Mehmet Demirtaş

Mehmet DEMİRTAŞ (b. 1973 - ) is a Turkish Composer and Musicologist.

He was interested in classical music starting from very young age and composed his first musical pieces at the age of thirteen. After graduating from St. Joseph High School (Istanbul), he studied at the Lyon State Conservatory in France. He received degrees in the fields of composition, history of music, aesthetics of music, art journalism, and analysis. Starting from 1996, he organized student concerts at the conservatory for the first time. The same year, he took charge of the Turkish broadcast program at Radio Trait d'Union in Lyon. He participated in the International Reine Elisabeth Piano and Composition Seminar in Brussels.

In 1997, he founded the Lyon Young Composers’ Group together with other composers. He enabled concerts to be organized in France to introduce and promote Turkish folk music.

He took part in the concerts at the conservatory in 1998 as well. He was the art director for the performances of the dancing department. He was invited to various concerts that took place in the universities in Lyon and participated both as a composer and a pianist. During the opening concert on June 15, 1999, he introduced the compositions of the Lyon Young Composers’ Group to an audience from outside the school. In September, he organized the concert project called “Intersecting Voices” with the contributions of the Turkish Embassy in Lyon and the Lyon Municipality in order to represent Turkey at the Lyon Consular Festival and performed his own compositions as well as the compositions of his group. The performance was decided to be repeated every year as a result of its outstanding success. In March 2000, he gave a concert together with his Composers’ Group as a joint event of Musique en Scene, which is one of the most important contemporary music festivals in Lyon, France, and the Lyon Museum of Fine Arts.

Mehmet Demirtaş, who has continued his career in Turkey since June 2002, established The Committee Ensemble, his current classical music group. He gave concerts for various institutions and organizations such as Borusan, MIAM, Italian Culture Center, Urgup Vintage Festival, Düzce Municipality, Tünel Festival, Roxy Cultura, and Yapı Kredi Culture and Arts Activities.

He has adopted a perspective on music that aims to empower the audience as well as eliminating prejudices against contemporary music. His compositions reflect a post-modern and minimalistic character embroidered with themes of Turkish music. The use of a modal harmony enhanced with spiral oriental melodies reflect his bi-cultural heritage.

Furthermore, his work known as ‘musical theater’ has also attracted much attention during his concerts.

He includes in his concerts performances that he designs in order to convey his style of contemporary music to his audience, with whom he strives to build a direct and interactive dialogue. He aims to personalize the musician-audience relationship during his concerts.

His motto is “Art is solely a feeling.”

Works

- quartet no:1
- trio no:1, 2 for two cellos and flut

External links

Mehmet Demirtaş official web site

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