Katia Tiutiunnik

Education

Katia Tiutiunnik's high school education was completed at Our Lady of Mercy College, Parramatta and North Sydney Girls High School. She earned her Bachelor of Music from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, where she won the John Antill Composition Scholarship, the Don Banks Memorial Scholarship, and the Alfred Hill Prize upon graduation. She gained her PhD from the Australian National University, where she also completed advanced studies in Arabic. She also earned the highest Italian postgraduate title available in composition, the Diploma di Studi Superiori di Perfezionamento, from the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Rome, where she studied with Franco Donatoni for two years.

Musical work

Tiutiunnik has guest lectured internationally and has received a number of awards, commissions, national and international travel grants and other sponsorship, from both the government and private sectors. She was an Honorary Research Associate at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music from 2010 to 2016 and was a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Music, Universiti Teknologi MARA, in Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia, from March 2012 until April 2016. In August 2016 Tiutiunnik was appointed as Professor of Music at SIAS International University in Xinzheng, People's Republic of China.

Tiutiunnik played the viola with the Sydney Youth Orchestra from 1990 to 1993. She has also performed and recorded a number of her own works, as well as the works of other composers. She was the first Australian composer to be appointed visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York City, where she gave a presentation on symbolic references to Islamic mysticism and Middle Eastern affairs, in her music. She was also a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, artist-in-residence and guest composer at Canberra Girls' Grammar School and Canberra Grammar School and composer-in-residence at the celebrated electronic studio, Charles Morrow Productions, New York City. During her sojourn in New York City, Tiutiunnik was a resident and an alumna of International House of New York.

Tiutiunnik's compositions have been published in Australia, Italy and the United States and are held in several international libraries, including the Bodleian Library at Oxford University (which also holds a copy of her doctoral thesis, The Symbolic Dimension: An Exploration of the Compositional Process), Harvard College Library, the National Library of Australia and the Wiener Music Library at Columbia University. On 11 December 2009, a revised version of Tiutiunnik's doctoral dissertation was published as a book and released internationally. Tiutiunnik's published dissertation received an extensive, scholarly review by Australian musicologist, Dr. Sally Macarthur, in the prestigious, peer reviewed journal, Musicology Australia, in July 2011.

The symbolic dimensions of a number of Tiutiunnik's compositions have been associated with the motif of the journey through darkness to illumination. Also, several of Tiutiunnik's works have been inspired by Islamic mysticism and related traditions—the musical symbols therein often manifesting themselves in the form of compositional processes emanating from her interpretations of Near Eastern traditions of numerology. Other important influences on the symbolic dimensions of Tiutiunnik's compositions include the landscapes, flora and fauna of Australia; historical and current events pertaining to the Middle East, in addition to the religion and mythology of Ancient Mesopotamia.

Performance

Tiutiunnik's works have been performed and broadcast in Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Germany, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Malaysia, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Festivals and conferences which have featured Tiutiunnik's compositions include the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival, Alaska; Festivale Internazionale di Musica Contemporanea, Nuove Sincronie, Milan; Suoni e Voci del Lago, Lake Garda, Italy; Sydney Spring Festival; the 28th General Assembly of the International Music Council, Petra, Jordan, 1999 (which featured the world premiere of her symphonic poem, Noor, dedicated to Queen Noor of Jordan); Musica Nova, Sofia, Bulgaria (International Society of Contemporary Music, Bulgarian Section); Festivale Internazionale della Chitarra: Nicolo` Paganini, Parma, Italy; Compositrici: nuove strategie per una migliore valorizzazione, Teramo, Italy (Fondazione Adkins Chiti), 2001; the International Congress for Women in Music, Beijing, 2008; Cinque Giornate per La Nuova Musica e La Musica Sperimentale, Milan; Soundstream Festival, Adelaide, South Australia and others.

