Uğurcan Öztekin (b. 1990) is a İstanbul-based composer of orchestral, chamber, and vocal music.
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 First Prize winner of the 2019 Calefax Composers Competition for his piece, "Conference of the Birds: Amsterdam", Öztekin has been selected in numerous competitions such as the Festival Mixtur 2016 Commission Prize, Donaueschinger Musiktage 2017 Next Generation Call for Scores, Atlas Ensemble Composition Competition, Computer Space International Computer Art Forum’s Electronic Music Competition, 11th Pre-Art Composition Competition, and 4th Choral Composition Competition of Turkish Ministry of Culture.
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His music has been performed in Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey and United Kingdom at concerts and festivals such as Donaueschinger Musiktage 2017, Festival Mixtur (Barcelona), Atlas Festival (Amsterdam), Barcelona Modern Festival, Festival Turbulences Sonores (Montpellier), Musica Electronica Nova (Wroclaw), International Composers Seminar in St. Petersburg Closing Concert (2017), ME_MMIX18 Festival Pirineus-Mediterrània Modern (Mallorca), Computer Space Computer Arts Forum (Sofia), Baroquestock Festival (London), Festival Unicum (Ljubljana) and Calgary New Music Festival.
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Öztekin’s works have been performed by leading ensembles such as Ensemble Airborne Extended, Atlas Ensemble, Barcelona Modern Ensemble, Ensemble Cairn, Calefax Reed Quintet, Ensemble Diagonal, Hezarfen Ensemble, Molot Ensemble, Pre-Art Soloists, and Semplice Quartet.​

What do you miss in Istanbul?
A collective project made by MIAM Sonic Collective

Participate in 'Something is missing'
'Something is missing' is a collaborative multimedia / sound art exhibition and concert that addresses a simple question: In our public and personal space, in our surroundings and everyday lives, what is missing, or what and whom do we miss? 
We all miss things - people, things, places, sounds, landscapes, images, stories, experiences. We invite you to take part in 'SomethingIsMissing' by sending us the things you miss: Images, pictures, drawings, texts, videos, music, songs, sound samples, voice and recorded text, or any other representation you can find of what you miss.The material can be made by you or by others.

How?
You can use our upload form in contact page.
http://somethingismissing.weebly.com/contact.html

Composer, Assoc. Professor at ITU Turkish Music State Conservatory Composition Department

How can form  evolve under a nowadays psychological framework? Is it more difficult to compose long or short pieces and is there any morality in it that serves as a proof of the composer’s skills? My musical interests are focused on a personal composition method that started from my late integrated masters years in Thessaloniki and which eventually was the subject of my PhD research in York. It used to serve as a preliminary stage for an instrumental composition; however, since 2017 the “Selective Subtraction of tone and rhythmic material” composition technique serves as a tool to create but mostly to sculpt the tone and rhythmic material of the instruments that will interweave with the electronics. As its name signifies it is based on a subtractionprocess that gives a certain amount of material. This material forms the basis for an evolutionary process where finally, all these elements are combined in order to give the final piece. Under the scope of electronics it incorporates computational methods like Csound software, Ableton Live and MaxMasp (Sound Synthesis private patch library) in the direction of finding new ways of pattern development and thus evolution of the form.

For examples of the Selective Subtraction of tone and rhythmic material” composition technique enter here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/alutmo3h0ue30ec/AAC-LmZExoUMBr6lVgabz1YOa?dl=0

Sound Synthesis private maxmsp library: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AvxYMmv9_S-sgfRtKB-Vq4t2l1PE_g?e=o8BN6A 

PhD thesis: http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/20111/
Website: https://manolisekmektsoglousite.wordpress.com/
email: ekmektsoglou8@gmail.com 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Manolis Ekmektsoglou was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. He studied composition at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, with Dimitri Papageorgiou and in the University of York, UK (PhD) with Thomas Simaku. He also spent a year at Hannover Musikhochschule studying acoustic and electronic music with Joachim Heintz, Gordon Williamson and Ming Tsao. He is an Assistant Professor of Instrumental and Electronic/Computer music Composition at İTÜ, Center for Advanced Study in Music (M.I.A.M.).

