2021–2022
MUSIC@ EMORY
These concerts are presented by the Department of Music at Emory University. music.emory.edu
Audience Information In Consideration Please turn off all electronic devices. Face masks covering the nose and mouth are required at all times in the Performing Arts Studio.
Photographs and Recordings Digital capture or recording of this concert is not permitted.
Design and Photography Credits Cover and Program Design: Lisa Baron | Cover Photo: Mark Teague
2021–2022
DONNA AND MARVIN
SCHWARTZ ARTIST IN RESIDENCE
Emory CompFest 2022
Flow State featuring Timuçin Şahin, guitar Schwartz Artist in Residence Adam Mirza and Katherine Young, CompFest co-directors Friday, February 11, 2022, 8:00 p.m. and Saturday, February 12, 2022, 8:00 p.m. Performing Arts Studio | 1804 N. Decatur Road
Friday, February 11, 2022, 8:00 p.m. Flow 1 Timuçin Şahin, guitar Students of MUS 349 Composition and MUS 235 Improvisation Laboratory Art of the Collective Imagination Orchestra
Saturday, February 12, 2022, 8:00 p.m. Flow 2 Timuçin Şahin, Katherine Young, and Adam Mirza Art of the Collective Imagination Orchestra
Sponsored by a grant from the Donna and Marvin Schwartz Artist-in-Residence Program. Timuçin Şahin visits Emory as a Schwartz Artist in Residence during CompFest 2022. As part of his residency, he will work with Emory music students on improvisation, electronic music, and composition, in addition to the two Flow State concerts. All CompFest and residency events will be free and open to the public.
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Program Note Each year, Emory CompFest brings innovative national and international musicians to Emory, where they work with students and faculty and present their music in concert to the greater-Atlanta community. We seek artists who work in ways that diverge from traditional compositional frameworks and who can offer exciting and meaningful creative exchanges with the community. This year, we are delighted to feature virtuoso guitarist and composer Timuçin Şahin as a Schwartz Artist in Residence. Şahin is a unique musical creator—his work embraces the musical spaces of contemporary jazz, experimental composition, free improvisation, electronic music, and world music (Turkish, Dutch, Carnatic). This hybrid space is a fertile area of new artistic expression that has become increasingly prominent in contemporary art, music composition, and performance. The title, Flow State, is drawn from Şahin’s recent album of the same name. It indicates an approach to individual and collective music— distinct from traditional hierarchies of composition and performance and through which hybrid musical spaces may come into being. Şahin invites us, as listeners and collaborators, to embrace diversity and difference in our musical practice, to exist together as a multiplicity, and to create new connections through flow. For his Emory residency, Şahin proposed a series of creative encounters with students, faculty, and community members that would culminate in two concerts of diverse instrumentation. During this residency, Şahin has visited two Department of Music classes to present workshops on improvisation, electronic music, and composition. In the workshops, he introduced students to conduction, a form of conducted ensemble improvisation, which he will present during the CompFest performances. Şahin directs the Art of the Collective Imagination Orchestra in Bergama, Turkey, an improvisation ensemble made up of community performers of all ages and musical backgrounds. A central component of this year’s CompFest is the creation of a Collective Imagination Orchestra made of students, faculty, and other guest musicians; a group which embodies Şahin’s musical idealism, to perform the concluding performance on each evening’s concert. We are grateful for the many creative opportunities Şahin has shared with our students and our community this week and for the thoughtfulness and integrity of his musical vision. —Adam Mirza and Katherine Young, CompFest co-directors 5
About the Artists Timuçin Şahin, guitar Timuçin Şahin has been recognized as one of today’s truly unique voices in contemporary jazz music by publications such as San Francisco Bay Guardian, All About Jazz, Jazzwise, Downbeat, and Jazz-Times. His music is difficult to categorize as it operates in a hybrid space between free improvisation, avant-garde composition, jazz, and other musical influences. Both his compositions and his playing on his trademark double-neck guitar (one neck is fretless which allows him to incorporate microtones and expressive pitch gestures) radiate an incomparable individualism. Şahin has played or recorded with Randy Brecker, Greg Osby, Robin Eubanks, Kai Eckhardt, Mike Mainieri, Mark Turner, Tony Moreno, Aydin Esen, Gene Jackson, Dave Kikoski, Ernst Reizeger, John O’ Gallagher, Owen Hart Jr., Donny McCaslin, Tyshawn Sorey, Thomas Morgan, Ralph Alessi, Tom Rainey, Sean Rickman, Loren Stillman, Russ Lossing, Dan Weiss, Cory Smythe, Christopher Tordini, Mark Ferber, and the Concertgebouw Jazz Orchestra. Şahin has also composed for the Amsterdam Percussion Group, Occult Ensemble, Mivos String Quartet, Timetable Percussion Ensemble, Enric Monfort Ensemble, Ere Lievonen, Verso, Amsterdam Conservatory Symphonic Orchestra, Brisk Quartet, TobeSung, Loadbang, and others. Born in Turkey, Şahin immigrated to Holland to study jazz guitar and classical composition in Hilversum and Amsterdam conservatories. He continued his studies at the Manhattan School of Music and received a PhD in music composition from New York University. He was awarded first prize at the prestigious Dutch Jazz Competition in 2001 and second prizes at the Jur Naessens Music Award in 2002 and Deloitte Jazz Award in 2006. Şahin shares his concepts about his sui-generis guitar playing and composing in master classes in the United States, Europe, and Turkey. In 2017, Sahin started a school and music program called “Art of the Collective Imagination,” which is devoted to real-time music-making in Bergama, Turkey. Other notable engagements include Manhattan School of Music New York (USA), NYU New York (USA), Amsterdam Conservatory (NL), Tilburg Conservatory (NL), and Sopot Jazz Festival (PL). Since September 2018, Şahin has served as an assistant professor and the director of jazz studies in the Department of Music at Yaşar University, teaching jazz guitar, improvisation, and ensemble classes. 6
Adam Mirza, composer and sound artist Adam Mirza works in acoustic, electronic, and multimedia contexts. His music has been presented at the Zurich New Music Days, the DiMenna Center in New York City, the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center in Kiev, the New York Electroacoustic Music Festival, and in other venues throughout the United States and abroad. Currently, he is at work on a solo album of acoustic chamber music that will be released by New Focus Recordings and a series of audio-video poems titled Naegleria Fowleri based on texts by Rimona Afana. Previous collaborators have included the International Contemporary Ensemble, JACK Quartet, Argento Ensemble, New Thread Quartet, and the Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble. An exponent of DIY and collective music-making, he has collaborated with young composers and musicians in the more than 40 concerts he has produced or co-produced through the new music organization Amp, a new music festival, and an NEA funded series “Pairings” at the Tank in New York City. As an assistant professor of composition at Emory University, Mirza teaches courses involving composition for acoustic instruments, recording, acousmatic music, and live electronic music.
Katherine Young, composer and artist Katherine Young’s electroacoustic music and sonic art use expressive noises, curious timbres, and kinetic structures. Relationship building and collaboration are central to her practice. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNOW, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Third Coast Percussion, Ensemble Dal Niente, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, and others have commissioned her music. She has worked closely with Wet Ink, Ensemble Nikel, WasteLAnd, Linda Jankowska, Oliva DePrato, and Yarn/Wire. Her installation work has been commissioned by the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art. As a bassoonist and improviser, Young amplifies her instrument and employs a flexible electronics setup. She has documented her work on numerous recordings, including her debut with Sam Scranton as Beautifulish (out on Shinkoyo) and a duo with Anthony Braxton. She teaches composition, improvisation, and electronic music at Emory. Young is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Music Composition.
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Music at Emory Music at Emory brings together students, faculty, and world-class artists to create an exciting and innovative season of performances, lectures, workshops, and master classes. With more than 150 events each year across multiple Emory venues, audiences experience a wide variety of musical offerings. As you explore Music at Emory, we hope you enjoy this variety by sampling an assortment of work from our student ensembles, community youth ensembles, artists in residence, professional faculty, up-and-coming prodigies, and virtuosos from around the world.
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