Memories of a Teaching Life in Music: The Autobiography of Wachtang Botso Korisheli

Overview

Wachtang Botso Korisheli was born in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, in 1921, the year in which his country was forcibly annexed to the Soviet Union. Raised in an artistic and cultured family, his life changed drastically when his father, a famous actor, was arrested in 1936 and executed as an enemy of the state. This cataclysm in the young man's life started a chain of circumstances which led him through the Soviet and German armies of World War II, to lumberjacking in Bavaria, and finally to emigrating to California in 1950, where he studied piano and music education and became a treasured teacher and mentor to generations of students in the small seaside town of Morro Bay. Botso lives there now with his wife Margaret and their daughters, Lia and Ellena; he also has two grown children, Temmo and Tina.