvili’s concerts in Tbilisi and London.
As it was said on the press conference last week organized by Bank Republic, together with Maia Baratashvili, this year on 18th of February Baratashvili will perform at the Tollhaus concert hall in the German city of Karlsruhe on February 18 with the group Shin.
“Despite my favorite styles of traditional jazz, for the first time I will perform Georgian folk. I will as well sing Austrian jazz keyboardist and composer Joe Zawinul’s and a variety of American composer Stephen Sondheim’s most famous works,” Baratashvili says.
“We have partnership with Maia Baratashvili, and it is important that we find always some new opportunities. So this is an artistic opportunity for her to go to Germany on 18th of February which we will support definitely as we did last year for London”, Hie told The FINANCIAL.
Hie says, when he first listened to Maia Baratashvili’s performance at the grand reception of the American Chamber of Commerce in Georgia, he have been fall in love with her impressive voice.
“As we can see BR is continuing to cooperate with me and I have to say thanks to them for this. It’s very important for an artist to have a good financial support and as our taste is the same I think that we will offer people a good arrangement for future too,” Baratashvili says.
“Its very important for me to do something new and for a long time I have been thinking about doing something different in Music. I have a good opportunity to do it now with the professional musicians,” Baratashvili explains.
Baratashvili on the 3th of February, gave a solo performance at the grand reception of Karlsruhe organized by the mayor of the city.
“Since her youth Maia Baratashvili has been captivating audiences with her powerful and emotive voice. Trained in a classical music education at Tbilisi's leading performing arts college, Maia moved into Jazz in 1995 as part of "David's Jazz Soul Club" opened in Tbilisi her home town. Since then she has gone on to perform as a soloist with the Tbilisi Municipal Jazz Orchestra, the Georgian State Symphony Orchestra, and numerous jazz ensembles,” Personal website of Baratashvili notes.
Accordingly to her personal website Maia has performed throughout Europe impressing crowds in Moscow with Igor Brill and his trio, at the International Jazz Event in the capital cities of Latvia and Lithuania. With Jorn Skogheim, Norwegian composer and guitar player, and back in Tbilisi at the numerous International Jazz Festivals together with jazz greats like George Duke, Mikhail Okunne, where she successfully combined the capacities of featured guest and Master of Ceremony.
She has released four CDs and won several prizes for her works. Maia performs in Kala jazz cafe regularly on Wednesday and Friday.
Discussion about this post