Pianist and Composer Dr Gina Ismene Chitty

Sydney based composer Dr Gina Ismene Chitty started playing the piano aged three and a half. Introduced to music by her parents she recounts becoming distressed when her father, playing the first of J S Bach’s Preludes in C Major from the Well Tempered Clavier, “didn’t play a G in the ‘right ‘ place.”

Despite this early introduction, composing music as a child was discouraged by her parents, specifically her father. It was impressed upon her that only the “greats” such as Beethoven, Bach, Scarlatti, Prokofiev, Bartok and Rachmaninov (to name a few), could write intelligent and good music. Chitty recalls “My father would get very annoyed when visiting international pianists at the numerous concerts we attended, played their own compositions as encores. “He would cover his ears and wish that they were forbidden from  doing so, and subsequently, as a child, I felt uncomfortable to write or play anything I composed in my head.”

Chitty graduated with a B.Mus from George Washington University USA, and garnered advanced diplomas in piano from the Royal Schools of Music and Trinity College of Music in Britain. Also holding a Ph.D. in Contemporary Music from Macquarie University, Chitty now focusses on her growing career in composition.

Chitty performed her first piano compositions at public at concerts and subsequently recorded at the WGMS radio station in Washington DC. Choral pieces, song cycles for voice and piano and a few chamber pieces followed. However, like many ventures, Chitty’s greatest productivity as a composer was triggered by the COVID lockdown. She is now an Associate Artist with the Australian Music Centre, and has been taken up by Australia’s leading fine music publisher Wirripang which has published 34 of her works. Artistically gifted, she creates the graphic designs for her publications.

Vibrant and technically demanding, with engaging titles like The Furious Toccata , The Dance of the Robotic Cyborg, and Obstreperous Etude Chitty describes her music as “contain(ing) sounds with linear progressions and a synthesizing of contrapuntal textures drawing on dissimilar genres of music such as Western Baroque and Middle Eastern music or Baroque motifs with a parallel movement of the elements of jazz.” Her music sometimes contains “fierce dissonances, never primarily used as sound effects but rather as directional thrusts following, on occasion, a specific idea an entire movement is based around ideas introduced early in the composition. “

“My pieces strive to create a  balance between the structural  and emotive motifs and  combine  intricate strands of counterpoint merging in with a profound expressiveness“ she adds.

A recent jazz prelude Skid on the Smooth Rock premiered at the Florianka Recital Hall, Academy of Music, Krakow, Poland and The Dance of the Robotic Cyborg received four differing interpretations by pianists around the world, Jinhong li (USA), Jakub Niewiadomski (Poland), Jun Ho Gabriel Yeo (Germany) and Usman Anees (Pakistan), confirming Chitty’s abservation that “ My work allows the pianist their individual interpretations – either highlighting  the boisterous, clashing jazz elements, the carefully designed counterpoint which is distinctly contrapuntal and baroque .. or both !”

Then there is the Grimmolow series, pieces that are easier to play, and contain little “ twirling motifs” and jazzy riffs. A Grimmolow, says Chitty, is a ” friendly-looking monster or baby dino-lizard and are supposedly merry and eccentric creatures who live in the Antarctic, although the recent batch of Grimmolows have left the icy slopes and moved on to Brazil as some of my four-hand duets have also been recently influenced by Brazilian music.”

Chitty had two world premieres of her music at the Sydney International Piano Competition in July 2023, where her works were selected by 4 competitors. Watch out for more!

Shamistha de Soysa for SoundsLikeSydney©