For this season's first Meetup for artists in technology, Mariam Gviniashvili is joined by Anushka Chkheidze
When: 12 March, 19:00
Where: online, join the meeting here
Sound and architecture
Having flown in from Tbilisi, Anushka Chkheidze found herself completely alone inside the empty and as yet unoccupied University of Basel’s Biozentrum: just her, a piano, and the surrounding spaces. Over a two-week period the young Georgian musician and composer was able to explore the building, designed by Ilg Santer architects, with the piano, microphones, a mixing deck, a computer, and her voice. She also assembled a small choir from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis music academy in Basel, who performed in an auditorium in the basement.
Anushka used her field recordings and compositional ideas from her on-site sessions to create the music for this album in the studio in Tbilisi, Georgia. The eight tracks are an acoustic and associative journey through the Biozentrum with a nonvisual form of perception: she encountered eight very different places in the building, and the spatial acoustics and nonvisible interior spaces all play their part.
About Anushka Chkheidze
Georgian Anushka Chkheidze, born in 1997, is one of the most promising talents far beyond the country’s borders. Growing up in the small village of Kharagauli, she began singing in a choir at the age of 11. She herself describes the time she spent there as magical and believes that her music is strongly influenced by those childhood years.
In January 2019, Anushka Chkheidze released her first tracks on the collection Sleepers Poets Scientists curated by Natalie Beridze. This was followed by her debut album Halfie in April 2020. The second album Move 20-21, released in February 2021, was created during the pandemic and addresses the absence of physical contact with other people.
Lost Luggage was released in 2023 and deals with an obvious, and unfortunately not unknown theme for most of us. The album Clean, Clear and White followed in May 2024, where Anuska Chkheidze performed field recordings as well as piano and choir recordings in the newly renovated research centre in Basel, Switzerland. She is invited to international festivals across genres. She often collaborates with choirs, which led to a commission from the Swiss-Georgian festival Close Encounters for the renowned women's choir Gori in Georgia. Anushka Chkheidze has collaborated several times with musician Robert Lippok and they are currently preparing their first joint release.
