Klasik Keyifler Müzik DerneÄŸi - FevzipaÅŸa Mahallesi, Çay Kenarı Sokak, No: 151, Merkez Çanakkale - music@klasikkeyifler.org +90 532 614 4955
Putting the KK Composers Cauldron
into Türkiye’s Festivals
Open Call 2024
with the friendly support of
Selected Composers
June 21st AIMA Concert
Born in 2003 in Istanbul, Orkay Pazarcı is an Istanbul-based composer of contemporary music.
Pazarcı's works depict serene atmospheres that reflect the harmony between nature-related elements and spiritualism. His works present a monolithic musical narrative with insistent figures, repetitive lines and primitive ornamentation, while also incorporating ancient references that blend enigmatic elements and the essence of savagery.
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The composer, whose music ‘Deluge’ was performed by Mirko Jevtović in the Schallfeld Ensemble in May 2023, started his musical career by studying classical guitar in his primary school years, and after his guitar education, he studied clarinet in high school with Elçin Çınar Selamet. Since 2022, he has been continuing his composition studies with UÄŸurcan Öztekin. In addition to his education, he studied with Stefano Gervasoni in the composition workshops he attended.
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1982
Composed for the Hoppa Project String Quartet, ‘1982’ is a musical collage referring to the post-coup period of the 80s in Turkey. Composed of anonymous folk melodies, the piece reflects the uncertainty and volatile life of the period, depicting the atmosphere of the moment when radio became free again. Modelled on Salvatore Sciarrino's window form, ‘1982’ creates a contrast between folk melodies featuring the parlando technique, with its structure of flajole glissandos and trills, as if changing the channel on the radio. While this structure reflects the complex mood and multi-layered structure of the period, it also presents a musical narrative in which shifting aural soundscapes intertwine.
Orkay Pazarcı
1982
Can Bilir
Fallen Fragments
As a composer, guitarist, and researcher, Can Bilir's music is multifaceted. His interdisciplinary work includes contemporary soundscapes, sound production and design. His works have been performed widely in the USA, Europe, West Asia, and Southeast Asia. He has received commissions from Grammy award-winning and nominated musicians. As a MusMa composer, he has participated in European festivals with I Solisti del Vento and has produced works for numerous projects.
Dr. Bilir completed his doctoral studies at Cornell University in 2019, where he worked as a lecturer, assistant conductor of the Cornell Symphony Orchestra, assistant in the Theory Department, and assistant at the Cornell Center for Electroacoustic Music. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for his graduate studies in the USA. His work took its present form as a result of the new music theory programme at Harvard University, IRCAM/Eastman School of Music in Paris, and his own research in France and Germany. Today, he performs on electric guitar and nylon string guitar with self-made instruments and ready-made objects, and is interested in experimental music, rock, and partimenti.

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Fallen Fragments
Inspired by the Oedipus myth, Fallen Fragment explores the darkest recesses of the human psyche, where identity and reality are distorted. Alternating between tender moments of introspection and violent outbursts, the music reflects the protagonist's desperate quest to reconcile his shattered identity. In Fallen Fragment, Can Bilir invites listeners to confront the blurred lines between reality and illusion and the fragmented nature of human identity. Fallen Fragment is a haunting and introspective work for string quartet based on Can Bilir's acclaimed composition Fallen (Low), and represents Can's aesthetic mindset informed by his life experiences as an artist in New York and Boston, from his time at Cornell and Harvard to 2019. The original long version of Fallen was recognised as one of the top fifteen most used scores globally, published in the UCLA Contemporary Music Score Collection, the largest repository of contemporary music. Surrounded by various principles of sound illusions and principles of sound directionality across the spectrum, many of these compositional decisions are strongly related to violence and trauma as well as social problematics of gender and power relations. Fallen Fragment distils the essence of the original piece, weaving a sonic tapestry that explores the complexities of identity and the Oedipal complex in a short arc. Utilising many sophisticated auditory illusions as well as processes such as harmonic glissandi, the piece creates an eerie sense of slipping and falling, evoking a sense of losing one's grip on reality and canonical continuity, the intertwined sounds symbolising the inevitable cycle of fate and one's futile attempts to break free.
