DeutschIncense of Music Nr. 48
A multisensorial concert – Thursday, 5th March 2020, 8 p.m.
Hayden Chisholm, saxophone. Meri Tschabaschwili, piano – Fabio Dondero and Dominik Breider (Incense burning): eucalyptus and lemongrass.
PANDA Theater in der Kulturbrauerei, Knaackstr. 97, 10435 Berlin
Meri Tschabaschwili was born on October 16th, 1985 in Tbilisi / Georgia. At the age of five she started playing the piano by ear and composing her own music. When she was seven she gave her first solo concert in Germany. From 1994 to 2005 she lived and studied in Saint-Petersburg, first at the music school, then at the music academy (conservatory) with Prof. Oleg Malov. During this time she regularly gave piano evenings, performed as a soloist with orchestras and won numerous competitions, such as the international piano duo competition “Brother and Sister” in 1996 (at the age of 11) and first prize in the “International Rachmaninov Piano Competition” in 1997 “. In 1998 Meri Tschabaschwili won the Borodin piano competition and was awarded the “Prometheus Star” by the city of Saint-Petersburg. She has been living in Germany since 2005 and continued her studies at the Cologne University of Music with Prof. Vasily Lobanov and Prof. Andreas Frölich. In 2007 the pianist was a scholarship holder of the Jehudi Menuhin Foundation “Live Music Now” and in 2013 a scholarship holder of the “Villa Musica” Foundation. Meri Tschabaschwili gives concerts as a soloist among others with the “Junge Philharmonie Köln” and has performed regularly at the “Amadeo” and “Euriade” festivals since 2008. Her concert tours take her all over Europe to China.
Hayden Chisholm was raised in New Plymouth, New Zealand, by parents Heather and Doug Chisholm. His first musical experiences came with local Dixieland bands. He began playing clarinet at age nine before switching to what became his primary instrument, the alto saxophone, two years later. The early influences of Johnny Hodges, Sun Ra, Eric Dolphy were strong, being his first jazz records. He was a member of the award-winning New Plymouth Boys’ High School Jazz band and won the prize for Most Outstanding Jazz Musician at the National Jazz Festival in Tauranga, 1991. With a DAAD scholarship Chisholm attended the Musik Hochschule in Cologne, Germany. He studied saxophone with Frank Gratkowski. In 1997 he received the New Zealand Young Achievers Award which enabled him to continue his studies abroad. During these years he also studied Carnatic music in Chennai and travelled extensively in the Balkans learning the different musical traditions. During his studies in Cologne Chisholm developed a system of micro-tonal fingerings for saxophone and so called “split-scales” which he presented on his 1996 debut solo CD Circe on Jazzhaus Musik. These scales split perfect intervals using quarter tones. His microtonal work was later featured on the Root70 album Root70 on 52nd 1/4 Street which received the German Critics Award. During his studies in Cologne he met many musicians he still collaborates with today including Marcus Schmickler, Nils Wogram, John Taylor, Felix Fan, Adrian Brendel, Burnt Friedman, Jochen Rückert, Burnt Friedman, Antonis Anissegos, Jaki Liebezeit, Claudio Bohorquez. He also worked under Mauricio Kagel who was then professor for composition. Hayden Chisholm, Moers Festival 2007 Since 2000 he has collaborated with the German artist Rebecca Horn. His work with her is wide-ranging, from composing the music for major site-specific installations “Moonmirror” (Mallorca, 2003), “Lumiere en Prison” (Paris, 2002), Spiriti de Madre Perla” (Naples, 2002), “Twilight Transit” (NYC 2004), Heart Shadows (Lisbon, 2005), “Das Universum in einer Perle” (Berlin, 2006), to recomposing the music for her early performance films which was released on a complete DVD set in 2005. In 2008 he worked as assistant director with Horn for the Salvatore Sciarrino Opera Luci mie traditrici at the Salzburger Festspiele. In 2009 he composed the music for her film Fata Morgana which was premiered at the Teatro La Fenice Opera House during the Venice Biannale. In 2011 he composed the music for her documentary film “Moonmirror Journey” which premiered in Berlin. In 2001 he composed music for the German Theater (Deutsches Schauspielhaus) in Hamburg, working on Maria Stuart by Schiller and Arabische Nacht by Schimmelpfennig. In 2006 and 2007 he was musical director of the Earth Festival in Kenya which featured a large cast of international musicians, including Huun Huur Tu. In 2008 he performed with David Sylvian on the “World is Everything” tour. Since 2006 he teaches a yearly masterclass on Mount Pilion in Greece in the village of Agios Lavrentios. His course “The G-string of Pythagoras” fuses saxophone, just intonation, ancient music theory, and improvisation. In 2008 he was assistant director at the Salzburg Festspiele of the Opera “Luci Mie Traditrici” by Salvatore Sciarrino. In 2012 Chisholm was featured in the feature documentary Sound of Heimat – Deutschland singt directed by Arne Birkenstock and Jan Tengeler. In the film, Chisholm travels through Germany and explores authentic forms of German folk music. In 2013 he released a 13-CD Box set 13 Views of the Heart’s Cargo which presents his most important recordings dating back to 2001. The first CD in this box, Love in Numbers, features works for saxophone in which Chisholm explores the Fibonacci series as it manifests in the overtone series. In 2015 Hayden Chisholm contributed to Waywords and Meansigns, a collaborative project setting James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to music. Hayden is a member of the quartet Root 70 with trombonist Nils Wogram. In 2018 Chisholm was a finalist at the New Zealand Jazz Awards in the Recorded Music NZ Best Jazz Artist category.