Manolis participated in the “Labor Beethoven 2017-2020” project, funded and organized by the Berlin Academy of the Arts. He received the third prize in the Karol Szymanowski composition competition 2023 with the work Motion, in Two, for solo violin.

His pieces have been performed by many ensembles in several festivals in many countries such as Greece (OutHear Week, DissonArt ensemble, Off Borders Festival), Germany (Neues Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, Earth, Sky, Space festival, Hitzacker 2018), Italy (Soundiff project), Turkey (MIAM 20 year-Gala), Iran (Reza Korourian Awards electroacoustic music festival 2017), Hong Kong (AMGA ensemble) Spain (Mixtur festival 2016), Austria (NAMES ensemble, Synaesthesis ensemble, Crossroads festival, KUG), the UK (Resonance FM 104.4, Kinetic nights festival, Manchester, Gallois trio, Diotima Quartet, Psappha ensemble, Resonance FM, RNM Call 2022), France (Viberation#2, Réseau inDREAM Network), the USA (MISE-EN festival, NYCEMF, Impulse festival 2024), Argentina (Atemporánea festival 2022), Romania (EELISA 1st conference, 2023) and Switzerland (UMS n’ JIP).

An upcoming publication by Manolis in the MIT Computer Music Journal (Volume 48, Issue 4) explores the impact of emerging AI technologies on music composition and performance. It also proposes an alternative approach to generating textural and timbral transformations in mixed-media composition through the use of a dynamically trained neuron.

Musical Practices in the Contemporary World is his first book, where he tries to sum up what has happened in New Music after the 70s, making meaningful connections with the past and providing suggestions from contemporary repertoire. 


For a detailed CV follow this link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ph47cs1c2geuni87r4yhp/CV.pdf?rlkey=eejehdl2u0fc9kgdxcenlhsij&st=6rjxtt9z&dl=0

Est. 2010. 
Still not popular.
Working on it.

Anahita Abbasi’s music (Iranian-born/world citizen) has been described as “a dizzyingly sophisticated reverie, colorful and energetic. It embodies tremendous timbral exploration and multilayered performance gestures”… (Classical Voice America and A Cunning plan). 

According to Guardian …”She takes even a more radical line with creating dense and pulsing textures”… “Her music has the capacity to immerse the hall into a dark multichannel throat and hissing” … (Bachtrack) 

Volkskrant describes … “the Iranian Anahita Abbasi, shows herself to be a composer with guts in the two-year-old Intertwined Distances Alienating whistling noises and furious fistfights with the keyboard, alternated with delicate strings, lead to a theatrical listening experience” …

Ernst. M Binder also writes: …“As it is also vivid from the titles of her works such as Dialogues, Situations, Distorted Attitudes, she investigates and gesticulate thoughts and emotions. It is manifestation/ observation of a scene or multiple scenes, which occur simultaneously. She has the tendency to take us with her music on a mystical, puzzling journey and leave us within our thoughts, to find out the “ending” ourselves”… 

About her piece for Mahan Esfahani Boulezian Blogspot writes: …” There was, without doubt, an extraordinarily inventive musical imagination at work, but it was never merely invention: it was a sonic and instrumental drama that seemed somehow to summarise, to extend, and quite properly to question many of the tendencies we had heard so far”…

Anahita Abbasi’s works explore the "organic physicality of sound" (Sound Barrier). Each of her works grows out of a fascination with a specific sound and its distinctive tonal color.  

Abbasi’s music has been commissioned and performed worldwide by renowned musicians, including Mahan Esfahani, Steven Schick, Ilan Volkov, Vimbayi Kaziboni, Jack Adler, Sergej Tchirkov, Ensemble Modern, International Contemporary Ensemble, Meitar Ensemble, Der gelbe Klang, Radio France, EBU, Zaafran Ensemble, Contrechamps, Contemporary Chamber Orchestra Elbe, Broken Frames Syndicate, Kommas Ensemble, TAK Ensemble, Seattle Modern Orchestra, Ume Duo, Long Beach Opera, Quatuor Diotima, Mivos Quartet, Argonaut Quartet, Thin Edge, neuverBand, Omnibus Ensemble, Schallfeld Ensemble, and others. 
 
