Biography
She is known for her visionary approach, which challenges the frameworks of modern art, culture, and human behavior, aiming to create a new model of a renaissance-like human — free from conventional stereotypes, endowed with holistic thinking, and capable of excelling across multiple disciplines.
Tatiana views her art as a tool for exploring social structures, cultural taboos, and both collective and individual psychodynamics. Her practice focuses on developing the potential of the human mind and physical endurance, while engaging with contemporary media landscapes to push the boundaries of new music and performance art.
Drawing inspiration from deathcore, industrial rap, and contemporary classical music, while delving into social and cognitive sciences, Tatiana constructs a world where primal energy collides with the cold, mechanical pulse of the future.
Becoming a bridge between the avant-garde and the mainstream, the primordial and the futuristic, her works generate immersive environments in which the boundaries between performer and audience dissolve, hierarchies are challenged, and egalitarian interaction deepens human engagement.
Through intense, multisensory experiences, she seeks to expand perception, stimulate critical thinking, and stretch the limits of the human psyche, thus offering a complex, transformative artistic encounter.
Born in Shklov, Belarus, Tatiana studied musicology at the Mogilev Rimsky-Korsakov Music College and composition at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory under Yuri Kasparov. She has also participated in masterclasses and workshops with Brian Ferneyhough, Pierluigi Billone, Beat Furrer, Alvin Lucier, Tristan Murail, Heinz Holliger, Peter Ablinger, Mark Andre, and Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf.
Her work has been featured at festivals and events worldwide, including MATA Festival (New York) and Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Darmstadt), and performed by ensembles and soloists such as the JACK Quartet, Ensemble Multilatérale, Moscow Contemporary Music Ensemble, Ine Vanoeveren, Dejana Sekulić, Michiko Saiki, and the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the St. Petersburg Philharmonia.
Tatiana has participated in residencies and academies including Académie Voix Nouvelles (France), Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany), Kulturstiftung Schloss Wiepersdorf (Germany), EBMF International Summer Academy for Young Composers (New York, USA), Künstlerdorf Schöppingen (Germany), Künstlerhaus Lukas (Germany), Künstlerstadt Kalbe (Germany), Kunsthof Dahrenstedt (Germany), Künstlerhaus Salzwedel (Germany), and Pyrenees-Mediterranean Creation Residence (Spain).
She has received numerous awards at composers’ competitions, including First Prize at the Seventh International Composers' Competition of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory (Russia), the 18th A. Petrov Open Composers Competition (Symphonic Music, St. Petersburg, Russia), the I International Composition Competition New Music Generation 2019 (Kazakhstan), and the Ad Libitum Composition Competition (Germany).
In addition to composing, Tatiana teaches composition and music theory at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, and regularly gives lectures, masterclasses, and workshops internationally on her artistic practice and the evolution of contemporary classical music in the digital age.
Curriculum Vitae
Education- Specialist in Composition (2014–2019)
Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Russia
Mentor: Yuri Kasparov
- Diploma in Musicology (2008–2012)
Mogilev Rimsky-Korsakov Music College, Belarus
Private Study, Masterclasses & Workshops
- Brian Ferneyhough, Pierluigi Billone, Beat Furrer, Alvin Lucier, Tristan Murail, Mark Andre, Peter Ablinger, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Heinz Holliger, and others
Courses & Academies
- Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, Germany
- EBMF International Summer Academy for Young Composers, New York, USA
- Fifth & Sixth International Young Composers Academy, Tchaikovsky City, Russia
- First International Master-Courses for Young Composers, St. Petersburg, Russia
- Russian Seminar on Contemporary Performing Techniques, Moscow, Russia
Residencies & Fellowships
- Kulturstiftung Schloss Wiepersdorf, Germany
- Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany
- Académie Voix Nouvelles, Royaumont Abbey, France
- Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, Germany
- Künstlerhaus Lukas, Germany
- Künstlerstadt Kalbe, Germany
- Kunsthof Dahrenstedt, Germany
- Kunststiftung Sachsen-Anhalt and Kloster Bergesche Stiftung, Germany
- Künstlerhaus Salzwedel, Germany
- Pyrenees-Mediterranean Creation Residence, Spain
Festivals & Events
- Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, Germany
- MATA Festival — “Future Perfect” Night, New York, USA
- Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology, Virginia Tech, USA
- New Music Festival, Netzwerk Neue Musik Baden-Württemberg, Germany
- KlangART Vision Festival, Magdeburg, Germany
- DARK WEB Music-Theatre, ZiMMT, Leipzig, Germany
- Wave-Gotik-Treffen Festival, Leipzig, Germany
- Chapman University, California, USA
- 18th A. Petrov Open Composers Competition (Symphonic Music), St. Petersburg Philharmonia, Russia
- Exhibition of graphic scores Sound Graphics, National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg, Russia
