Five Preludes for solo cello (2013) 
Cello: Eric-Maria Couturier

Tuzun - 5 Preludes - Couturier

The pain they left behind /melted into thin air /and became the baseless fabric of /what we call ourselves today.
for flute, clarinet, piano, violin and violoncello 
Premiered by Oerknal Ensemble June 16, 2017 at Delian Academy for New Music, Mykonos-Greece

The Pain They Left Behind...(2013-2017)

Ouverture: An Anacrusis for Opera
for large ensemble (2009)

This work is the first part of a five‐piece cycle based on Turkish poet Enis Batur’s Opera. Later versions can have additional electronic and vocal parts.
This version of Ouverture: An Anacrusis for Opera is premiered by ALEA III, conducted by Theodore Antoniou, at the TSAI Performance Center on March 23, 2009

Ouverture: An Anacrusis for Opera  for large ensemble (2009)

Metathesis (2006)
for two contrebasses, one performer
Metathesis (2006) is an electroacoustic composition by Tolga Tüzün, composed at IRCAM during Cursus 2005-2006. 

Watch the video at: http://vimeo.com/5892498#at=0

Metathesis (2006)

Imaginary Neighborhoods of Athens (2018)

When I was asked by Onassis Cultural Center to write a piece on city center soundscapes of Athens, the immediate thought was to record particular soundscapes of various neighborhoods and to use them as a model to generate musical parameters. 

This idea contained a lot of questions in itself: How does one define a neighborhood? What defines a neighborhood? What are our preconceived and/or misconceived sets of thought, when we even attempt to do so? 

In mathematics, the set of points whose distance from a given point is less than (or less than or equal to) some value constitutes a neighborhood. But when it comes to a city, there are various parameters that make up a neighborhood. One takes in all the aspects, i.e., geographical, social, economical, political, visual, sonic and so on, to have an image of a neighborhood. 

When it comes to soundscapes, it is even harder to leave out some sounds, to include others to set up a model for composition. When I had to make a choice, I have realized that we already make deliberate choices about what to listen to in a soundscape; there are sounds we tend not to hear, there are some we favor over others, some we don’t like. So I choose the meat market soundscape as a driving force, as a model for my composition. The reasons are many but here are some of them:
  
The meat market (also the fish market) forms a sonic system, an acoustic ecology where one hears a sonic dispersion, diversion, collision of forces and motions. Those forces and motions transmitted through the voices of merchants into a constant energy flow via amplitudes and timbres that are omnipresent in that specific space. 

It is an acoustic economy of offer, presence, survival, attraction and persistence. An emergent system of survival but also of a hidden lust: the goal is not only to survive above the noise floor within the ecology but also to attract. The voices identify and frame that particular acoustic ecology, which in its turn exemplifies a co-dependent relationship of survival as well as a form of solidarity, competence, and competitiveness. 

The voices’ acoustic and spectral energy are the basis for local musical events (micro-form) but also for temporality of various sections of the composition (macro form). I have to clarify one thing in particular: the voice models are not used as mimetic elements,  there is no instrumental synthesis, there are no transcriptions of the models with instruments and/or electronics.  Instead, I treat them as self-contained material in-itself and for-itself, establishing relations via their diverse forms, features and morphologies. 

So the voice models’ energy are transliterated into what I call “Energy Morphemes.” 

Those Energy Morphemes are little abstract dynamic gestures, distilled from the meat market voices’ dynamism, they become exciters for different contexts, “transmorphing” their containers while changing them at the same time. Sometimes they work as rhythmic profiles, sometimes as horizontal profiles, timbral fluctuations, dynamic fluctuations; sometimes as electronic shadows, as a reminder, a trace of their original energy, serving as guidelines for improvisatory forces. 

And of course, there are transitions, collages, juxtapositions, bursts of energy, interruptions, ruptures…

Imaginary Neighborhoods of Athens reimagines Athenian neighborhoods via overlapping layers of “sound communities.” It is an open question on

“How to survive 
	within/with/next to/throughout/through/over/under/around/above/below
your neighborhood ?
your neighbors ?”

Tolga Tüzün

Tuzun - Imaginary Neighborhoods Of Athens-Dialogue At Monastraki

Tuzun - Imaginary Neighborhoods Of Athens-Omonia At Night

Tuzun - Imaginary Neighborhoods Of Athens-Athenas Walk

Tuzun - Imaginary Neighborhoods Of Athens-Psyri Underground

Tuzun - Imaginary Neighborhoods Of Athens-Acropolis At 4 AM

for viola, violoncello, contrabass, percussion and electronics
Premiered by Hezarfen Ensemble on October 31st, 2019 
Commissioned by Dystopia Festival
Concert recording: Gökhan Deneç

“Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms” 
William Shakespeare

“Natura respuit ut contraria quaeque iungantur” 
(Nature refuses the joining of unlike things)  
Boethieus

“There is a strange power in the joining of unlike things.”
Carnival Row season 1 Ep.4 15:04

The most successful dystopian fictions are created not by merely imagining a “utopia-gone-wrong” places but by exaggerating the features of the Past and the Present that contain potentials for them to become dystopian. These dystopian features are to be sought in the contemporary canvas of our societies: social memory loss, disregard for differences, unfounded familiarities, traces of past mass violence. What we call “ourselves” in a modern society are interwoven acts of barbarisms and adequate forgetfulness/indifference that go along with them. 

Les Traces de Notre Futur Antérieur for Hezarfen Ensemble takes this idea of “uncovering what is lost as a result of violence” and translates it into a musical circumstance that is inspired by the texts belonging to the people who once inhabited the Anatolian land for centuries.

Les Traces De Notre Futur Anterieur(2019)

Tolga Tüzün (Ph.D.) is an electro-acoustic music composer and a performer.

He started taking classical piano lessons at the age of eleven. After receiving his BA in Political Sciences, he studied composition with Pieter Snapper and Marc Wingate and advanced orchestration with Ilhan Usmanbas and Hasan Ucarsu at the Istanbul Technical University, Center for Advanced Music Studies.

His compositions have been performed in various cities throughout US and Europe.  During his studies for a Ph.D. in Music Composition at CUNY Graduate Center, he studied composition with David Olan and Tristan Murail in New York, and with Philippe Leroux in Paris .

He has given lectures on music theory and electro-acoustic music at international conferences.  Between 2003-2005 he taught harmony and composition at Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.  Tolga Tüzün participated in the composition and computer music course at IRCAM during 2005-2006.

Along with his compositional output, he also performs within experimental, jazz and electronic scenes, solo or with other artists. His collaborations include Oğuz Büyükberber, Korhan Erel, Nora Krahl, Ned Mc Gowan, Bob Ostertag, Frank Gratkowski, Nicolas Crosse, Sam Briton, Anıl Eraslan to name a few.  

Tolga Tüzün is a full professor at Istanbul Bilgi University where he teaches composition and electronic music since 2007.

Tolga Tuzun

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