Check out some videos from over the years: from performing at the historic Rustaveli Theatre in Tbilisi in the fall of 2024, to Toronto’s Music Garden in the summer of 2024 to our most favoured performance interview series for BLOK-DOWN in 2022, to as far back as 2010, the first time they performed as a family in a Small World music festival. Also have a read to learn more about Shalva or Andrea’s professional work. You can also read about Ori Shalva’s first trip to Georgia in 2024 and their first tour of Quebec in 2025. And if interested, check the success of Gabo’s Trio, an off-shoot of Ori Shalva from 2016-2018.
Ori Shalva performs mostly as a trio but on special occasions and in the fall of 2024 when they performed in Georgia, they also perform with Gabo, the youngest son. But at the final concert of the 2024 Festival Sakartvelo, Ori Shalva’s leader and native Georgian suffered from food poisoning so the group had to go on as a trio. The discerning Georgian audience was very surprised to hear how Georgian this all-Canadian trio sounded.
Honoured that ORI SHALVA is part of BLOK-DOWN, an Eastern European concert/interview series. And feature on the first video, released March 31st! Great film work, interviewing and capturing the spirit of Georgian folk songs. Recorded January 2022 in Toronto.
We felt really lucky to have such great weather and such a warm audience for our picturesque performance for the Summer Music in the Garden series 2024 at Harboufront.
Ori Shalva sings Dzabrale and part of “Sounds of Canada” filmed in 2019 for the Ethnic Chanel
Ori Shalva blossomed when leading online singing workshops since April 2020
Ori Shalva at the Body Percussion Festival, Harboufront Centre, Toronto 2017
Maybe one of our first professional performances as a family, Small World Music Festival, Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto, 2010.
SHALVA MAKHARASHVILI, a Georgian native, has been performing the music of his homeland for over 35 years. Starting with the panduri (a 3-stringed indigenous lute) at the age of 4, his musical education included training in voice, tradition and classical choral repertoire, classical guitar, and traditional dance. As a young man he toured Georgia and the former Soviet Union in a number of choirs as featured soloist and instrumentalist (panduri and guitar player). Besides panduri, Shalva plays changi (harp), chonguri (a 4-stringed lute) and chiboni (bagpipes). Since his immigration to Toronto he has received a number of awards and featured on CBC radio. He was a soloist in and used to lead the community choir Darbazi and sings with his professional trio ZARI as well as numerous ad hoc groups within the Georgian community. He also chants numerous times per week in services for the Georgian Orthodox Church. He maintains close ties with the traditional singing community in Georgia, where he is highly respected as a singer as well as for his work in disseminating Georgian
ANDREA KUZMICH is an award winning singer, a teacher, an ethnomusicologist and music facilitator. Her eclectic musical activities defy her conventional classical beginnings where by the age of 16 she was a cellist with the McMaster Symphony and had sung in four different Canadian Opera Company productions. Andrea has also: sung in a Congolese Gospel Choir; studied Balkan folk music, South Indian singing and drumming, and West African drumming; performed in Big Bands, small jazz combos, as well as contemporary new music ensembles; taken a leading role in the practice of ridnyj holos (Ukrainian traditional singing) in Canada through Kosa Kolektiv and Kalendar (formerly KalynDar); become one of Canada’s foremost practitioners and academics of Georgian polyphony; sings in the professional Georgian trio ZARI and was also a lead soloist in the community choir DARBAZI. Inspired by this diversity, she started MusiCamp in 2013, a Toronto studio that hosts workshops, kids camps and facilitates musical events. She can be heard on Veryan Weston’s “Make” (2017); Tanya Tagaq’s “Retribution” (2016); DoVira’s “DoVira” (2016); Kalendar’s “Sichen” (2016); ZARI’s “ZARI” (2008); Whitney’s Smith Big Steam Band’s “Swing’s Mistress” (1998); movie soundtrack “The Witch” (2015); documentary soundtrack “What is Love” (2016), among others.
Singing for leisure in beautiful Tobermory!
PAST NEWS
In September 2024, for the first time ever, Ori Shalva returned to the homeland of Georgian polyphony, to perform and study with the best traditional Georgian singers in the world! Read more about their experiences here
MusiCamp 