ZMF-2025 / Concert II: Miniatures

ZMF-2025 / Concert II: Miniatures

Program note:

A Tribute to Giya Kancheli – On the 90th Anniversary of His Birth

On 25 October, the Zurich Music Festival will dedicate a quiet and contemplative evening to the Georgian composer Giya Kancheli — one of the most distinctive voices of the 20th century. His music lives in the tension between silence and sound, spiritual clarity and emotional depth.

In honor of his 90th anniversary, the Augustinerkirche in Zurich will host the world premiere of a cycle of 18 miniatures arranged for clarinet and piano — music of soaring simplicity and restrained power.

The works were adapted in 2019 at Kancheli’s personal request by Julian Milkis — a world-renowned clarinetist and the only student of jazz legend Benny Goodman. Together with Nikoloz Rachveli — pianist, composer, and chief conductor of the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra — he will perform these works, inspired by a long-standing friendship with the composer and a deep understanding of his worldview.

Despite their performances worldwide, there is still no recording of the Milkis–Rachveli duo. This evening will therefore be a unique moment in sound that cannot be repeated — a quiet touch to the artistry and inner world of Giya Kancheli.

*As part of the concert, a solo exhibition of the artist David Sharashidze will take place.

Program:

Julian Milkis

Julian Milkis, the celebrated clarinetist and the only student and protégé of jazz legend Benny Goodman, has earned international acclaim for his unique sound, virtuosicity, and musical imagination. His artistry spans classical and jazz genres, captivating audiences across the globe with performances that reflect both technical mastery and deep emotional expression.

Mr. Milkis has appeared as a soloist with leading orchestras worldwide, including The Toronto Symphony, CBC Vancouver Orchestra, State Symphony Orchestra of Russia, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, L’Orchestre National de Lyon, L’Orchestre Colonne, L’Orchestre Symphonique Française, and the KBS Symphony of Seoul. His performances have graced prestigious venues such as Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, Salle Pleyel and Salle Gaveau in Paris, the Great Halls of the Moscow Conservatory, St. Petersburg Philharmonic, and Odessa Philharmonic, Roy Thomson Hall and Weston Recital Hall in Toronto, and the National Concert Hall in Taipei.

As an esteemed chamber musician, Mr. Milkis has collaborated with renowned ensembles, including the Borodin String Quartet, the St. Lawrence String Quartet and Cuarteto Latinoamericano. He has also performed with distinguished musicians such as Valery Afanassiev, Gérard Caussé, Alexander Rudin, Mischa Maisky, Polina Osetinskaya, and others. His versatility extends to jazz, where he has worked closely with jazz pianist and composer Dick Hyman, Benny Goodman’s former bandmate. Their collaboration has resulted in the transcription of several Goodman classics and the dedication of Hyman’s Ragtime Concerto to Mr. Milkis, offering a rare glimpse into the golden era of jazz.

Julian Milkis has premiered numerous works composed specifically for him, including compositions by distinguished composers such as Giya Kancheli, Dick Hyman, Boris Tishchenko, Mieczysław Weinberg, and Oscar Morawetz. His recordings span labels like Warner Classics’ Lontano, French Suoni e Colori, Sony’s Russian division CEAUX, Russian Seasons, Brilliant Classics, and Melodiya.

Julian Milkis is a dedicated Yamaha artist. In 2025, marking the 90th anniversary of his favorite composer Giya Kancheli, Mr. Milkis will focus on performing Kancheli’s works in tribute to this milestone. Recently, he was honored with the prestigious title of Knight of Honour of the Maltese Order, St. John Grand Priory.

Nikoloz Rachveli

pianist / conductor

Georgian conductor, composer and cultural manager. He composes and arranges for theatre and film, using themes from Georgian and non-Georgian composers. Rachveli is the Principal Conductor of the Georgian Philharmonic Orchestraand head of the Georgia National Music Center.[1][2] He has been leading the Mikeladze Symphony Orchestra since 2007. In 1995 Rachveli was listed in the book of UNESCO «New faces of the planet» awards, and, in 2001, was granted by Georgian Ministry of Culture for his original music for the theatre performance of Late Requiem. In 2003 he conducted the premiere of Giya Kancheli’s vocal-instrumental work Little Imber in the UK, which was recorded and released by ECM Records. 

In 2004 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Tbilisi Music and Drama State Theatre, and in 2005 became Head of the Georgia National Music Center, which houses the National Symphony and Chamber Orchestras, and National Choir and String Quartet. While at the Center he founded the contemporary music festival ‘Kontrapunkt'[1] and the string quartet festival ‘String Quartet Welcomes’. Rachveli became the Principal Conductor and General Director of the National Symphony Orchestra in 2007. His repertoire included pieces from Georgian composers and wider-world symphony and opera works.
In 2010 he was awarded a best theatre music prize for the David Doiashvili production of Macbeth in the Croatian International Theatre Festival

David Sharashidze

artist

David Sharashidze was born in 1959 in Tbilisi, Georgia. In 1986, he graduated from Tbilisi State University. Since 1991, he has participated in group and solo exhibitions. Since 1993, he has lived and worked in Kyiv, Ukraine. He works in the fields of painting, graphics, and design.

David is a descendant of those Georgians who over centuries kept creating Ukrainian-Georgian spiritual heritage, absorption of cultures, traditions and national characters, shared understanding and support of each other at difficult times.
Georgians, like David, who found in Ukraine their second native land, added many bright colors to the Ukrainian cultural palette.

It is these unique , saturated with sun, magnetic colors on Sharashidze’s canvases that are his calling card making his works well recognizable from a distance. Asceticism, deliberate simplicity and composition’s photographic structure inherent to his style all bring an emphasis on a unique set of colors. That creates in each artwork the atmosphere of full harmony. The artist’s-with his mission and the viewer’s-with the world’s beauty that happened to be finally noticed.

Sonya Zholobova

Pianist

Sonya Zholobova was born on April 9, 2004, in Kyiv, Ukraine. She began playing piano at the age of four, and her exceptional talent was soon recognized — in 2016, a documentary about her was produced in Ukraine.

She is a laureate of numerous international piano competitions, including De Piano (Paris), “Merci, Maestro!” (Brussels), the Volodymyr Horowitz Competition (Kyiv), Gran Klavier (Spain), Peregrinos Musicales (Galicia), and others. In 2021, she won first prize at the Newport Virtuosi Competition.

Sonya studied at the Lysenko Special Music School in Kyiv and later entered the National Music Academy of Ukraine. Since 2022, she continued her studies in Spain at the Centro Superior de Música Katarina Gurska under pianist Vadim Gladkov.

She performed across Ukraine, Belgium, France, the Czech Republic, and Spain, including with the Galician Philharmonic Orchestra and at the Juventudes de Chipiona Festival.

From April 2024 to April 2025, Sonya served as Pianist in Residence at the Museo del Prado in Madrid.