
Chewing on my hand, UK Golders Green,
before the family went to Greece 1972-73.


Hampstead Heath, London, just
returned from Greece.
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Here we are mum, dad and me enjoying
a flower in Golders Green Park, Spring, I am nine months
old, 1971.
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Mother. 1962
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The grave of Shogi Effendi, a
significant figure in the Baha'i Faith, I visited his
grave every year on average while in U.K. London 2003.
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Avenue trees, Paris cemetery 2003.
This avenue leads to the grave of Thomas Breakwell.
Dimitri Tishler was born in London, United Kingdom. My father was studying architecture. My mother was looking after me. They had a top floor flat backing onto Hampstead Heath.
My parents had decided to travel through Europe in a VW van. They spent six months on the road, travelling through Northern and Eastern Europe, and lastly in Greece, where my grandfather was born, in a small village in the Peloponnese mountains called Akrata. We ended up finally on a small island off Corfu called Paxos, where we stayed for a year while my father attempted to finish his thesis.
Moving back to Australia, we lived firstly living in a terrace house in Malvern, Melbourne. Moving longer term to a house in the Dandenong ranges, just outside Melbourne; our house in the forest. My love of nature comes from this time and especially my parents love of gardening. My brother and sisters are born at this time.
The family moved to North Australia, Cairns. This is a time of walking in tropical rain-forests, swimming and sailing on the Great Barrier Reef. I used to fish a lot, catching butterfly fish for the local aquarium.
My parents divorce and my father, brother and I move to New Zealand for three years. This is a both fulfilling but difficult time. I discover I have a rare form of eye cancer. Questions of life and death arise and I look for answers, in the process, I discover the Baha'i Faith.
Back in Australia, my eye is removed in a bid to rid myself of cancer. Again more difficult times here struggling to stay well but my composition starts as I recover. Go back to New Zealand on a photographic and musical journey.
I start writing several solo classical guitar works, nothing of consequence. Start doing design work to pay the bills. Feeling a bit limited in Australia, and in need a change of scene and more opportunities to study music, I move to London.
Arrive in London, where I start writing some serious
compositions for solo guitar,
this takes the next few years. And I begin travelling around
England and Europe.
Start studying composition with Paul Rhys. I complete my guitar works and move onto other instruments. I visit New York again, a year before the world trade centre collapses. It was sad actually, to think many of the people I have passed on my way to and in the restaurant at the top of the Trade centre towers may have passed away a year later.
I visit Paris for the third time, but on this trip I visit
the grave of Thomas Breakwell an early Baha'i who lived in
Paris around the early 1900's and died tragically early. See
photo left; a typically French avenue of trees at the cemetery
where he is buried. I start getting severe headaches in these
years and have to stop design work as the stress of contract
work didn't help, but this gives me a chance to compose more
or less full time.
Started composing for piano and cello, and other small chamber works. Study composition with Alwynne Pritchard. I start writing a novel, A Placeless Sun.
I move back to Australia, my London adventure comes to an end
after 5 years. I continue writing my novel and work on having
compositions played at various locations around the world.
Writing ongoing. I am concentrating on writing the novel "A
Placeless Sun" these last few years. I plan to have the "Shape Series" for Solo clasical
guitar premiered this year in November.
Copyright © Dimitri Tishler
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