In the Footsteps of Bartók: Collaborations and Improvisations

Inspired by the groundbreaking research carried out by Béla Bartok in 1936 (in the region of the recent earthquakes) and described in his book ‘Turkish Folk Music From Asia Minor’ (published by Princeton Press in 1976) this concert program juxtaposes compositions for Western instruments with traditional instrumental improvisations from the region.

Compositions will include works by A.A. Saygun and N.K. Akses, each representatives of the early Turkish Republican era, who also both traveled with Bartok in southeast Anatolia. Alongside these string quartet movements, solo piano music written by their predecessors born into the late Ottoman Empire, the Armenian and Georgian composers V. Komitas and G. Gurdjieff will be performed. Oud virtuoso/composer Ara Dinkjian and clarinet virtuoso/composer İsmail Lumanovski will improvise ‘interludes’ and perform traditional masterpieces throughout this concert program based on the musical source materials heard in the composed works. 2 recent chamber works from award-winning Turkish composers Erberk Eryılmaz and Mahir Cetiz will be presented, and the composers will both perform at the piano and co-moderate the program. The premiere of Cetiz’s Yaşar Kemal’s Lamentations for string quartet, electronics and narrator was funded by the Guggenheim Foundation and is dedicated to the victims of the 2023 earthquakes.

Princeton faculty member and violinist Sunghae Anna Lim will bring together colleagues from the Klasik Keyifler Music Association (KK) an NGO based in Turkey dedicated to chamber music and collaborations with living composers, alongside the Hoppa Project, a US-based ensemble promoting folk, improvised and contemporary music from the Balkans and the Middle East.

US premiere

Laments and Dreams: a meditation based on the works of Yaşar Kemal

“Ağıtlar ve Düşler” (Laments and Dreams), is a work that is dedicated to all the people affected by they 2023 earthquake in Turkey. The whole project is based on the works of Yasar Kemal, including passages from his novels and is transcriptions of lamentations of Adana region, as well as some field reports when he worked as a journalist. This work could somewhat be defined as a “meditation” on nature’s sublime quality, the relationship of human Eastern and Southeastern Anatolian people with the nature through their lives as well as through their dreams, in addition to the cycle of life and death.

Scored for narrator, voice, bağlama, string quartet and a mixed soundtrack of recorded and electronically produced material, the work is structured around the epic nature descriptions by Yasar Kemal that are delivered by the narrator. Musical material sometimes sets the stage, sometimes reacts to what is been delivered in words. There are also a number of lamentations and songs reframed within the work, that are originally from the Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia, directly relating to the human experience of those regions.

Mahir Cetiz

Sunghae Anna Lim has performed extensively throughout the United States, Central America, Europe and Japan. She is a founding member of the Laurel Trio and, as violinist of the New Millennium Ensemble, Ms. Lim won the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and gave a debut recital at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center. She is actively involved in contemporary music, premiering and recording numerous works by living composers. Recent highlights include the premier performance of the Second Violin sonata by the late Donald Martino and a recording of Alexander Steinert’s violin sonata of 1921. She has worked with conductor Robert Craft to record chamber works of Webern for the Naxos label. https://music.princeton.edu/people/sunghae-anna-lim/

Violinist, Ellen Jewett, has performed in Europe, Japan, Africa, New Zealand, Canada and throughout the US in major venues such as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Merkin Hall and the Kennedy Center, both as recitalist and with groups such as Ensemble X, Taliesin Trio, American Chamber Players, New York Chamber Soloists the New York Chamber Ensemble, Apple HIll Chamber Players and the Mark Morris Dance Company. She has served on the faculties of McGill University, SUNY Stony Brook, Ithaca College, and Ankara University. Ms. Jewett has recorded for Centaur, Chandos, Albany and Newport Classics, and her recent CD of Turkish solo violin music was released by Naxos in 2019. http://www.ellenjewett.com/

