Tamila Jani-zade, Ph.D. in Art History, associate professor of the Musicology Department of the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music, graduated from the Gnessin State Musical & Pedagogical Institute. The subject of her Ph.D. dissertation “Azerbaijani Mughams: On the Question of Musical Thinking in the “Maqamat” Art” set the priorities in research interests of the author studying extra-European music cultures. Therefore, her pedagogical work at the Gnessin Russian Academy of Music started with development of programs for new courses for musicologists: Ethnomusicology and Music Cultures of Nations of the World, with working on and creating training audio and video aids.

Her monograph “Music Culture of Russian Turkestan” is the outcome of her years-long work at the Glinka State Museum of Musical Culture. The monograph is based on the materials of the music and ethnographic collection compiled by Avgust Eikhgorn, a military bandmaster working in Tashkent (1870-1883). It is written in the form of a catalog-research and scheduled for publication in 2013.

Since 1989 Tamila Jani-zade has been a member of the International Council for Traditional Music, UNESCO and an active participant of its multinational research groups studying “maqāma”; folk music instruments; music iconography; historical and ethnographic sources. Tamila Jani-zade is a regular participant of seminars and international scientific conferences on oriental studies, which are held in Russia and in other countries; she was one of the organizers of the Third International Musicological Symposium in Samarkand (1987).

Tamila Jani-zade is the author of numerous publications and research articles: “Sufism in the Context of Muslim Culture”, “Typology of “Lutes” in the Culture of the Islamic Civilization”, “The Arabic Oud in the Music Culture of the Islamic Civilization”, “The Personality and Canon in Azerbaijani Mughams”, “Hal-Maqam” as the Concept of the “Maqamat” Art”, “The Ethnical Factor in the Culture of the Islamic Civilization”, “On the Turkic Musical Sub-Culture in Islam”, “Music Culture in the Islamic and Christian Context” and many others. A number of works and articles were published not only in Russia, but also in other countries: Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Holland, USA, Iran, Jordan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan; most of them are dedicated to music of Azerbaijan, Iran and Central Asia. At the moment, Tamila Jani-zade is finishing her work on the monograph “Music of the Islamic Civilization: Medieval Musical Traditions of the Arabs, Iranians and Turkic Speaking Nations”.

Irina Chudinova graduated from Saint Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatoire as a composer. She defended a PhD dissertation on the subject “Church Music Culture of Saint Petersburg”.

Irina Chudinova worked as a teacher of theory and history of music at the Glinka Choir Capella of Saint Petersburg, then as a lecturer at Saint Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatoire (a specialist course of history and theory of church music). Currently I. Chudinova is a senior researcher at the Russian Institute for the History of the Arts.

Her research interests are music in church statute, Greek-Slavic connections in the music of monasteries, listening and sound creation in Orthodox ascetics. Irina Chudinova is the author of two monographs: “Time of Voicelessness: Music in Monastery Statute” (2004) and “Singing, Bells, the Ritual: Topography of Church Music Culture in Saint Petersburg” (1994), and of over 50 articles.