Ilkim Tongur, Ph. D. is a composer and a choir conductor. She composed for solo instruments, chamber music, orchestra and electroacoustic medium. Her music has been performed in the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Japan and Turkey. She is coming from an artistic family including composers, dancers, instrumentalists, and painters. She started her piano education at the age of six with her mother and continued her full-time professional musicianship education in State conservatory at the age of eleven. She holds a composition/conducting undergraduate and a master’s degrees from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. And a composition master’s degree from the University of Manitoba where she earned Orff certificate and got piano pedagogy with Edmund Dawe. She taught basic skills, theory and choir in Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, as well as composition and piano in University of Manitoba Preparatory Studies. She also taught composition and musicianship courses at the University of Calgary. She recently completed her Ph.D. in composition at the University of Calgary where she studied under Allan Bell. She had teaching experience over twenty-five years and worked with students between the ages of 3 and 74. She composed three beginning books for piano and developed her own teaching system which allows students to learn faster without sacrificing fun and maintaining the crucial technical development at the same time. Dr. Tongur currently teaches piano, theory and composition lessons in Tongur Music Studio, that she co-founded in 2013 with Babur Tongur, who teaches violin and piano in the same studio.