Open Call for new scores
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Putting the KK Composers Cauldron into Türkiye’s Festivals
6 New Chamber works influenced by the concept of ‘Parlando’
Eligibility: Turkish composers
Deadline for application: April 15, 2024
with selection notification April 18th
Application requirements: 2 different scores and recordings of recent works and short biography.Please indicate your desired instrumentation and festival. All new works will be premiered in the selected festival programs, and subsequently recorded (video is not provided).
Instrumentation and deadlines- Each work should be approximately 5 minutes:
String Quartet @ Ayvalik Festival; 2 pieces Concert June 21st. Scores due May 23th. Revisions of the score will be allowed until an August recording date (because this May deadline is very soon).
Hoppa Project String Quartet
Violins: Ellen Jewett, Ceren TürkmenoÄŸlu
Viola: Laura Krentzman
Cello: Gözde YaÅŸar
Wind Quintet @ Adana Festival; 2 pieces
Concert September.26th
Scores due August 1
Anadolu Nefesli BeÅŸlisi
Cem Önertürk (flute), Ufuk Soygürbüz (oboe), Kıvanç Fındıklı (clarinet, Ozan Evruk (bassoon) ve Hüseyin Uçar (horn)
Troya Trio @ Çanakkale Bienale; 2 pieces Concert first week of October, Scores due August 1
Troia Trio
Violin, Eda Delikçi
Piano, Senem Zeynep Ercan
Horn, Koray Ay
With the friendly support of the EV Siemens Foundation, Klasik Keyifler’s contemporary music projects for 2024 are focused around the concept of ‘Parlando’ and programs will feature chamber music with voice and text. This title is a term commonly used in musical scores to indicate a declamatory or recitativo style of speaking and singing. The word is more recently used in opera between the arias or songs in order to narrate the story, although this kind of singing/ narration has been transferred orally by bards and storytellers from times unknown. This term was also used by Béla Bartók, as one of his 2 main designations for rhythms and folk songs in his book “Turkish Folk Music from Asia Minor”. This book contains detailed musical transcriptions and also recounts his travels in Anatolia near Adana and Osmaniye in 1936. He and his musical guide in Türkiye, Ahmet Adnan Saygun (alongside the young composers Bartók described as ‘observers’ Necil Kazim Akses and Ulvi Cemal Erkin) shared the twin passions of preserving and archiving traditional and timeless folk songs, and also transforming this material into their individual compositions.
Inspired by these legendary composers who were also pioneers in the early field of ethnomusicology, KK will provide the platform for a number of new compositions scored for singer/narrator and chamber ensemble to be premiered.
Selected composers are free to write according to their concept of ‘parlando’ and/or the relevance of Bartok at the intersection of contemporary practices and folk traditions in Türkiye. If used, text can be integrated into the score and spoken by the performers or with electronics. KK can provide a narrator but unfortunately KK does not have the budget for trained singers. All pieces will be premiered in the festivals. The audio recordings will be carried out separately in consultation with composers.
Sept. 20th, Çanakkale Bienale
Eren Arın
Sonat
Mustafa Eren Arın studied Composition and Turkish Makam Music Composition
with Emin SabitoÄŸlu, Mutlu Torun, Selahaddin Ä°çli, Yavuz Özüstün and Ali Eral in the composition department of ITU Turkish Music State Conservatory, which he started in 1997 and graduated in 2003. While he was pursuing his Master's
Degree in Theory at ITU Music Advanced Research Center (MIAM) between 2003
and 2007, he continued his composition studies with teachers such as Kamran
Ä°nce, Michael Ellison and Ruben Latour at the same institution. He graduated
from ITU Social Sciences Musicology and Music Theory Doctoral Program in
2014, to which he was accepted in 2008. In 2009, he went to the Estonian Music
Academy for 5 months as part of a student exchange program to study
composition with composer Toivo Tulev who is of the leading representatives of
Baltic Contemporary Music, and during these studies and in the following years,
the composer's music turned towards a style that can be roughly described as
"mystical expressionism". Arın's music is based on the "taksim" form, which
represents the improvisational performance tradition of Turkish Makam Music, as its compositional essence. In his works, the composer investigates the timbral possibilities of today's music, based on the highly flexible time/space fiction of the taksim form.
