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Polyphonic harmony

Pauline McLean | 21:00 UK time, Friday, 19 November 2010

Mastering the complexities of Georgian polyphony is some task but it is one children from Thornlie Primary School in Wishaw have taken up with gusto.

When they were first told about the war in Georgia, they recalled how their own school had been vandalised at weekends and how much they wanted to make it stop.

It became even more personal when they heard about a boy of their own age, who'd been paralysed to increase his value as a child beggar.

Datuna was only three when he was thrown from a window on to the street below.

The children struck up a friendship and raised money for a ramp so he could get out of his orphanage in Tiblisi.

They lobbied the Edinburgh Area Health Authority.

And they learned to sing.

It's a style of singing which has defeated many adults but the Thorlie primary choir has now not just mastered it, they're good at it.

And as the only non Georgian children's polyphonic choir, they're much in demand.

They went to Tiblisi to see Datuna and performed at the Tiblisi Conservatoire World Symposium.

They sang for the Georgian patriarch and appeared on the news with the message that from the other side of the world they'd been moved by Datuna's plight and had come to help.

On Tuesday 23 November, they'll join the leading polyphonic choir Shavnabada for a charity concert in Edinburgh.

There will also be civic receptions in Wishaw and in Edinburgh.

And Datuna? He'll be coming to Scotland to see his new friends next spring.

And to have surgery - donated by Edinburgh surgeon Thanos Tsirsikos and the Edinburgh Sick Children's Hospital.

And I suspect there'll be some singing then, too.

The concert will take place on Tues 23 November, St Cuthbert's Church, 5 Lothian Road, Edinburgh.

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