- Radio broadcast about Tatiana Gerasimenok, Pulsar CISM Radio, Montreal, Canada
- Radio broadcast about Tatiana Gerasimenok, No Pigeonholes Radio, California, USA
Competitions & Awards
- First Prize at the Seventh International Composers' Competition, Tchaikovsky Moscow Conservatory, Russia
- Winner of the International Composition Competition Samal, Kazakhstan
- Winner of the I International Composition Competition New Music Generation 2019, Kazakhstan
- Winner of the Ad Libitum Composition Competition — commissioned to create a piece for brass sextet, Germany
- Winner of the JACK Studio Call — commissioned to create a piece for JACK Quartet, New York, USA
- Winner of the Morphosis Ensemble Call — commissioned to create a piece for Morphosis Ensemble, Barcelona, Spain
- Winner of the No Medici project at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik — commissioned to create a piece for Ine Vanoeveren, Belgium
- Winner of the Temporality of the Impossible Composition Competition — commissioned to create a piece for Dejana Sekulic, Belgium/UK
- Winner of the 18th A. Petrov Open Composers Competition (Symphonic Music), Russia — selected composer to work with the Academic Symphony Orchestra of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, conducted by Fedor Lednev
- Winner of the New Music, New Paths project — commissioned to create a piece for Roberto Alonso Trillo, Spain
- Winner of the DARK WEB project — commissioned to create a piece for Michiko Saiki and Frauke Aulbert, Leipzig, Germany
Performers
- JACK Quartet, USA
- Ensemble Multilatérale, France
- Morphosis Ensemble, Spain
- Studio for New Music, Russia
- Ine Vanoeveren, Belgium
- Dejana Sekulić, Serbia
- Roberto Alonso Trillo, Spain
- Michiko Saiki, Japan
- Frauke Aulbert, Germany
- Academic Symphony Orchestra of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, conducted by Fedor Lednev, Russia
- Ensemble BRuCH, Germany
- And others
Teaching, Masterclasses & Workshops
Composition and Music Theory (Teaching)
- Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, Moscow, Russia
- Mogilev Rimsky-Korsakov Music College, Mogilev, Belarus
- Künstlerhaus Lukas, Germany
- Künstlerstadt Kalbe, Germany
- Kunsthof Dahrenstedt, Germany
- KlangART Vision Festival, Magdeburg, Germany
- Kulturstiftung Schloss Wiepersdorf, Germany
- Künstlerhaus Salzwedel, Germany
- La Unió Social de Flix, Spain
- Musikschule Offenburg, Germany
- Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, Germany
- Meeting of the Union of Composers of Russia, Moscow, Russia
- Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, Darmstadt, Germany
- First Russian Symposium of Young Composers, Moscow, Russia
- Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
- Académie Voix Nouvelles, Royaumont Abbey, France
- Fifth and Sixth International Young Composers Academy, Tchaikovsky City, Russia
- And others
“The primal rawness of her music and the forcefulness with which Gerasimenok expresses her pathos are unusual in her artistic milieu, while Tatiana’s striking outward appearance sets her apart from the grey mass of classical composers. She ‘breaks several molds at once,’ as her senior colleagues say, and remains one of the most intriguing musicians of the new generation.”
• • •
“Tatiana Gerasimenok, the pop-star-looking contemporary music composer,
on ‘Parasitism & Stagnation in Contemporary Academic Music.’
‘The most savage take on classical music I’ve ever read in my life.
And what’s there to disagree with?’ — comment Tatiana’s fans.”
Yuri Kasparov,
Russian composer and professor at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory,
Tatiana’s composition teacher,
speaks about Tatiana:
“During her years of study at the conservatory, she composed a wide range of works. Most of them are written in a complex, deeply individual modern musical language and bear the imprint of an outstanding intellect. In addition to her musical expertise, she has gained substantial knowledge in the sciences, philosophy, linguistics, literature, and other arts. In my view, Tatiana Gerasimenok is one of the most profound, interesting, and promising young composers, capable of bringing a fresh voice to the art of composition.”
“I shall start the conversation about Tatiana Gerasimenok with the quote of doctor Breed from 'Cat's Cradle'. On the question whether he was the Head of laboratory where famous scientist Felix Hoenikker worked, Asa Breed answered: 'If I actually supervised Felix, I'm ready now to take charge of volcanoes, the ties, and the motions of birds and lemmings. The man was a force of nature no mortal could possibly control.' Exactly the same creation of nature is Tatiana! The grade of brightness and originality of Tatiana's creative ideas doesn't concede the brightness and originality of her appearance and behaviour.
Tatiana is thinking, deep person, and the extreme emotions never overshadows the work of mind, it just sharper and probably helps to feel more accurately the world around us and everything that happens at that time. In my life I have met hundreds of definitions of music as such. One of them says that the music is abstract structuralization of emotions. This is a good working definition for many romantic composers. And in certain expressions, whether consciously or intuitively, Tatiana fully shares the views of Robert Schumann: 'the mind errs, the emotion never'.
