Taylan Susam (born November 18, 1986) is a

Turkish-Dutch Turks in the Netherlands (occasionally and colloquially Dutch Turks or Turkish-Dutch; nl, Turkse Nederlander; tr, ) refers to people of full or partial Turkish ethnicity living in the Netherlands. They form the largest ethnic minority group i ...

composer of

experimental music Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, ...

. He is a member of the Wandelweiser group, which has been described by ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issue ...

'' as "an informal network of twenty or so experimental-minded composers who share an interest in slow music, quiet music, spare music, fragile music."

Biography

Susam grew up in Amsterdam, where he attended the

Barlaeus Gymnasium The Barlaeus Gymnasium is a secondary school in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It is one of the five categorial gymnasia in Amsterdam, the other four being Vossius Gymnasium, Ignatius Gymnasium, Het 4e gymnasium and Cygnus Gymnasium. It offers ...

. He studied composition with

Martijn Padding Martijn Padding (born 24 April 1956) is a Dutch composer and educator. Padding was born in Amsterdam, and was taught by Louis Andriessen (composition), Geert van Keulen (instrumentation) and Fania Chapiro (piano). He also studied sonology at ...

and

Yannis Kyriakides Yannis Kyriakides (Greek: Γιάννης Κυριακίδης, born 1 August 1969) is a composer of contemporary classical music, and sound art. His music explores new forms and hybrids of media, synthesizing disparate sound sources and highlight ...

at the

Royal Conservatory of The Hague The Royal Conservatoire ( nl, Koninklijk Conservatorium, KC) is a conservatoire in The Hague, providing higher education in music and dance. The conservatoire was founded by King William I in 1826, making it the oldest conservatoire in the Nether ...

, and privately with

Antoine Beuger Antoine Beuger (born 3 July 1955 in Oosterhout, Netherlands) is a Dutch composer, flautist, and music publisher. He is a founder of the Wandelweiser group. Biography Beuger studied composition from 1973 to 1978 with Ton de Leeuw at the Conservator ...

and Samuel Vriezen, among others. His compositions have been performed in more than a dozen countries, at such venues as the Experimental Sound Gallery Saint Petersburg, Galerie Mark Müller,

Glenn Gould Studio The Canadian Broadcasting Centre, also known as the CBC Toronto Broadcast Centre, is an office and studio complex located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It serves as the main broadcast and master control point for the Canadian Broadcasting Corpora ...

, Goethe-Institut Amsterdam, Grote of Sint-Jacobskerk, Hafnarborg, ISSUE Project Room, Kid Ailack Art Hall, Kunstmuseum Villa Zanders, Kunstraum,

Magna Plaza The Former Amsterdam Main Post Office, currently a shopping mall known as Magna Plaza, is a monumental building located at Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal 182, Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was built in 1895–1899 in Neo-Gothic and Neo-Renaissance style. ...

, Maison des Jeunesses Musicales,

SMART Project Space SMART Project Space (SPS or SMART) was a publicly funded foundation for Contemporary Art founded in 1994 by the innovative cultural mediator Thomas Peutz. SPS closed its innovative exhibition programme in 2013, but remains a creative industries ...

St Anne and St Agnes St Anne and St Agnes is a church located at Gresham Street in the City of London, near the Barbican. While St Anne's is an Anglican foundation, from 1966 to 2013 it was let to a congregation of the Lutheran Church in Great Britain. History The ...

, The Stone,

REDCAT Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT) is an interdisciplinary contemporary arts center for innovative visual, performing and media arts in downtown Los Angeles, located inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Opened in November 2003 ...

, and at festivals such as

Ostrava Days Ostrava Days is a three-week-long exposition of contemporary classical music that takes place biennially in the city of Ostrava, The Czech Republic. The last season (2013) ran from August 12 to August 31, 2013. The event is considered to be one of ...

November Music November Music is an annual international festival of contemporary music in the Netherlands on various locations in 's-Hertogenbosch. Its motto is 'Today's Music by Today's Makers'. The ten-day festival is held in the first half of November. It ...

