Gina Ismene Chitty
Indulge in the musical world of Gina Ismene Chitty, finely crafted works, blending classical precision with modernist innovation. Her works incorporate influences of diverse genres, styles, blends of exotic Arabian and Spanish influences, lively Brazilian rhythms, intricate Baroque elements, and a fusion of Classical and Jazz genres.
Gina is a pianist-composer, artist and author with works performed internationally - including the UK, Netherlands, Germany, USA, Poland, China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and Australia.
Her compositions are inspired by evocations of futuristic visual stimuli, from abstract higher dimensional points of relative arrangements within tone intervals, to robots and Germanic "baroque bears". Recent performance venues include the Florianka Recital Hall in Krakow, Poland, the Krzysztof Penderecki Hall at the Krzysztof Penderecki Academy of Music, Verbrugghen Hall, Sydney Conservatorium of Music and the Richard Jacoby Saal of Hochschule fur Music, Hannover, Germany.
She has had two World Premieres and one Australian Premiere at the Sydney international Piano Competition 2023.
Gina enjoys creating innovative piano pieces about imaginary beings such as “Grimmolows”, “Baroque Bears”, “The Man in a Hat” and lively piano duets for four hands.
Her works were selected for the Australian Women Composers’ Piano Anthologies Volume 111 and the upcoming volume IV.
She holds a Ph.D In Contemporary Music from Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, a Bachelor of Music from George Washington University, Washington DC, USA, a Fellowship of Music (FTCL) from the Trinity College of Music, London and a Licenciate (LRSM) from Royal Schools of Music, London.
Gina was also awarded a Fellowship at the American University in Washington DC and has been a finalist at numerous piano competitions.
The winner of a Tchaikovsky piano competition held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Gina was awarded a scholarship to the prestigious Moscow Conservatorium, but a family diplomatic appointment took her to Washington DC instead where she graduated at the George Washington University, Washington DC, USA.
Amongst her solo concerts Gina has performed the piano concerti of Liszt, Rachmaninoff and Beethoven, recorded some of her early compositions based on folk music, and has also had solo piano performances for the diplomatic community at the Meridian House International, Meridian International Centre, Washington DC.
Gina writes a genre of music that transcends existing classified boundaries - in the merger of Baroque music with Asian and Arabian music.
She enjoys synthesizing 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.
She is also an artist, painting in acrylics, pastels and oils, a writer and poet.
Gina is the author of Public Postures, Private Positions - an ethnomusicological discussion of a hybrid cultural form of Afro-Lusitanian Music.
Read more about Gina with this wonderful interview with Interlude:
https://interlude.hk/interview-with-gina-ismene-chitty-multicultural-background-australian-composer-and-artist/
Sounds Like Sydney Review (February 2025)
https://www.soundslikesydney.com.au/pianist-and-composer-dr-gina-ismene-chitty/
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