If we talk about the music in mathematical terms, the Euclid defined parallel lines as never intersecting. Lobachevsky extended the boundaries of Euclidean geometry, defining parallel lines as those that intersect at infinity. Tatiana, excluding non-Euclidean geometry to have exhausted itself, accepts the postulate that parallel lines intersect infinite number of times in the infinite number of infinities!
Tatiana belongs to the cohort, preferring continuous sounding space and far from academic voices, and I see a deep symbolism that her latest tools scores corresponds exactly to that with which people built houses and other architectural structures. Intellectual work is not just reflected in each of her score, but finds the most unexpected and unusual forms of expression!”
“I shall start the conversation about Tatiana Gerasimenok with the quote of doctor Breed from 'Cat's Cradle'. On the question whether he was the Head of laboratory where famous scientist Felix Hoenikker worked, Asa Breed answered: 'If I actually supervised Felix, I'm ready now to take charge of volcanoes, the ties, and the motions of birds and lemmings. The man was a force of nature no mortal could possibly control.' Exactly the same creation of nature is Tatiana! The grade of brightness and originality of Tatiana's creative ideas doesn't concede the brightness and originality of her appearance and behaviour.
Tatiana is thinking, deep person, and the extreme emotions never overshadows the work of mind, it just sharper and probably helps to feel more accurately the world around us and everything that happens at that time. In my life I have met hundreds of definitions of music as such. One of them says that the music is abstract structuralization of emotions. This is a good working definition for many romantic composers. And in certain expressions, whether consciously or intuitively, Tatiana fully shares the views of Robert Schumann: 'the mind errs, the emotion never'.
If we talk about the music in mathematical terms, the Euclid defined parallel lines as never intersecting. Lobachevsky extended the boundaries of Euclidean geometry, defining parallel lines as those that intersect at infinity. Tatiana, excluding non-Euclidean geometry to have exhausted itself, accepts the postulate that parallel lines intersect infinite number of times in the infinite number of infinities!
Tatiana belongs to the cohort, preferring continuous sounding space and far from academic voices, and I see a deep symbolism that her latest tools scores corresponds exactly to that with which people built houses and other architectural structures. Intellectual work is not just reflected in each of her score, but finds the most unexpected and unusual forms of expression!”
May 27, 2021 — Moscow Philharmonic
Yuri Kasparov:
“Tatiana Gerasimenok is my student. She graduated from the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory two years ago. Tatiana comes from the Belarusian city of Mogilev, where she graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov Music College. After that, she moved to Moscow and entered the Moscow Conservatory.
She now lives in Berlin and holds scholarships from various academies and residencies dedicated to contemporary academic art. These scholarships allowed her to come to Germany, live on full support, and focus entirely on composing. Tatiana has been a scholarship holder at institutions such as the Royaumont Abbey in France and the EBMF International Summer Academy in New York, among others.
Tatiana does not call herself a composer but a multidisciplinary artist. When she was graduating from the Moscow Conservatory, it was truly something remarkable. There are no “alive” sounds in her music.
One day she came to me and said:
“Can I give a concert near the conservatory cafeteria?”
“Why there?” I asked.
“There’s the floor I need. If you slide a chair across it, it makes exactly the sound I’m looking for. I’ve explored every floor in the conservatory — nowhere else has that sound.”
Indeed, Tatiana has an extraordinarily sharp and refined timbral ear. She finds a particular timbre and develops it, creating a unique atmosphere. The effect is absolutely astonishing, and every concert of hers that I have attended has been a success.”
She now lives in Berlin and holds scholarships from various academies and residencies dedicated to contemporary academic art. These scholarships allowed her to come to Germany, live on full support, and focus entirely on composing. Tatiana has been a scholarship holder at institutions such as the Royaumont Abbey in France and the EBMF International Summer Academy in New York, among others.
Tatiana does not call herself a composer but a multidisciplinary artist. When she was graduating from the Moscow Conservatory, it was truly something remarkable. There are no “alive” sounds in her music.
One day she came to me and said:
“Can I give a concert near the conservatory cafeteria?”
“Why there?” I asked.
“There’s the floor I need. If you slide a chair across it, it makes exactly the sound I’m looking for. I’ve explored every floor in the conservatory — nowhere else has that sound.”
Indeed, Tatiana has an extraordinarily sharp and refined timbral ear. She finds a particular timbre and develops it, creating a unique atmosphere. The effect is absolutely astonishing, and every concert of hers that I have attended has been a success.”
ACADEMIC FLESH
#1: Who was your childhood inspiration for writing music and poetry?
Tatiana Gerasimenok:
Arnold Schoenberg — both directly and indirectly.
For music, "A Survivor from Warsaw" and "Pierrot lunaire";
for poetry, Albert Giraud’s "Pierrot lunaire" and Charles Baudelaire.
#2: Who would you be if you weren't a composer?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: A forensic pathologist.
#3: Are your relatives musicians too?
Tatiana Gerasimenok: My relatives come from Belarusian-Polish intelligentsia — doctors, scientists, educators in the exact sciences, and businesspeople with a passion for academic art. Here's an example of my dad’s creativity when he was 18.