Christmas Vigil in Tbilisi

A view of Tbilisi from the Baratashvilis Bridge

After 11 hours in the Munich airport between overnight flights (a very nice airport, I might add, but still an airport), I arrived in Tbilisi at 4am on January 6, and was immediately relieved to discover that my friends' plane had been delayed. I was set to meet up with members of Teatr ZAR, a Polish theatre group who had done extensive musical research in Georgia, but international logistics being what they are, I was nervous that our simultaneously arriving flights would lead to some missed connection. Thankfully, I had time to get my bag and a bottle of water before ZAR arrived from Istanbul. I knew Jarek Fret, the director, and a few other members of the company already, and was pleased to meet some new people – from the U.S., the Ukraine, Italy, and South Africa – who had recently joined ZAR's work. After a quick ride to our homestay and a far-too-short nap (given that I was now 9 hours removed from Boston), we set out to explore the churches where we would soon hear some of the vocal music (sacred, in this case) that brought me to Georgia in the first place.

In Orthodox churches, Christmas takes place on January 7, and the most extensive celebration is the night before, with an "All-Night Vigil" beginning around 11pm and going until 4am in many places. In Georgian churches, everyone stands - there are only seats usually for the very old or unwell. That said, there's also a certain attitude toward attendance in which people are constantly going in and out of the church, staying for a minute, then going back out to talk on their phone or with friends. We started our evening at 11 at the Sioni Church, the former seat of the Patriarch of the Georgian Orthodox Church. The place was packed – I stood shoulder to shoulder the whole time, and it took me a full ten minutes to push through the crowd (which had started moving forward, I think for the Eucharistic celebration) when I saw the rest of my group leaving. We ended up going to Sioni, Anchiskhati, Kashweti, and finally the Mama Daviti church, all in Tbilisi, in a night that ended around 3am for me (Olla and Tomek from ZAR lasted 'til 4 I think). I brought my audio recorder with me and was able to capture some of the music at the different churches. First, in Sioni, they have two choirs, one with mixed female and male voices, the other all-male, in the traditional three-part arrangement. Jarek tells me that in the past, they even had a third choir. It was really fascinating hearing the interplay of these two choirs with the heavily-mic'd voice of the priest, often in a different key than either of them. In this excerpt it begins with the mixed choir, in harmonies that sound to me at least more Russian than Georgian, with the male choir taking over about partway through:

Sioni Cathedral, packed inside and thronging outside.

After stops at the Anchiskhati and Kashveti Churches (at the latter the constant sound of the door opening and closing behind me made my recordings useless), the last place we went to was up a steep hill on the south side of the Mtkvari River, the Mama Daviti church. The choir there was remarkable – its director is one of the leading proponents of Georgian chant, and has reconstructed many of the old liturgical pieces – their tuning and sense of the acoustics of the space, and the simultaneously strong and gentle voices. Here's a brief excerpt from that night – I hope to return later in my trip for a more extended listening opportunity:

Mama Daviti Church, seen in daylight, before the grueling ascent

The next day at Mama Daviti (in my jet-lagged memory it felt like early morning, though it was really a Christmas Vespers service), I got to witness a baptism and hear a different incarnation of the chant tradition, as an all-women choir subbed in for the no doubt exhausted male choir. During the service, I turned to my left and suddenly saw the priest plunging a naked infant three times into a bathtub-sized baptismal font. The subsequent cries of the child (and the unforgettable look on the young mother's face) were counterpointed by the calm dispatch with which the priest carried out his duty. Here's a last audio sample from my Christmas church wanderings, first a haunting response from the women's choir and then a more elaborated "Aliluiyah":



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