The High Voice of Tbilisi – Part 1: The Recording

The choir recorded the hymn in the empty church at midnight, because it is the only time the city is quiet. When Nino played it back, she heard eleven voices. There were only ten singers in the room.

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Tbilisi sits in a valley between mountains, a city of wooden balconies, sulphur baths and old churches built of honey-coloured stone. At night, the river runs dark and fast beneath the cliffs, and the fortress glows above the old town.

The choir had sung in the Church of the Silver Bell for thirty years. Ten voices. Old Georgian polyphony, the kind of singing where voices weave so tightly they seem to make a single living thing.

Giorgi sang the highest part. He was a countertenor, and when his voice rose above the others, people forgot to breathe. He wore his long hair tied back with a dark ribbon and a velvet coat the colour of wine, and he always closed his eyes when he sang.

Nino Kapanadze had been hired to record the choir's first album. She had set up her microphones in the empty church at midnight and recorded the hymn three times.

At two in the morning, alone in her studio, she played the third take back through her headphones.

She stopped. Rewound. Played it again.

Beneath the ten voices, almost hidden, was an eleventh. A man's voice, very low, not singing. Speaking. In a whisper. Close to one of the microphones.

She turned up the gain and filtered out the music, and the whisper came through, clear enough to understand.

"The bell. Thursday. Before the inspection."

The next morning, she played it for Giorgi in the church.

He listened with his eyes closed, the way he sang. When he opened them, they were troubled.

"That's microphone four," he said. "Behind the altar screen." He paused. "Nobody is allowed back there except Levan."

"And Levan," Nino said slowly, "was standing right in front of us the whole time."

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Next: Part 2, The Bell. A narrow stone stair, freshly loosened bolts and a concert with a very generous patron.