Arın's works have been performed by his wife, ney player Ayça Arın, and other
musicians/music ensembles in various international/domestic academic and
artistic events, and he currently serves as a faculty member in the Department of
Composition and Orchestral Conducting at Kocaeli University State Conservatory,
Department of Music. The composer's works are included in the babelscores
catalogue. The composer is an active member of Besomder and klank.ist (a
collective of Istanbul-based composers).
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Program Notes are coming soon
Amir Nabizad
Atila
Amir Nabizad was born in Urmia, Iran in 1991.
After graduating from Urmia Fine Arts High School, he worked as a piano teacher for 10 years. He studied composition, piano and piano technician in Tehran and Azerbaijan.
In 2020, he won the Department of Composition and Orchestra Conducting at Maltepe University Conservatory. He is currently studying in the 4th year in this department.
Participated Festivals
Kk.composing cauldron 2023
Journey of Sound Festival 2023
Journey of Sound Festival 2024
He was accepted to the Duvertlandini Festival in 2023 and 2024 but could not attend due to visa problems.
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Program Notes are coming soon
Sept. 26th, Adana Festival
Mesruh SavaÅŸ
Gustav
Turkish composer, Mesruh SavaÅŸ was born in Bulgaria. He began his musical studies with piano lessons. After moving to Turkey, he studied composition at Bilkent University in Ankara in the class of Işın Metin. He also attended master classes with Giya Kancheli, Odette Gartenlaub, and others. His Two Movements for Orchestra (2004) which was awarded a prize at “5th Eczacıbaşı National Composition Competition” marked a turning point in his career as a composer and helped him make a name among young Turkish composers.
Later he studied composition at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University State Conservatory in Ä°stanbul and graduated from the class of Hasan Uçarsu in 2007. In 2018 the composer was awarded a Professor title for his academic and artistic studies.
Echoes of Oriental, Turkish, and Bulgarian folk music can all be detected simultaneously in SavaÅŸ’s compositions. The composer, currently a full–time professor at Ä°stanbul University State Conservatory also works in the fields of electronic and electro acoustic music.
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Gustav
This work, composed for woodwind quintet, is based on the narration of Andersen's fairy tale ‘The Child and the Shadow’. However, the purpose of my explanation here is not to make the abstract music more clearly understandable, but rather to convey the dramatic and striking reality of the narrative through music. Just as this music provokes the composer to reveal his shadow sides during the creation process, it also aims to confront the musicians and listeners who perform it with the sides they do not want to face.
For this purpose, musicians are asked to be narrators and actors at the same time. In addition, the musicians are expected to make the listeners believe that what is being told is not a fairy tale, but a reality within their own stage and time fictions.
The disturbingly ordinary but memorable rhythmic structure presented at the beginning of the piece and the small intervals within this rhythmic structure describe the basis of the relationship between the individual and his shadow.
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Yunus Gencer
Masalımtrak
Yunus Gencer continues to work as a composer, writer and academic. He studied at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, The Royal Northern College of Music (United Kingdom) and The University of Memphis (United States) with esteemed composers and academics such as Volkan Barut, Adam Gorb, Özkan Manav, Gary Carpenter, Hasan Uçarsu, Kamran Ä°nce and John Baur, and received his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees. His works have been performed on various stages in Istanbul, Essen, London, Boston and Memphis. In 2015, he received the Smit Young Composer Award in Memphis and composed music for Gedik Sanat's Wordless Diaries (2020) and Quarantine States (2021) projects. His Clarinet Concerto (2023), commissioned by Gedik Sanat, was performed at the Süreyya Opera. Gencer composes for many different ensembles with a culturally and historically eclectic and embracing musical language. He has also published several books, including Dance Music in the Baroque I - II, Solfege with Interactive Accompaniment I and Harmony Education with Saygun's Approach, as well as a research article titled ‘Making Sense of Madrigal Comedy, the Precursor of Opera’. Gencer has been lecturing on ear training, piano, music history, music theory, composition and form analysis since 2007. Since 2020, he has been working as a doctoral lecturer at MSGSÜ Istanbul State Conservatory and received the title of associate professor in 2023. He is currently holding this position.
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Program Notes are coming soon