On 19 March 2007 (Tiutiunnik's fortieth birthday), a concert of her solo and chamber works was held at the Dom Kompozitorov, Saint Petersburg, Russia, as part of festivities celebrating two hundred years of business relations between Australia and Russia. This third concert of Tiutiunnik's compositions in St Petersburg featured eminent performers such as the Rimsky-Korsakov Quartet of Saint Petersburg and pianist Anna Sbagina. On the same day, Tiutiunnik gave a lecture/recital for the composition students of Boris Tishchenko, at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and was also interviewed by Radio Maria, Saint Petersburg. The event was organized by Dr. Elena Kostyuchenko (who also organized her 2001 and 2006 St Petersburg concerts) and its sponsors included the Embassy of Australia in Moscow, Lis Faenza of Batemans Bay (who personally funded all of Tiutiunnik's international travel for the event) and Sebastian Fitzlyon-Zinovieff, Honorary Australian Consul in Saint Petersburg.

Presentations on the role of Tiutiunnik's work in global conflict resolution have been given by Dr. James Michael Bicigo of Borealis Brass of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (whose performances of Tiutiunnik's works have been broadcast internationally) at Bard College, Union Theological Seminary, in New York and at the University of Hawaii. Tiutiunnik's music has also been used for theatrical productions at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, as well as in London, Melbourne, New York and Sydney. Her compositions have also been showcased as part of the Daniel Pearl World Music Days of the Daniel Pearl Foundation.

In early December 2009, the "Borealis in Australis" tour featured over ten performances of Tiutiunnik's works (including two world premieres and an Australian premiere) by Borealis Brass of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. These performances were in Batemans Bay, at Sydney's St. Andrew's Cathedral and on the Sunshine Coast. Highlights of this tour included a lecture/recital on the role of music in global conflict resolution—featuring Tiutiunnik's music and the music of other women composers from around the world—at the Batemans Bay campus of the University of Wollongong and a workshop for highschool students from the Eurobodalla Shire. Another important event in this tour was the VIP reception featuring live Koori music (supervised by local Koori elder, Loretta Parsley), the world premiere of Tiutiunnik's trumpet duo L'Imperatore Amato (dedicated to International House of New York) and speeches by various dignitaries, in Catalina, New South Wales. Two of Tiutiunnik's compositions, featured in the "Borealis in Australis" tour, received repeat performances at the University of Alaska Fairbanks New Music Festival, on 5 February 2010.

In April 2010 Tiutiunnik guest lectured and attended an Australian premiere of her music at the University of Melbourne.

Tiutiunnik's setting of the poem To the Enemy, by Eva Salzman, for soprano and percussion ensemble, received its world premier performance on 26 August 2010, at the opening, "Visionaries" concert of the Soundstream Festival, Adelaide, South Australia. This world premiere was broadcast live by ABC Classic FM.

Since moving to Malaysia in March, 2012, Tiutiunnik's music has continued to be broadcast internationally and performed by numerous international artists, including Iwona Glinka, Bridges Collective, Elizabeth Reid, Roberto Fabbriciani, Vilma Campitelli and her ensemble, Luis Casal, Emille Blondel, Borealis Brass of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Pemi Paull, Merietta Oviatt, Alice Bennett, Laila Engle, Peter Sheridan, Arya BastaninEzhad, Jane Bishop, John Sharpley, Akiko Otao, Kalin Yong, Roger Vigulf and others. Tiutiunnik has also performed as a violist at LASALLE College Singapore, Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre, Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris, the Russian Centre for Science and Culture Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere. As an erhu player, Tiutiunnik regularly performs with the SIAS International University Chinese Traditional Orchestra and has also given solo recitals on the erhu at the Russian Centre for Science and Culture, Kuala Lumpur and elsewhere. .

Personal life

From 2008 to early 2012, Tiutiunnik resided with her two sons in the Eurobodalla Shire of the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia. Since March 2012 Tiutiunnik has been living in Shah Alam in Selangor, Malaysia. Since September 2016 Tiutiunnik has been living in Xinzheng, Henan Province, People's Republic of China.

Selected works

1. "Portal to Nibiru"
2. "Lament to Inanna"
3. "O Fair Daughter of Man!"
4. "Sacred Marriage in TILMUN"
5. "Ali Dorati dei Nefilim (Golden Wings of the Nefilim)"

1. "Exiled in Babylon"
2. "Embracing Dumuzi"
3. "Temple of the Sun"
4. "White Night"