Gina Ismene Chitty
Script error: No such module "AfC submission catcheck".
Gina Ismene Chitty is an Australian pianist-composer of piano, voice, ensemble and orchestral works, published by Wirripang, the leading publisher of Australian composers in Australia.
EDUCATION
PhD in Contemporary Music ( Macquarie University, Sydney)
Bachelor of Music ( George Washington University, Washington DC )
Fellow of the Trinity College of Music, London
Licentiate of the Royal Schools of Music, London
Alma mater: Ladies College, Colombo
Composer
Gina’s works are performed internationally- including the UK, Netherlands, USA, Poland, Germany, Japan, Pakistan, China and Canada.
Between the years 2020 and 2024 she has penned over 50 compositions and has produced approximately 30 Wirripang publications.
The most popular have been her solo piano compositions, deeply personal and expressive importantwhich have been inspired by evocations of futuristic visual stimuli, from the more abstract higher dimensional points of relative arrangements within tone intervals, to cheerful robotic beings and time travelling Germanic "baroque bears " who engage in culturally colourful fetes of foreign festivity such as Arabian wedding parties and encounters with exotic princesses and medieval street jongleurs.
She writes in a variety of styles, composes instantaneously in her mind, and sometimes at the piano.
Gina's music is particularly popular with younger concert pianists such as the Polish pianist Jakub Niewiadomski.
"I have had the privilege of performing two of Dr. Gina Ismene Chitty's piano compositions in recent times in Krakow, Poland. I enjoyed immensely the intense dramatic impact of these pieces, with their little repetitive riffs, fast technical passages, complex harmonies and rhythms.
An outline of a very unique compositional style!
Both pieces were not too difficult to memorise as the complexities in the harmonies hold more traditional values, definitely more conservative than most of the other modern composers of this century I have had the privilege of performing “
Gina had two world premieres of her music at the Sydney International Piano Competition in July 2023, where her works were selected by 4 competitors.
The Germany based Jun- Ho Gabriel Yeo, who competes regularly in International piano competitions performed Dr. Gina Ismene Chitty's “The Dance of the Robotic Cyborg” recently at two venues.
The first, in his home country Germany at the Richard-Jacoby-Saal in Hannover and the next time at the Sydney International Piano Competition.
” I immediately liked the groovy character with interconnected accents, which is really fun to play. I had some kind of a futuristic feeling while playing it, the cyborg came alive, first slowly then more and more."
She has a Ph.D. in Contemporary Music from Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia and a B.Mus. majoring in Piano Performance from George Washington University, USA.
A Fellow of the Trinity College of Music, London, and a Licentiate from the Royal Schools of Music,Gina has been the finalist in several piano concerto competitions and the winner of a Tchaikovsky piano competition held in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The latter competition won her a place at the prestigious Moscow Conservatory of Music. However, a family diplomatic appointment took her to Washington DC, USA, instead, where she graduated in music at the George Washington University and had several concerts as well as performances of her compositions. She has had solo performances in many countries, performing the concerti of Rachmaninoff, Liszt and Beethoven.
Gina is also the author of “Public Postures, Private Positions” - an ethnomusicological discussion of a hybrid cultural form of Afro-Lusitanian music, that analyses a quaintly hybrid music form prevalent in Sri Lanka.
She explores the genre's sixteenth-century beginnings and then turns to its unique placement in the Sri Lankan diaspora of the twenty-first century
She revived her passion for composition more recently and began to write a genre of music that transcended existing classified boundaries - in the merger of Baroque music with Asian and Arabian music. Gina enjoys synthesising contrapuntal textures drawing on dissimilar genres of music such as Western Baroque music and Middle Eastern music or by weaving Baroque motifs with strands of Asian music. The meshed-in baroque motifs, harmonies and flourishes, while reminiscent of the practices in the Baroque era, are entirely her own inventions; so are the Arabian melodies. None are derived from existing folk melodies or extant popular music.
Gina fancies herself to be a time traveller as she thinks and writes easily in neo-Baroque mode, that has been a puzzling phenomenon for her. She often constructs works, reminiscent of Baroque composers but in a new space, with diverse and differing harmonic movements and motifs. She also loves to generate and intertwine her pseudo Baroque strands with music composed in a Spanish folk idiom. Often she juxtaposes the Spanish idiom with music of mediaeval tradition, with the strains of a mediaeval Jongleur’s music mingling in with her Flamenco dances.
