Sam(antha) Hirst graduated from the Department of Musicology at the University of Toronto. While there, she fell in love with Georgian music which became the focus of much of her studies in Ethnomusicology. Since her involvement with Darbazi she has expanded her musical activities to collaborations with other musicians, transcribing and arranging Georgian songs, directing the women’s group Megobrebi, and playing the pandur, doli and accordion
Bie Engelen’s first visit to Tbilisi led her irresistibly to spending two-and-a-half years more in Georgia in order to be closer to the source of its folk music. Several fortuitous involvements have been her musical education: singing with Tafelmusik Baroque Choir, being in "Georgian" choirs led by Alan Gasser and Carl Linich (Darbazi and Okros Stumrebi respectively) and becoming unexpectedly and temporarily the leader of the latter group. She has also taken up the chunir and folk pandur and leads Trio Kundzuli.