Violist and violinist Caroline Wolff grew up in New York City and went on to study Classics at Columbia University. She continued her music studies at Indiana University and the New England Conservatory. As a member of the Fidelio String Quartet (prizewinners in the London International String Quartet Competition) Caroline performed in the United States, the UK and Germany, and also in every public school in San Francisco. Caroline has performed on both violin and viola at numerous festivals, including Tanglewood, Taos, Norfolk, Schleswig-Holstein, Prussia Cove and Santa Fe, as well as chamber music series such as Bargemusic in New York, Emmanuel Music in Boston and St. John’s College Chamber Music in Oxford. Caroline has taught at the New England Conservatory Preparatory division, Phillips Exeter Academy, and the Bowdoin Festival. She currently divides her time between Oxford, England and NYC. http://www.cme-music.org/legal.html

Doctoral studies, Indiana University Bloomington; M.M., Eastman School of Music; B.M., Oberlin College. Studies with Janos Starker, Steven Doane, Richard Kapuscinski, Toby Saks. Formerly, teaching assistant to Janos Starker; faculty, Indiana University Bloomington, Earlham College, Eastman School of Music, Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, Heifetz International Music Institute. Formerly, cellist, Richmond Symphony Orchestra, Cayuga Chamber Orchestra. Cellist, Ariadne String Quartet, Ensemble X, Taliesin Trio. Solo performances with Buffalo Chamber Orchestra, New Music Festival. Fellowship, Tanglewood Music Center. International recitals as a U.S. artistic ambassador. https://www.ithaca.edu/staff/esimkin

Ara Dinkjian is an Armenian born in America in 1958. His earliest professional musical experience was accompanying his father Onnik Dinkjian, a renowned Armenian folk and liturgical singer.

Ara learned several Western and Eastern instruments (piano, guitar, dumbeg, clarinet) and in 1980 graduated from the Hartt College of Music, earning the country’s first and only special degree in the instrument for which he has become most well-known, the oud.

For over 40 years, he served as organist in the Armenian Apostolic Church. Throughout his musical life, Ara has continued to develop his highly personal compositional style which blends his eastern and western roots. In 1985, to help realize these compositions and musical concepts, Ara formed his instrumental quartet, Night Ark, which recorded four CDs for RCA/BMG and Universal/PolyGram. Night Ark’s recordings and world-wide concert tours were highly influential for musicians and music lovers throughout the world because they demonstrated how music can be progressive and creative while still retaining the dignity and soul of one’s culture. https://www.aradinkjian.com/biography

The extraordinary clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski is a musical force of passion and dynamic virtuosity. Already of international distinction, Lumanovki has launched a major career as a soloist, chamber musician in both classical and cross-over repertoire. His synergistic blend of natural talent and training combines the spirit of folk music with the discipline of classical music. https://www.ismaillumanovski.com/about

Mahir Cetiz is a composer, conductor and scholar, who lives in the USA, teaching as the assistant professor of composition and music theory at the Rudi E. Scheidt School of Music. His compositional discourse includes works for orchestra, pieces for acoustic ensembles of different sizes, as well as solo instrumental pieces and pieces for and with electronics. As an active performing musician, Cetiz is continuously engaged with the performance of new music. In past, his compositions received performances by such ensembles as: International Contemporary Ensemble, Ensemble Intercontemporain, New York Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic and Zurich-Tonhalle Orchestra. As a composer, his interests include (but not limited to); middle-eastern and Indian traditional music, medieval polyphony and the perception of musical gestures. https://mahircetiz.com/home/about/

Istanbul native, Husam, received his university degree in history from Bosphorus University, an English language university in Istanbul. After doing graduate work in Ottoman studies and Classical archeology at Leiden University, Holland he returned to work as a guide throughout Turkey and Aegean islands in a wide variety of projects including production and historical consultation for TV series on channels such as BBC, Channel 4 UK, TV5 Canada. Subjects include Istanbul, Turkey, Paganism and St. Paul. He was production manager for the Turkish portion of Michael Winterbottom’s film ”In this World”, and has provided the organization and translation for academics in a number of archeological expeditions and surveys including the Pepouza and Troas Projects. In his 32 years experience, he has guided US senators, academics, individuals doing genealogy research, actors and actresses, photographers, film crews, church groups and numerous families. He is also a caver, mountaineer, skier and sailor. He is married to an American violinist Ellen Jewett and together with his wife founded Klasik Keyifler a non profit association organizing chamber music concerts and workshops in historical venues throughout Turkey. http://www.husamsuleymangil.com/