, Dark Music Days, Transit, the ISCM Pan Music Festival, and the Amsterdam Wandelweiser Festival. Performers of Susam's music have included

Quatuor Bozzini The Quatuor Bozzini is a string quartet that specializes in new and experimental music based in Montreal, Canada. Since 1999, Quatuor Bozzini has been an original voice in new, experimental and classical music. Their skew is radically contemporar ...

Asko Ensemble Asko or ASKO may refer to: * Asko (name), a male given name common in Finland and Estonia * Askø, a Danish island * Asko Cylinda or Asko Appliances AB, a Swedish company producing household appliances * AskoSchönberg, a Dutch chamber orchestr ...

, Ensemble Chronophonie, Ensemble Sisyphe, Incidental Music, Nordic Affect,

S.E.M. Ensemble S.E.M. Ensemble is an American group dedicated to the performance of contemporary classical music. It was founded in 1970 by the Czech composer Petr Kotik, who serves as its director, and is based in New York City. Kotik seems to have rather arb ...

, Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble,

Dante Boon Dante Boon (born 1973) is a Dutch composer and pianist. A member of the Wandelweiser composers collective, he is perhaps best known as an interpreter of experimental piano music. His own music has been performed internationally to wide acclaim ...

, Erik Carlson,

Eve Egoyan Eve Egoyan (born 1964) is an Armenian-Canadian pianist and artist based in Toronto. Early life and education Egoyan was born in Victoria, British Columbia.Hampson, SaraThe Keys to Living''The Globe and Mail''. 2006-04-08. Accessed: 2022-02- ...

, Eva-Maria Houben,

Radu Malfatti Radu Malfatti is an Austrian trombone and harmonica player, and composer. He was born in Innsbruck, in the province of Tyrol, on December 16, 1943. Malfatti is associated with the style of music known as reductionism and has been described as " ...

Michael Pisaro Michael Pisaro (born 1961 in Buffalo, New York) is a guitarist and composer. A member of the Wandelweiser Composers Ensemble, he has composed over 80 works for a great variety of instrumental combinations, including several pieces for variable i ...

, Taku Unami, and Daan Vandewalle. Along with colleagues Daniel Brandes, Johnny Chang and Sam Sfirri, Susam belongs to a younger generation of Wandelweiser composers. Taylan Susam is also known as a performer of experimental music. He appears as a conductor on an overview CD of

Philip Corner Philip Lionel Corner (born April 10, 1933; name sometimes given as Phil Corner) is an American composer, trombonist, alphornist, vocalist, pianist, music theorist, music educator, and visual artist. Biography After The High School of Music & Art ...

's music on

New World Records New World Records is a record label that was established in 1975 through a Rockefeller Foundation grant to celebrate America's bicentennial (1976) by producing a 100-LP anthology, with American music from many genres. and as a clarinetist in

's ''düsseldorf vielfaches'' released through Malfatti's label ''b-boim.'' Susam organized the concert series ''leaf sound / wave sound'' (named after a

Robert Lax Robert Lax (November 30, 1915 – September 26, 2000) was an American poet, known in particular for his association with Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton. Another friend of his youth was the painter Ad Reinhardt. After a long period of dri ...

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 A positive organ (also positiv organ, positif organ, portable organ, chair organ, or simply positive, positiv, positif, or chair) (from the Latin verb ''ponere'', "to place") is a small, usually one-manual, pipe organ that is built to be more o ...

in the foyer of the

. In 2014, Susam delivered a version of John Cage's ''Lecture on Nothing'' in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

's Perdu theater. In 2007, he collaborated with dancer-choreographer Katharina Maschenka Horn to create the performance ''triptych august 1973'', based on painter

Francis Bacon Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...

