2023 Staff & Faciliators
Gideon Crevoshay, Program Director
Gideon Crevoshay is a musician from the hills of the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. He uses the human voice to explore the countless dimensions of sound, language, and improvisation. Gideon studies traditional and ancient forms of singing from around the world, including the US, Caucasus, and Mediterranean, finding inspiration in the wisdom contained within these traditions and how they can inform present ideas of music-making and community. He performs, records, and tours extensively with many projects including Tenores de Aterúe, Trident Ensemble, Resonanda, OKAPIS, Starry Mountain Singers, Revels, and Briars of North America. Gideon has worked with OneBeat since its inception in 2012, having co-led projects in Turkey and Russia. He also teaches polyphonic singing throughout the US, and with the world music organization, Village Harmony.
Jess Tsang, Program Manager
Jess Tsang is a Brooklyn-based percussionist, interdisciplinary artist and researcher. A graduate of McGill University’s Music Masters program, Jess has collaborated with an eclectic variety of artists, dancers, and musicians including Rebecca Saunders, Martin Creed, Rebecca Lazier, David Szanto and Deborah Carruthers. She has appeared in performances throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia and was a fellow at the 2018 Eighth Blackbird Creative Lab. Equally fascinated by the worlds of contemporary music, material culture, speech, and the culinary arts, Jess views percussion as a flexible field with endless possibilities for intersection. She is dedicated to gender equality, diversity and representation within her field, and works to achieve these goals through her guitar and percussion duo party of one.
Marina Decristoforo, Tour Manager
Marina Decristoforo is an anthropologist, filmmaker, writer, and reluctant singer, who splits her time between New York, Tbilisi, and Tyrol. Marina holds a PhD in Anthropology, with regional focus in Georgia (the country), where she did several years of dedicated fieldwork. Since 2019, Marina has been actively involved in documentary and fiction filmmaking. Her directorial debut, Life in Three Voices (2020), is an award-winning documentary that follows a group of young Georgian singers on a journey throughout the US and their native Georgia. She has worked in various capacities on projects for the Discovery Channel, and the BBC, as well as a number of independent film productions, and has directed several short fiction and documentary films and music videos. With her partner she is the co-founder and co-director of Pillusion Film Festival, an international film festival that takes place in a repurposed barn in a small Alpine village in Tyrol, Austria. She occasionally performs Georgian and Lithuanian songs with various folk choirs and family members.
Ben Wheeler, Production Manager
Ben Michels Wheeler (1986) is an experimental musician, composer, and ethnomusicologist based in Tbilisi, Georgia. He teaches synthesis courses at Creative Education Studio in Tbilisi and performs regularly in clubs and festivals throughout the South Caucasus. He is the co-founder of Mountains of Tongues, a project dedicated to preserving and promoting lesser known music from the Caucasus region.
Lamia Lazrak, Filmmaker
Lamia Lazrak is a Moroccan filmmaker based in Portland, ME. She graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) with a Bachelor’s in Film & Television and a passion for documentary film. Her love for non-fiction storytelling first began when she directed and produced an award winning investigative Hip-Hop documentary short entitled Camoflauge. From examining issues of gun violence in Savannah, GA through hip hop, to telling stories of the crisis against substance use disorder in Maine, Lamia continues to devote her work to telling real human stories that have the power to move and inspire change.
Leo Decristoforo, Production Assistant
Leo Decristoforo is a filmmaker and musician. Born in Vienna, Austria, he studied cinematography at the IFS in Cologne, Germany and the Filmacademy Prague, Czech Republic. Together with his wife, he filmed “Life in Three Voices“, a documentary about Georgian polyphonic singing which was screened at festivals and won several awards. He has filmed both narrative and documentary formats in multiple countries for the BBC, Discovery and others. Leo is the co-founder of the Pillusion Film Festival. He also sings & plays the guitar and the tuba.
Giorgi Kolbaia, Photographer
Giorgi Kolbaia is a photographer and cinematographer with over 8 years of professional expertise. As a documentary photographer, Giorgi is dedicated to conveying the struggle of ordinary people, battling socio-economic inequality and facing the challenges arising from climate change. Through his portrait photography, while highlighting the beauty found in everyday moments, the subjects have the opportunity to convey their own stories. Featured in the Georgian magazine Indigo, Giorgi's recent article provides a comprehensive examination of the difficulties experienced by the locals of Chiatura, Georgia, a mining city, and the surrounding villages.
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Tornike Gvelesiani, Recording Engineer
Tornike Gvelesiani is a music producer, composer and audio engineer from Tbilisi. He began making music and playing instruments before finishing high school, and at the age 17 he began to study audio engineering with Gvaji (Recording/Mixing Engineer, Founder of “Leno Records”). Tornike soon after became the head recording and mixing engineer at Georgian Film Studio, a unique studio in the Caucasus region, where over the past several years, he has led hundreds of band and orchestral recordings, including Georgian folkloric music. He also works actively as a live sound engineer in and around Tbilisi. Tornike is dedicated to peace, equality and unity of all people.
Vincent Moon, Guest Filmmaker
Vincent Moon is an independent French filmmaker and sound explorer. He was the main director of the Blogotheque's Take Away Shows, a web-based project recording fieldwork music videos of indie rock-related musicians as well as some notable mainstream artists like Tom Jones, R.E.M., or Arcade Fire. For the past ten years, Vincent Moon has been traveling around the globe with a camera in his backpack, documenting local folklores, sacred music and religious rituals for his label Collection Petites Planètes. He works alone or with people he finds on the road, and most of the time without money involved in the projects, trying to produce and distribute films without following the established industry standards. He shares all of his work, films and music recordings for free on the internet under a Creative Commons license.