Yulianiya (Dzianisava)

Iryna (Yulianiya) Dzianisava
b. 1957. Belarusian church composer, choir director, musicologist, teacher, and author of liturgical chants.

1957
Born in Minsk. Her father was an engineer; her mother held a doctoral degree in agricultural sciences.

1980
Graduated from the theory and composition faculty of the Leningrad State Conservatory as a musicologist, in the class of Professor T. S. Bershadskaya.
Taught solfeggio and harmony for 27 years at the College of the Belarusian Academy of Music. Mother of three children, two of whom are musicians.

1992
Began singing in a church choir.

1997–2007
Choir director of the First Choir of the Minsk Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul.
Awarded the medal of St Cyril of Turaw.

2007
Joined the St Elisabeth Convent in Minsk and was soon appointed senior choir director. She led the festal choir and the sisters’ choir.

3 January 2011
Tonsured a nun by Metropolitan Philaret (Vakhromeyev) under the monastic name Yulianiya.

Early April 2020
Against the backdrop of the coronavirus epidemic and the monastery’s denial of COVID-19, she took the difficult decision to send the choir into self-isolation.

29 April 2020
Hospitalised with COVID and pneumonia.

May 2021
Left the St Elisabeth Convent and departed from monastic life.
The professional (non-monastic) choir also left the convent together with her.

Iryna Denisova is the author of around 200 church chants, arrangements, and harmonisations. A printed score collection of her works, Pienije vsiumilennoye, has been published, and during her monastic period four further volumes of her Complete Collection of Chants appeared. Over the years more than 20 discs have been released featuring recordings of her choirs (the Festal and the monastic).

In 2006 a video film The Choir Director was made about her, and in 2010 a documentary, The Nun. In 2010 her book Two Stories About Love was published.

For service to the cause of the spiritual renewal of the Fatherland, awarded the medal “For Merit” (2014). For diligent labours for the glory of the Holy Church, awarded the medal of St Athanasius, Patriarch of Constantinople and Wonderworker of Kharkov (2017). Laureate of the Polish Prince Constantine Ostrogski Prize (2017).