WITH LIANA GOURDJIA
Tcha Limberger and Liana Gourdjia.
Through prestigious collaborations and critically acclaimed recordings, they share their passion for boundary-defying concerts, offering a unique cultural and musical journey that spans Flamenco, Gypsy jazz, and reimagined Central European music.
TCHA LIMBERGER – Violin, Guitar, Voice
LIANA GOURDJIA – Violin
This is gutsy playing, full of power and poetry - THE GUARDIAN
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Liana Gourdjia gives a clean, elegant, sometimes dogged and sometimes lyrical account of Stravinsky’s 1931 Violin Concerto - THE TIMES
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Gourdjia sweeps the listener away - AIDIO
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Without being in the least cold, her interpretation charms the ear as much as the mind - CLASSIC TOULOUSE
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a violinist whose musical language is characterised by sensual components - PIZZICATO
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This is gutsy playing, full of power and poetry - THE GUARDIAN • Liana Gourdjia gives a clean, elegant, sometimes dogged and sometimes lyrical account of Stravinsky’s 1931 Violin Concerto - THE TIMES • Gourdjia sweeps the listener away - AIDIO • Without being in the least cold, her interpretation charms the ear as much as the mind - CLASSIC TOULOUSE • a violinist whose musical language is characterised by sensual components - PIZZICATO •
Liana Gourdjia
Liana was introduced to the violin by her grandmother, a violinist of a “Mosfilm” orchestra, at the age of four. Her first debut as a soloist with an orchestra was at the age of nine. At the age of six, Liana appeared on Moscow television and has since performed with orchestras and recitals with her mother, pianist at the Moscow State Conservatory, in many prestigious venues throughout Russia including the Great Hall and the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, and the Philharmonic Hall in Saint-Petersburg.
As a laureate of the prestigious New Names foundation in Moscow and a fellow of the Spivakov foundation, she performed in the Vatican for Pope Jean Paul II, released a CD with the Melodia label for the the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and was invited as a young talent to the International Colmar Festival. Gourdjia became a laureate of the Tchaikovsky International Competition for Young Artists in Sendai in Japan at the age of fourteen and appeared numerous times on television and radio programs dedicated to presenting young stars in Russia and Europe.
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Winner of the Sion-Valais International Competition, Liana has also won prizes at the Michael Hill, Corpus Christi Hudson Valley International Competitions. She has soloed with orchestras of Lille, SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, Moscow Philharmonic, Zagreb Soloists, Fort Wayne Philharmonic, Lithuanian National Symphony, Hudson Valley Philharmonic, the Ashville Symphony, City Music Cleveland, the Cleveland Chamber… under direction of François- Xavier Roth, Andrew Grams, Daniel Hege, Paul Haas, James Gaffigan, Shlomo Mintz, Carl Topilow, Thomas Hinds, David Effron, and Sergei Stadler ….
As an active chamber musician, Ms. Gourdjia has collaborated with such artists as Jaime Laredo, Lawrence Power, Vladimir Mendelssohn, Marc Coppey, David Soyer, Antonio Meneses, Giovanni Belucci, François-Frederic Guy, Alexander Melnikov, Peter Laul, and members of Talich, Vogler, Juilliard, Guarneri and Tokyo String Quartets among many other musicians. Liana has performed at festivals including the Printemps des Arts in Monte Carlo, Musique de Chambre de Lyon, the 92/Y in New York, Les Musicales de Compesieres in Geneva, Les Musicales de Colmar, and is a laureate of Juventus festival in France.
She was awarded a three-year fellowship at The Marlboro Music festival, where she had a chance to collaborate with Mitsuko Uchida, Leon Fleisher, Kim Kashkashian…
A proponent of contemporary music, she has frequently premiered works, commissioned by her from prominent and upcoming composers. She is a member of the Paris based Ensemble Variances under direction of Thierry Pécou and served as a concertmaster of the New Music Ensemble at Indiana University under direction of David Dzubay.
Liana began her studies at the famous Central Music School at the Moscow State Conservatory with renowned professors Iryna Bochkova and Maya Glezarova. Upon graduating, she moved to the U.S. to continue her studies with David and Linda Cerone at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she received Bachelor and Master of Music degrees. Liana received an Artist Diploma from the Jacob’s School of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington, studying with Jaime Laredo. At the Indiana University she was the first recipient of the prestigious Jacob’s scholarship.
An avid reader, she is fluent in Russian, French, Spanish and English. Liana now lives in San Sebastián where she is a professor at Musikene Centro Superior de País Vasco and is a guest concertmaster with Euskadiko Orkestra. She continues to serve in faculty of École Normale de Musique d’Alfred Cortot in Paris.
