About this project

Last summer I met a Turkish composer who told me about the vibrant new music scene in Turkey. We kept in touch over the following year, and in April he encouraged me to apply to the Klasik Keyifler Composers' Cauldron festival in Kapadokya. I sent my application in June and learned several weeks later that I had been accepted and was being awarded a partial scholarship.

My scholarship will cover a substantial portion of the tuition for the festival, but I am responsible for my own airfare and room and board costs. Please chip in a few bucks if you can! My participation in the festival will involve lessons and masterclasses with composers Kamran İnce, Marc Mellits, and Michael Ellison.  Your support will fund the premiere of a new composition for string quartet, Mountain Suite (2011), by the musicians in residence.

Information from the Klasik Keyifler website:

"Klasik Keyifler is an organization dedicated to the innovative presentation of small chamber ensemble concerts and workshops in a wide variety of intimate settings primarily within Turkey. Designed to offer a retreat for artists, a creative portal for music students and a source of inspiration and contemplation for audience members, Klasik Keyifler projects seek to close the boundaries between performers and listeners by enabling interaction and by informalizing the concert venues in ways that both reflect the historical origins of chamber music as well as offer a personal immediacy that can be hard to find in large modern concert halls. Klasik Keyifler offers workshops for music lovers and designs unique educational programs for young musicians preparing for careers in the 21st century. Cultural exchange and collaboration are central to the Klasik Keyifler projects. For thousands of years the land now known as Turkey has been a major crossroads and the fragments of hundreds of different civilizations are visible side by side. Klasik Keyifler aims to connect and bring players from around the globe in order to make music together in these multicultural, historical and “classical” sites thus feeding the imaginations that interpret the musical "classics" of both the East and West."