Gia Kancheli

Giya Kancheli
Giya Kancheli photographed in March 2010
Background information
Born	(1935-07-10) 10 July 1935 (age 81) Tbilisi, Georgia
Genres	Soundtrack Classical music
Occupation(s)	Composer
Instruments	Piano, keyboard, synthesizer
Years active	1977–present
Associated acts	Jansug Kakhidze

Giya Alexandrovich Kancheli (Georgian: გია ყანჩელი; born 10 August 1935 in Tbilisi, Transcaucasian SFSR, Soviet Union) is a Georgian composer who is resident in Belgium.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kancheli has lived in Western Europe: first in Berlin, and since 1995 in Antwerp, where he became composer-in-residence for the Royal Flemish Philharmonic.

In his symphonies, Kancheli's musical language typically consists of slow scraps of minor-mode melody against long, subdued, anguished string discords. These passages are occasionally punctuated with "battle scenes" involving martial brass and percussion. His music post-1990 has become more refined and generally more subdued and nostalgic in character.Rodion Shchedrin speaks of Kancheli as "an ascetic with the temperament of a maximalist; a restrained Vesuvius".

Kancheli has written seven symphonies, and what he terms a liturgy for viola and orchestra, called Mourned by the Wind. His Fourth Symphony received its American premiere, with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Yuri Temirkanov, in January 1978, not long before the cultural freeze in the United States against Soviet culture. Glasnost allowed Kancheli to regain exposure, and he began to receive frequent commissions, as well as performances within Europe and America.