The Shin

Performance: Folk - Jazz

Band:
Zaza Miminoshvili - song writing, Guitars, Panduri
Zurab J. Gagnidze - bass, vocals, song writing
Mamuka Gaganidze - vocals, percussion, song writing

About:
The Shin formed in 1998 in Germany, where Zaza Miminoshvili and Zurab Gagnidze have been living since 1994. Mamuka Gaganidze joined the band in 2002. In their native Georgia these musicians are acclaimed among the country¹s most elite composers and musicians.
The Shin's "instrumental theatre" is the sound of Georgia's musical encounter with the world. In The Shin's music Georgian-style vocal pyrotechnics, intricate polyphony and instrumental virtuosity meet jazz scat, funk and fusion, flamenco, Ravel and Shakti. How does it sound? Sophisticated, surprising, hip, humorous, and always exhilarating - even at its most sensitive. The Shin¹s celebratory musical dialogues know no bounds. Listen again and you'll hear something new each time.
Members of The Shin have composed original works for productions at the Tbilisi State Theatre and for film, television and radio programs in their native Georgia and around the world. They have collaborated internationally with artistic greats like Gia Kancheli, Robert Sturua, Jorge Pardo, Giora Feidman, Chaka Khan, Randy Brecker, Okay Temiz and Fuat Saka and many others. The Shin is regularly spotlighted in international festivals and has received significant critical acclaim for its unparalleled originality and magnetic appeal.
In Georgian shin means coming home. Although each of us has our own home and our own road home, The Shin¹s music has the amazing ability to lead everyone "home", no matter how far it may be. It may lead you somewhere you know you've been before, where the windows are fogged over from the rain and familiar smells waft in from the kitchen, where you hear familiar voices and you understand, even when you can¹t make out the words.
The Shin's latest project, "EgAri" ("That's it!" in Georgian), features the trio collaborating with Georgian folk musicians, singers and a dancer in pursuit of a quintessentially Georgian, yet unmistakably modern, sound. EgAri is shaped around traditional Georgian instrumental styles, polyphonic vocals, and folk dance. It unites them for the first time ever in a brilliant aural and visual display. EgAri is a non-conventional hybrid of archaic and modern elements, Caucasian and non-indigenous instruments, startling Georgian harmonies and more familiar jazz threads. For The Shin, only a music which continuously evolves can survive. It is in this spirit that the musicians perceive themselves not as threats to, but as guardians of, Georgian tradition.
EgAri is a showcase for a handful of Georgia's most outstanding musicians. It reinitiates a peaceful dialogue between East and West, old and new, "ours" and "theirs" -a dialogue which has existed in Georgian culture for centuries. It is possible to experience this dialogue in the poetry of Shota Rustaveli, the paintings of Niko Pirosmani, the architecture of Tbilisi, the choreography of George Balanchine, the films of Otar Ioseliani, and yes...
...the music of The Shin.

Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/shinthe

Albums: