Nobel Prize of Music goes to a Turkish Composer

The Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, known also as the “Nobel Prize of Music”, is awarded in 2012 to Zeynep Gedizlioğlu, a Turkish composer living in Germany. Gedizlioğlu born in 1977, after having studied oboe at Mimar Sinan University, State Conservatory, studied composition with Cengiz Tanç, an eminent Turkish composer.

After her graduation in 2000, she taught solfeggio and music theory at Mimar Sinan University and Academy Istanbul. In 2001 she went to Saarbrücken to continue her studies on composition with Prof. Theo Brandmüller at the Composition Department of Hochshule für Musik Saar (HFM). Wolfgang Rihm in Karlsruhe, Ivan Fedele in Strasbourg, Daniel Teruggi, and François Donato at the Group de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in Paris, are among the others Gedizlioğlu studied and worked composition with. She also worked on electrical music at the music studio, Rendezvous Musique Nouvelle and at IRCAM in Paris.

 

portrait of Zeynep Gedizlioglu by Johannes List on Vimeo.

 

Significant Achievements   

Besides composing music for various plays in Turkey and abroad, Gedizlioğlu had already achieved worldwide recognition prior being awarded the “Nobel Prize of Music”. The leading ensembles such as the Ensemble Recherche, the Navarra Symphony Orchestra, and the Ensemble Accroche Note have performed the music of Gedizlioğlu whose music has been performed throughout Europe and Turkey. She has been invited to many festivals such as Musica in Strasbourg, Mediterranean Contemporary Music Festival, and ISCM World Music Days and she has participated in the International Summer Courses for New Music in Darmstadt and the Centre Acanthes in Avignon.

 

Awarded for outstanding contributions to the world of music. Gedizlioğlu has already received many scholarships and prizes for her composition works before being awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize for her outstanding contribution to the world of music. The composer, whose CD Kesik with the world-renowned Arditti String Quartet from whom she received a commission in 2007 is just released, continues to live in Germany and Turkey after having spent time also in Paris. Markus Böggemann defines Gedizlioğlu’s music as “an emphatic plea for the value of heterogeneous and individual difference.”