In a lighter vein, Gina likes to write whimsical “Jazzical” interludes and has a collection of works that she calls “A Jazzical Insouciance”. The “Jazzical Insouciance” is comprised of Jazz rhythms, harmonies and riffs encapsulated in more traditional Classical and Contemporary Classical forms, perhaps a creation of a new genre of Australian Jazz music.
Gina is also an artist, painting in acrylics, pastels and oils, a writer and poet.
She illustrates the covers of her Wirripang publications with her own sketches, caricatures and paintings
.Dr Chitty is presently writing a series of works which link the encounters of pre Baroque jongleurs to seemingly extraneous and alien musical genres.
Gina also enjoys writing piano pieces for children - based on a fictional character she calls a Grimmolow.
The first performance of her original Grimmolow piece was by Dr Katie Zhukov, which was followed by publication in the " Australian Women Composers Antholology Volume Three". Yet another Grimmolow piece from a new trilogy composed earlier this year will be premiered at the Australasian Piano Pedagogy Conference at Monash University in July this year.
Her works are published by Wirripang.[1][2][3][4][5]
PUBLISHED WORKS
The Baroque Bear and the Middle Eastern Princess (2019) https://www.australiancomposers.com.au/collections/composers-and-authors/products/baroq-bear-and-the-middle-eastern-princess-the
The Baroque Bear at the Arabian Wedding Party (2020)
The Boogie in Limbo (2024)
Chillin’ in Lockdown ( marimba, drum set and piano) 2020
The Christmas Elves Dance with the First Snowflakes (piano) (2020)
Coogee Beach Capers (piano ) 2024
Australian Women Composers’ Piano Anthology, Volume III
Cool Struttin’ Baby Grimmolow ( piano) 2024
The Cruising Drone - (Drowsy Drone Walk ) - piano -2023
https://www.australiancomposers.com.au/collections/composers-and-authors/products/cruising-drone-the
The Dance of the Ecstatic Metalborg ( piano) 2023
The Dance of the Robotic Cyborg (piano) 2021
The Furious Toccata ( piano ) 2023
The Grimmolow’s Awkward Tango (piano) 2024
The Heavy Rock Metal Dancer Meets the Baroque Bear piano, harpsichord, drums, cymbals (2020)
Hexagonal Etude Augmentations (piano) 2023
The Ingratiatingly Friendly Ghost (piano ) 2022
The Inscrutable Cat (piano) 2021
The Loping Grimmolow (piano ) 2020
The Manly Beach Rompango (piano) 2023
The Orangutan Boogie Dance ( piano ) 2021
The Panther’s Promenade ( piano ) 2023
The Rabbit and the Spaniard (piano) 2021
The Sassy Waitress on the Caribbean Cruise (2020)
Sense and Insouciance ( sleigh bells, marimba, cymbals, drums) 2020
Skittish in Lockdown ( piano, marimba, drums) 2020
The Stomping Gygaborg ( piano ) 2022
https://www.australiancomposers.com.au/collections/composers-and-authors/products/stomping-gygarborg
The Surreptitiously Astute Cat and the Stoat (piano) 2020
Toccatina Avventura (piano ) 2020
The Very Sneaky Grimmolow (piano) 2024
Year Seven Frolics (piano) 2021
https://www.australiancomposers.com.au/collections/composers-and-authors/products/year-seven-frolics
PUBLISHED MONOGRAPHS
Published Postures, Private Positions: The Sri Lankan Diaspora’s Engagement with Baila ( Afro Lusitanian dance and music) (2010)
https://www.dymocks.com.au/book/public-postures-and-private-positions-by-gina-chitty-9783639245462
References[edit]
- ↑ https://www.australiancomposers.com.au/pages/gina-ismene-chitty
- ↑ https://www.jwpepper.com/myscore/Australiancomposer33
- ↑ https://www.jwpepper.com/sheet-music/search.jsp?myScoreFlag=true&brandCodes=MSGC01&perPage=12&pageview=list-view
- ↑ https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCtFQj51e7RlFCRqDn2QBTlw
- ↑ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHtgUIIc_e4ZWjqt0upcRrA
This article "Gina Chitty" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Gina Chitty. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.
