Ilusha Tsinadze

Ilusha Tsinadze, born in Tbilisi, Georgia moved to the New York City area in 1991, when he was 8 years old. He didn't start learning Georgian music until he finished music school for jazz guitar in 2005 and traveled back to his homeland for the first time. His debut album, Deda Ena ("Mother Tongue") merges the traditional music from his homeland with a top notch jazz and bluegrass band from New York. .............................................................................................................. When Ilusha Tsinadze left his birthplace, Tbilisi, the Republic of Georgia, to come to the United States with his family at the age of eight, he had had limited exposure to Georgian traditional music. His older brother had taken Georgian dance lessons and Ilusha had always admired the drummers who accompanied the classes, but before he was old enough to join them he was suddenly whisked away to America where his earliest memory of music is the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” played on the family’s first CD player in their tiny apartment in Bloomfield, NJ. This love of early rock music quickly grew to encompass blues, jazz, bluegrass, and other roots music from around the world. It wasn’t until 2005 when Ilusha had already graduated from William Patterson University’s jazz program with an honors degree in jazz guitar that he finally paid his first visit back to his homeland since he’d left in 1991. There, he discovered for the first time his musical heritage. It became a bridge between cultures and lands, between his family in Georgia and himself. Now he could play the songs of his home while he was in the U.S. and keep the people he loved close to him. Since then, Ilusha has continued to visit and travel within Georgia, collecting songs and stories from his family. Ilusha was inspired to share this music with an audience in the U.S. But rather than combing the diverse New York City musical scene for Georgian traditional musicians he opted to call on some of his accomplished friends, creative musicians recognized for their talents in jazz, American roots music, and other music traditions from around the world. The project’s debut record, Mother Tongue, features Richie Barshay (drums), Chris Tordini (bass), Rob Hecht (violin and bass clarinet), Liam Robinson (accordion), and guest vocalist Jean Rohe, who all bring their unique talents and a keen interest in Georgian tradition to the music. “I wanted to be true to the music but also true to myself,” says Ilusha, referring to his own diverse musical history. His hope is that Mother Tongue will be a way to connect him further to other members of the Georgian Diaspora through song and to share this beautiful and little-known musical tradition with Americans, through the eyes of an immigrant with one foot in New York City and the other in a little nation on the Black Sea, Georgia.