A deeply affecting work. It reminded me of the calmness of the Tibetan plains and the universal serenity of the mountains.

(Water Lilies Floating)

		

			water 

						lilies
            will
			air				wait		
air

				    iris
								    air			
	east        
      			             wars		   
							water
		
		teals
							west
				wisteria  
						trees
  		write						air
					water			
		
			will-						    lilies
  laws
						ows swirl

	aisle				
				air

								reels

(Water Lilies Floating)

Bilkent Youth Symphony orchestra, conducted by Isin Metin. BeethovenFest, 2014, Bonn.

Tableaux Vivants d'une Resistance (for orchestra)

Requiem pour une Terre Perdue (for ensemble)

Recorded by Lydian Quartet

I – NODE: Tuning Knot  00:00-03:22
II – Recently Found Fragments: Chant Loop  03:28-11:38
III – Striding Rituals: Nocturnal Gatherings for Mass Wooing  11:44-17:30
III.5 or 5.IV – Optional habits  17:43-18:40
IV – CODEX: I know I know this (…almost remembering…)  18:44-25:04
V – Turn the Corner: Post-Rapture Celebration  25:08-28:04
VI - NODE: Ex nihilo…In nihil [-for Mary Ruth-]  28:05-35:30

Treatises for an Unrecovered Past is dedicated to the Lydian String Quartet and was composed as part of their Composition Commission Award, which was made possible by the generosity and vision of Marjorie B. and Martin Cohn. It was composed in San Francisco and Cambridge and is 35 minutes long.

Treatises for an Unrecovered Past (2013-14/rev. 2017) for string quartet

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Violoncello - Eric-Maria Coutier
Double Bass - Nicolas Crosse
Percussion - Victor Hanna

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters) (2017)

Cornell Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Chris Kim
Live performance, March 5, 2017, Cornell University Bailey Hall

Strange Sounds and Explosions Worldwide (2015-16) for orchestra

for amplified recorder quartet

performed by Istanbul Composers Collective at Kadıköy Süreyya Opera House, İstanbul on April 9th, 2017.

Kopfkino I (2017)

for String Quartet, Gamelan Ensemble, Readymade objects and Olfaction

This work includes multiple meaning levels of abstract thinking, language, cultural practices, and synthesis of perceptive modes. It is technically surrounded with various principles of sound illusions and cyclic phenomena; many of these compositional decisions are strongly associated with the problematics of violence and trauma, as well as gender and power relations. It elaborates feelings of being haunted by the specters of the past, the future, and the moment, of being haunted by the Cin, a particular other-than-human person in central Anatolian culture.

Düşük also comes with a spectral manifestation in its text. Masculine oppression and violence to women is an undertone. In what extent? This manifestation is deeply connected to the Oedipal Triangle and desire innate in musical creation and material properties of imagining with sound, its expression. I do not only engage with Deleuze and Guattari's robust theory on Freud's; my focus is the binary, the Oedipus Trilogy, the concept of oracle, destiny, leading to unbendable binaries of the human social constructs, shaping the inner musical drama of Fallen (Dusuk). Temporality is nonlinear in the oracle, make, made, and made by it. This is why the cognitive illusions take over the behaviors that are defined in each moment of expression of this piece. Harmony is multidimensional and multidirectional, although keeps the drama in a linear flow, as in the classic tragedy that is haunted by the cultural forms of ghosts, this time the other-than-humans, cins.

.Düş.ük (Fallen-Gamelan and String Quartet version)

It is difficult to think of a song, any song, without the words.

Consider all the ways songs are made – words first and then music, music first and then words, the haphazard fusing of sound and action given speech, the democratized & collective assembly of a rally cry given melody, the purposeful need to make something created solely to be remembered so one “knows” they need to buy that product while at the store or they “must” vote for that candidate while at the polls or they “will” thank their god while at the church.

Songs occupy so many parts of our being. They are remarkable devices for connecting the written or the spoken with the act of musicking – to sing; to music a story, to song an emotion or remember a memory or be inspire to do something you hadn’t considered doing only moments earlier. So to take away the words of a song is a surgical act that assumes the music will survive without the text; that the message is somehow still intact even though it is no longer being told with the word and only with the sound.

It is fitting that the opening of Mitchell’s Blue is:

“Songs are like tattoos
You know I've been to sea before
Crown and anchor me
Or let me sail away
Hey Blue
And there is a song for you”

These remixes are works that sail away from the original song, but they definitely started out at the port of the song. Perhaps THAT is the joy of the remix – it honors the port of departure as the most important location in the journey. It’s not about where you are going; it’s about where you started from.

-- 

Hildegard was a polymath; a poet, a doctor, a musician, a theologian, a philosopher, an artist and a leader. Her text to the Ave Maria is original poetry and does not use the traditional liturgical texts. While liturgical in nature, her version is clearly centering a very active role for Mary – not just the mother of Jesus, but healer, creator, builder, warrior, leader.

“Hail Mary, 
O authoress of life, 
rebuilding up salvation’s health, 
for death you have disturbed, 
that serpent crushed 
to whom Eve raised herself, 
her neck outstretched 
with puffed-up pride.”

Ave for alto flute, viola & cello, a remix after Hildegard von Bingen (2020)

Razor Blades was commissioned and premiered by Nodus Ensemble of the Bilkent University Music Department in Bilkent New Music Days 2013 under the direction of conductor Orhun Orhon.

Nodus Ensemble:

Cem Önertürk: Flute
Cem Güngör: Bass Trombone
Ceren Baran: Guitar
Gamze Kırtıl: Piano
Nazlı Avcı: Violin
Gözde Yaşar: Violoncello


.Düş.ük (Fallen-Gamelan and String Quartet version)

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Torumtay Altan | Composer

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