Another Wonderful Gift of Music, This Time in Tbilisi!

“Without music, life would be a mistake,” said German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

I surely agree. A life-long love of music has played an important part in my post-retirement travel life, providing many new, wonderful opportunities to hear and see live musical performances throughout the world that I would never have had without it.

Many of my most memorable travel experiences have involved music.

From the mad rock sounds of the French band The Inspector Cluzo in Peru; Gregorian chant in an 11th century cathedral in Berlin; impromptu jams by indigenous musicians in Iquitos on the Amazon River; the Amazon Symphony Orchestra itself playing Hayden and Strauss in Manaus, Brazil; to most recently discovering the incredible polyphonic voices at Tbilisi, Georgia’s Holy Trinity Cathedral, and many more, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed a grand variety of world music along my journey.

This week I was looking online for more live music in Tbilisi and discovered to my delight that the internationally renowned Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra was performing this week at the Kakhidze theater, just a six-minute walk from where I live!

The program included Beethoven’s 8th Symphony, and the great composer’s Concerto for Piano and Symphony Orchestra No. 5, featuring pianist Sandro Gegechkori.

This was a can’t-miss opportunity, so I started looking into getting tickets.

I found the website with a theater seating chart online, but the “Buy” button wouldn’t work. I decided to just walk over to the theater and seek out the box office.

From the seating chart it looked like I could get center section seats about 10 rows from the stage for 30 Georgian lari, about 10 USD each.

I called my Canadian friend Suzanne who was also excited about going, and when I left my apartment I met my neighbor Gwyn from Wales who asked if I’d get a ticket for him, too.

It was all coming together. I just needed to find out whether I could get tickets at the theater or get some help with the website.

I went to the theater entrance with my phone screen locked on the theater site, a credit card if needed, and more than enough Georgian lari in my wallet to make the purchase if I needed cash.

A small, bald man with a big mustache greeted me at the door. I showed him my phone so he had some idea what I wanted. He asked if I spoke Russian.

“Nyet,” I replied, somewhat contradicting myself.

I told him, “English,” eliciting a mild groan. He gestured palm down several times which I took to indicate I should wait there while he walked away in search of an English-speaking staffer.

The brief encounter attracted several other balding men with bushy mustaches and seemingly little else to do but curiously examine the foreigner now in their midst.

A pleasant young man, also short, who spoke English fairly well, came back with the first man I talked to but said he didn’t know how to work the website, and was apparently satisfied to leave this problem to someone else. “Now I can go back and play,” I heard him say while walking away.

The short bald man gestured palms down again and walked away, returning this time with a slender, soft-spoken middle-aged woman who seemed like she wanted to help. She spoke a little English but tried her best to understand. When I thought she fully understood, holding a pen to her pursed lips, she just about whispered, “Not possible.”

My incredulous look of frustration must have cut right through the language barrier, as she furrowed her brow, said “wait,” and walked away.

A few minutes later she returned with an older woman who spoke not at all, but exuded an air of authority in matters such as whatever it was I apparently had instigated here.

The crowd of observers around the front desk grew to at least half a dozen, and several others carrying musical instrument cases were trying to make their way through the inharmonious assembly to leave by the front door. I took them to be performers, possibly even those I wanted to see perform the next night. None showed any interest in me, however, or whatever the matter that was hindering their quick exit from the building.

The slender woman with the pen looked toward the older woman, then back at me, and said, a little louder this time, “It is not possible … not possible, all tickets electronic.”

So I offered my best pitch. 

“I am sorry. I don’t understand,” I said calmly, trying not to appear a pushy, arrogant American, though I’m guessing they thought I was exactly that.

“If electronic, I have a phone,” which I displayed in hand. “I have a credit card, and I have lari if necessary,” I said, placing my card and cash on the counter.

I pointed to the seating chart and the “Buy” button on the screen.

“You have seats available for the concert, yet I cannot purchase tickets for my friends and I to attend tomorrow’s concert?

“I’m sorry,” I repeated softly. “I don’t understand.”

The slender woman eyed the older, silent authority figure, and they conversed briefly in Georgian. Maybe Russian.

The slender woman then turned, gestured toward me with her pen, and said, “Please, come.”

I followed her and the older woman back to an office deep inside the theatre building where I was told to sit like an errant school boy in the principal’s office. I wasn’t sure what I was in for.

While the younger woman stood over me, the older woman sat behind a large desk and began writing on what looked like a ticket.

I didn’t know what she was doing at first but the slender woman said, “Present, …  it is present.”

At that moment I realized the woman behind the desk was writing me a free pass for three seats to the concert. When I looked, they weren’t the seats I had targeted. They were even better!

I was stunned.

Three seats in the front row of a balcony box overlooking the stage! I jumped up, bowed and began expressing my thanks effusively.

I offered to make a donation to the symphony but they would have none of it. “A present, … PRESENT!” the slender woman repeated. There was nothing more to discuss.

What a wonderfully unexpected and warm gesture of kindness and friendship, another example of the character of Georgian people, as I’d already experienced so often during my first six weeks in their beautiful country.

I walked out of the office on a cloud, through the curious small crowd still by the door, bowing and thanking each and all with my best pronunciation of one of the few Georgian phrases I knew. “Madloba (thank you), madloba, madloba … .”

The next night we were treated to an exquisite performance in a beautiful, intimate theater. The orchestra was amazing and the young pianist Sandro Gegechkori was an out-of-this-world talent, a virtuoso extraordinaire!

Only one problem remains. Should I want to go to the theater again in Tbilisi, how will I get tickets?

END NOTE: Only after hearing him perform did I look him up to discover that this 20-year-old(!) talent Sandro Gegechkori is already an internationally acclaimed pianist, as he should be. Subscribe to my newsletter to learn more about him and be among the first to get an email notice whenever I add a new post to my blog at Real On The Road.

(Symphony photo above courtesy of Suzanne Hooker)