Liana’s CD releases include Stravinsky violin concerto and works for violin and piano with the Deutsche Radio Philharmoniker of Saarbrücken and pianist Katia Skanavi for Audite label and Complete Sonatas by Charles Ives for violin and piano with pianist Matan Porat for label Printemps des arts in Monte Carlo.
‘Guitarra’ by Moritz Moszkowski
From the 2024 concert at Auditorium Claude Debussy, Versailles
MORE INFO
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What happens when you assemble four of Europe’s foremost jazz musicians playing 17 tunes from an era when popular music was “hot”? The answer is The Viper Club – a quartet who revisit the long-overlooked partnership of African American musicians Stuff Smith and Jonah Jones (the violinist and trumpeter whose joyous, inventive music making as the Onyx Club opened-up the sound of swing in the mid-to-late 1930s).
The Viper Club features violinist Tcha Limberger and trumpeter Jerome Etcheberry as their front-line players while string bassist Sebastien Girardot and guitarist Dave Kelbie provide a powerhouse rhythm section. All four musicians have remarkable pedigree – Tcha is an award winning multi-instrumentalist, deeply connected with Hungarian and Romanian Roma folk music alongside playing top flight jazz, Etcheberry’s one of France’s finest jazz brass players, his 2020 album Satchmocracy found him paying tribute to his musical hero, Louis Armstrong (who also happened to be Jonah Jones’ favourite trumpeter), while Kelbie and Girardot are amongst 21st Century jazz’s most highly regarded rhythm sections – as the solid foundations for Django a la Creole and Don Vappie & Jazz Creole they have rocked festivals and concert halls across the globe.
The Viper Club create scalding sounds. Loosely inspired by Smith and Jones’ recordings from the Onyx Club years, Tcha and Jerome pursue an extremely expressive violin/trumpet dialogue rooted in blues-based improvisation, both musicians feeding off each other. “Stuff and Jonah’s partnership has been avoided by all since,” says Kelbie, “which I understand on the face of it – unless you can find a violinist who plays like a brass player the instrumentation is unlikely to work. With Tcha and Jerome I believe we might just bring violin and trumpet back to front line jazz.”
Revisiting such standards as Ballin’ The Jack, My Blue Heaven, Lawd You Made The Night Too Long, Swanee River and After You’re Gone, the Vipers explore the richness, beauty and mystery in these numbers, their dynamic ensemble playing ensuring each number bristles with vitality, colour and a clear commitment to Swing. The Vipers not only revisit Smith/Jones’ repertoire, they took their name from Stuff’s most famous composition: he wrote and first recorded You’se A Viper in 1936, the song quickly becoming a jazz standard (alongside being considered the greatest ever celebration of smoking marijuana). This wry tune, which when the likes of Fats Waller popularised it, led to outrage from US government hacks then determined to harass jazz musicians (they loathed the freedoms jazz offered – in opposition to racist US society), can be seen as a celebration of free spirited creativity. Thus the Viper Club!
Determined to honour those who have come before them, the Vipers – Kelbie, Limberger, Etcheberry and Girardot – understand that jazz from the pre-WW2 era was just as incendiary and innovative as that made by modernist icons of the LP age. Yet where Miles and Trane and Sun Ra are venerated today, the likes of Stuff Smith and Jonah Jones have been largely forgotten. The Onyx Club brought violin to the forefront of jazz, today the Viper Club continues this venerable tradition.
Garth Cartwright
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TCHA LIMBERGER – Violin, Guitar, Voice
LIANA GOURDJIA – Violin -
LIANA GOURDJIA
Winner of the Sion-Valais International Competition.
Prizes at the Michael Hill, Corpus Christi Hudson Valley International Competitions
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Liana Gourdjia gives a clean, elegant, sometimes dogged and sometimes lyrical account of Stravinsky’s 1931 Violin Concerto: precisely the qualities demanded by this work - THE TIMES
A great recording, which reveals to me a violinist absolutely worth following - ARTALINNA
Russian violinist Liliana Gourdjia’s thoughtful performances offer a perfect combination of Russian fire classical poise - FANFARE
Violinist Liana Gourdjia's interpretation of the solo part is technically flawless, yet sensitive and colourful - AUDIO
Here we are obviously dealing with a violinist whose musical language is characterised by sensual components and the need to fill the tonal space with music in such a way that it flows from the experiencing self to the experiencing you - PIZZACATO
