Name: “Nomad, Concerto for Piano, 2 Violins with String Orchestra and 2 Percussions” EXCERPT by Onur Türkmen
Duration: 2 min 56 s
Description: “Nomad, Concerto for Piano, 2 Violins with String Orchestra and 2 Percussions” . Soloists: Özcan, Ayşen, Birsen Ulucan, Conductor: Gergely Madaras, Orchestra: Anima Musikae Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Süreyya Opera House, 16 April 2018

Score: https://20d52ddd-4b1c-4e95-b324-99d928b39244.filesusr.com/ugd/597012_25c3e51b14914b4bae5738b1d1a718cf.pdf

Conductor: Orhun Orhon

Flute: Seray Seyhan
Oboe: Ulaş Yurtoğlu
Clarinet in Bb (also Bass Clarinet): Onur Ustabaş
Bassoon: Serkan Alagök
Horn in F: Mustafa Kaplan
Trumpet in C: Onurcan Çağatay
Trombone: Mehmet Ali Baydar
Tuba: Özgür Haran
Harp: Gözde Ece Yavaş Öztürk
Violin 1: Özge Erdem
Violin 2: İlayda Zeynep Köksal
Viola: Ali Başeğmezler
Cello: Mehmet Gökhan Bağcı
Double Bass: Doğukan Pahsa
Percussion: İrem Dekeli, Alican Öztan

Bilkent Concert Hall, Ankara, 2021

Visage (2021) for Large Ensemble

Performed by Science Ficta:

Sydney ZumMallen, bass viol
Loren Ludwig, bass viol
Caroline Nicolas, bass viol
Liam Byrne, bass viol 

Recorded by David Adamcyk
Scandinavia House, New York, March 2022

Program notes:

In Harmonie Universelle, Marin Mersenne writes the following about the viol:

"If one were to judge musical instruments according to their ability to imitate the human voice, and if one were to esteem naturalness as the highest accomplishment, so I believe that one cannot deny the viol the first prize, because it can imitate the human voice in all its modulations, even in its most intimate nuances..."

Indeed, there used to be a tradition of viol writing that particularly underlined the instrument’s perceived likeness to the human voice, among which a popular work being Marin Marais’s Les Voix Humaines. My piece Human Voices (2022), dedicated to the gamba quartet Science Ficta, is meant as a present-day response to this humanistic endeavor.

Acting as a 21st century counterpart to Marais’s Les Voix Humaines, Human Voices aims to question what “naturalness” might encompass in regard to the human voice. In order to liken the ensemble’s sound to the human voice, I 3D printed six human vocal tract models that are each tuned to a different vowel shape (/a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /ə/)[1], and amplified the gamba quartet through these tubes. Therefore, the quartet’s acoustic sound would be physically filtered through these models, imbuing the live performance with a vocal quality.

I did not conceive Human Voices as a singing machine; but rather as a musical experiment in which the listener is continuously invited to ask: “Did I just hear a voice in there?” The music is ultimately intended to function from within the realm of the uncanny, from a liminal zone that borders the human and non-human, or the so-called natural and unnatural. The sudden occurrences of the human sonic image therefore behave as brief transgressions that disturb this distinction. The human voice, a feature that is regarded to be unique to us, becomes reduced to a material construct, thus emphasizing our own material nature in return.

[1] I greatly benefited from Takayuki Arai’s acoustic research for this piece. The 3D models for the tubes /a/, /e/, /i/, and /o/ were downloaded from his website https://splab.net/apd/v100/. I modeled the tubes /u/ and /ə/ myself based on Arai’s work. Many thanks to Takayuki Arai for giving me permission to use his models in my piece.  

Art: Yugo Kohrogi

Human Voices (2022) for amplified viol quartet

Live recording from concert on 28 March 2022 at the Berio-Saal of the Wiener Konzerthaus
Soloist: Nermin Kaygusuz, Kemence
ensemble XXI. jahrhundert
Conductor: Peter Burwik

Recording: ORF

Onur Türkmen: Hat | EXXI | Kaygusuz - Burwik

Performed by Reverberation Percussion trio 
Elman Mecid,  Percussion I 
Juliette Serrié, Percussion II
Fanis Gioles, Percussion III
Bilkent Concert Hall, Ankara - 2022

The Pace Of the Transition

"Nyogtha" for 10.1 multi-channel setup

The Lighted Window, for clarinet and voice

Nina Janßen-Deinzer, Clarinet
Peyee Chen, Voice

Bilkent University Faculty of Music and Performing Arts, Ankara - 2022

The Lighted Window

Nina Janssen-Deinzer, contrabass clarinet
Peyee Chen, voice

24 September, 2022
Bilkent Concert Hall


“A whole world of pain is contained in these words.’ How can it be contained in them? - It is bound up with them. The words are like an acorn from which an oak tree can grow.”
Wittgenstein uses the sentence to exemplify a language phenomenon which is directly pointing the cognitive process that our minds go through while getting meaning out of that. The sentence is depended on individual maps of associations to unfold its semantic content. Otherwise the sentence won’t show where or how “A whole world of pain is contained.”.
The piece illustrates the process of unfolding on the concept of dream. Just as the semantic content of the text used in section I. , sonic world of the piece also goes through the process of unfolding from section I. to II..

Package and Message (2021)for amplified contrabass clarinet and voice

premiere, MIAM, Istanbul, on 13.3.14
Hoca Nasreddin: Nikolai Galen (voice), Robert Reigle (tenor saxophone) & Serkan Şener (kaval)
composition: Onur Türkmen
rough mix

Dilsiz Şeytan (live at MIAM on 13.3.14)

triptych for string quartet
I. there, in the shadows of the evening
II. desires are the flowers of the living
III. annuling, revoking and invalidating

Contemparlando String Quartet
Ellen Jewett, violin
Olgu Kızılay, violin
Alİ Başeğmezler, viola
Gökhan Bağcı, cello

Bilkent Concert Hall, Ankara - 2023

on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/2BXX7Phhh70GtGrDivM6Xk?si=o_ipnq77T66ETs_qd1cV_A

triptych for string quartet

“Nomad, Concerto for Piano, 2 Violins with String Orchestra and 2 Percussions” . Soloists: Özcan, Ayşen, Birsen Ulucan, Conductor: Gergely Madaras, Orchestra: Anima Musikae Chamber Orchestra (Budapest), Süreyya Opera House, 16 April 2018

“Nomad, Concerto for Piano, 2 Violins with String Orchestra and 2 Percussions” EXCERPT

Performed by Oerknal:

Gregory Charette - Conductor
René van Munster - Cello
Daniel Boeke - Bass Clarinet
Susanne Peters - Alto Flute & Piccolo
Jellantsje de Vries - Violin
Christian Smith - Percussion
Sophie Patey - Piano

October 2019, Bilkent Concert Hall

Art: Yugo Kohrogi

“Nomad, Concerto for Piano, 2 Violins with String Orchestra and 2 Percussions” EXCERPT

Onur Türkmen

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