taylan susam
Biography
Taylan Susam (born November 18, 1986) is a Turkish-Dutch composer of experimental music. He is a member of the Wandelweiser group,[1] which has been described by The New Yorker as "an informal network of twenty or so experimental-minded composers who share an interest in slow music, quiet music, spare music, fragile music."
Susam grew up in Amsterdam, where he attended the Barlaeus Gymnasium.[3] He studied composition with Martijn Padding and Yannis Kyriakides at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and privately with Antoine Beuger and Samuel Vriezen, among others.[4]
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His compositions have been performed in more than a dozen countries,[5] at such venues as the Experimental Sound Gallery Saint Petersburg,[6] Galerie Mark Müller,[7] Glenn Gould Studio,[8] Goethe-Institut Amsterdam,[9] Grote of Sint-Jacobskerk,[10] Hafnarborg,[11] ISSUE Project Room,[12] Kid Ailack Art Hall, Kunstmuseum Villa Zanders,[13] Kunstraum, Magna Plaza, Maison des Jeunesses Musicales,[14] SMART Project Space, St Anne and St Agnes,[15] The Stone,[16] REDCAT,[17] and at festivals such as Ostrava Days,[18] November Music,[19] Dark Music Days,[11] Transit,[20] the ISCM Pan Music Festival, and the Amsterdam Wandelweiser Festival.
Performers of Susam's music have included Quatuor Bozzini,[14] Asko Ensemble, Ensemble Chronophonie, Ensemble Sisyphe, Incidental Music, Nordic Affect, S.E.M. Ensemble, Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble, Dante Boon, Erik Carlson, Eve Egoyan,[8] Eva-Maria Houben, Radu Malfatti, Michael Pisaro,[17] Taku Unami, and Daan Vandewalle.[5] Along with colleagues Daniel Brandes, Johnny Chang and Sam Sfirri, Susam belongs to a younger generation of Wandelweiser composers.[21][22]
Taylan Susam is also known as a performer of experimental music. He appears as a conductor on an overview CD of Philip Corner's music on New World Records[23] and as a clarinetist in Radu Malfatti's düsseldorf vielfaches released through Malfatti's label b-boim.[24] Susam organized the concert series leaf sound / wave sound (named after a Robert Lax poem) in 2007, presenting six concerts of experimental music. In the same year, he performed Tom Johnson's Kirkman's Ladies on a positive organ in the foyer of the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.[25] In 2014, Susam delivered a version of John Cage's Lecture on Nothing in Amsterdam's Perdu theater.[26]
In 2007, he collaborated with dancer-choreographer Katharina Maschenka Horn to create the performance triptych august 1973, based on painter Francis Bacon's work of the same title.[27] In the same year, he was invited, along with John Lely, to work with Fluxus artist Ben Patterson to curate a night of performances in Ostrava's Philharmonic Hall. He has also collaborated with poets Oswald Egger[28] and Samuel Vriezen.[29]
A retrospective of Susam's work was presented in 2013 at the Los Angeles performance space the wulf.[30] Recordings of his compositions appear on three CDs released by the British label Another Timbre[31] and a new recording of his solo piano music has been announced by pianist Dante Boon.[32] His music was also included in mixtapes released by FACT Magazine[33] and WQXR[34] (both compiled by Julia Holter).
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.