Her works have been featured internationally at festivals such as Darmstädter Musiktage, Akademie der Künste Berlin, Acht Brücken Festival, Radialsystem, Beethovenfest Bonn, Podium Esslingen, Tritonus Festival, Elbphilharmonie (Germany), IRCAM - Manifeste Academy, Présences Festival, Festival Ensemble  (France), Time of Music (Finland), BIFEM (Australia), Klangspuren Schwaz, Impuls Festival (Austria)  Sound State Festival (Southbank Centre, London), Tectonics (Glasgow),Klang Festival (Copenhagen), Contempuls (Prague), Tongyeong International Music Festival (Korea), Musica Polonica Nova (Poland), Atlas Festival, Grachten Festival (Netherlands), Borealis Festival (Norway), Festival Archipel (Geneva), Gaia (Tel Aviv), Mostly Mozart Festival, Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, The Kitchen, Roulette, National Sawdust, Time Spans (USA), and many others. 

Ms. Abbasi has received numerous awards, including a work-scholarship from the Experimental studio of SWR, Freiburg (2014), a Morton Gould ASCAP Young Composers Award (2015), a nomination for "Composers of Our Time" (2017), the Composition Prize of the Acht Brücken Festival (2020), the German Record Critics’ Prize 2020 (Mahan Esfahani’s album MUSIQUE?), and the New Music USA creator’s fund award (2025). In 2022, she was awarded the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship in Italy, a Ucross Foundation Residency in Wyoming, and a three-year residency at the Fondation Singer-Polignac in Paris. She is also one of the recipients of the 2024 Music Prize from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, recognized by Georges Aperghis. In 2025 she received the New Music USA’s creator's fund for her project “Thawing Tides”.  

In addition to being a founding member of the Schallfeld Ensemble (Austria, 2013), she is also a founding member of the Iranian Female Composers Association (IFCA, USA, 2017). Anahita Abbasi studied composition with Beat Furrer and Pierluigi Billone at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG) in Austria and worked closely with Georges Aperghis, Franck Bedrossian, and Philippe Leroux. In 2014, she moved to the USA to pursue a PhD in composition with Rand Steiger at UC San Diego. 

Currently, Anahita Abbasi lives in Flensburg, and Paris, where she holds a three-year residency at the Fondation Singer-Polignac (Paris, France). Her recent projects include commissioned works for Ensemble Modern and Jack Adler, both premiered at the Darmstädter Musiktage in 2023.  Her upcoming projects include a commission for solo percussion (USA) as well as a commission from Radio France for an ensemble piece for Philharmonie de Radio France for the opening night of Présences Festival (2026).

Theodoros Lotis studied the guitar, flute, music analysis, electroacoustic composition and Fine Arts in Greece, Belgium and the UK. His music has been performed at festivals and conferences in Europe, Australia, America and Asia, and has received a number of awards and distinctions at Bourges, Sculpted Sound Composers Competition, Metamorphoses, Luigi Russolo, CIMESP and and Jeu de temps / Times Play. He was awarded the first prize at the Concours International de Spatialisation pour l’Interprétation des Ouevres Acousmatiques by Musiques et Recherches, in Brussels. He has done commissioned work for Musiques et Recherches (Belgium, 1997, 2000, 2014), Sculpted Sound Composers Competition (UK, 2000), Amici della Musica di Cagliari (Italy, 2001), the festival Visiones Sonoras (Mexico, 2007), the clarinetist Esther Lamneck and many dance and theatre companies. 
He has completed a Ph.D. in Music at the City University, London, with Denis Smalley, thanks to grants from the British Academy (Arts and Humanities Research Board), and the Foundation A.S. Onassis. 
Theodoros Lotis has been teaching electroacoustic composition and analysis at Goldsmiths College, University of London, the Technological and Educational Institute of Crete, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and Universities in Europe and America as invited composer. He is Assistant Professor at the Ionian University, Corfu, Greece. He is founding member of the Hellenic Electroacoustic Music Composers Association (HELMCA) and the Hellenic Society for Acoustic Ecology. His music has been released by Empreintes Digitales (https://www.electrocd.com/en/album/2357/Theodore_Lotis/Époque_de_l_eau).

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