's work of the same title. In the same year, he was invited, along with

John Lely John Lely (born Norwich, England, in 1976) is British experimental composer, improvising musician and curator based in London, UK. His music has been commissioned and performed by musicians including Apartment House, Quatour Bozzini, violinis ...

, to work with

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

artist

Ben Patterson Benjamin Patterson (May 29, 1934 – June 25, 2016) was an American musician, artist, and one of the founders of the Fluxus movement. Biography Benjamin Patterson was born in Pittsburgh on May 29, 1934. He attended the University of Michigan fr ...

to curate a night of performances in

Ostrava Ostrava (; pl, Ostrawa; german: Ostrau ) is a city in the north-east of the Czech Republic, and the capital of the Moravian-Silesian Region. It has about 280,000 inhabitants. It lies from the border with Poland, at the confluences of four ri ...

's Philharmonic Hall. He has also collaborated with poets

Oswald Egger Oswald may refer to: People *Oswald (given name), including a list of people with the name *Oswald (surname), including a list of people with the name Fictional characters *Oswald the Reeve, who tells a tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's ''The Canterbur ...

and Samuel Vriezen. A retrospective of Susam's work was presented in 2013 at the Los Angeles performance space ''the wulf.'' Recordings of his compositions appear on three CDs released by the British label

Another Timbre Another Timbre is a record label, based in Sheffield and known for its releases of free improvisation, experimental and contemporary classical music. It was founded by television sound recordist Simon Reynell, who also engineers and produces most ...

and a new recording of his solo piano music has been announced by pianist

. His music was also included in mixtapes released by

FACT Magazine A fact is a datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance, which, if accepted as true and proven true, allows a logical conclusion to be reached on a true–false evaluation. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scie ...

and WQXR (both compiled by

Julia Holter Julia Shammas Holter (born December 18, 1984) is an American singer-songwriter, record producer, composer, artist and academic, based in Los Angeles. Following three independent album productions, Holter released ''Tragedy'' as her first official ...

Music

In her 2016 study ''Experimental music since 1970'', musicologist Jennie Gottschalk interprets Susam's use of

silence Silence is the absence of ambient audible sound, the emission of sounds of such low intensity that they do not draw attention to themselves, or the state of having ceased to produce sounds; this latter sense can be extended to apply to the c ...

as "a potentiality that includes all sounds." Critic Richard Pinnell, in a review of Susam's 2009 ensemble piece ''for maaike schoorel'', adds:

This music, typical of the
Wandelweiser The Wandelweiser Group is a collective for composers and performers of contemporary classical music. Inspired by the work of John Cage, the Wandelweiser Group writes experimental music, which is typically of a very quiet nature and often incorpo ...
collective of composition that Susam is a member of, has a wonderful stillness to it, and yet the little islands of soft sounds that do appear, as simple as they are, seem to harbour whole worlds of sound and timbre.

Daniel Barbiero, writing for Avant Music News, describes a recording of the same piece as an " mbodimentof an almost

metaphysical Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of consci ...

dialogue between activity and non-activity." Susam's earlier work is marked by the use of random numerals as a means of notation. In these scores, such numerals have served to indicate anything from the number of sounds to be played within a span of time (''for maaike schoorel'', ''for anthony fiumara'') or the duration of a rest or an unspecified pitch (''for sesshū tōyō''), to which player should play ever so slightly louder than the others (''for blinky palermo''). The score of his ''for louis couperin'', inspired by the tradition of the

unmeasured prelude Unmeasured or non-measured prelude is a prelude in which the duration of each note is left to the performer. Typically the term is used for 17th century harpsichord compositions that are written without rhythm or metre indications, although various ...

, consists of nothing but two rows of numbers indicating the fingerings to be used by a keyboard player. According to composer and musicologist

Daniel James Wolf Daniel James Wolf (born September 13, 1961 in Upland, California) is an American composer. Studies Wolf studied composition with Gordon Mumma, Alvin Lucier, and La Monte Young, as well as musical tunings with Erv Wilson and Douglas Leedy a ...

e notation in aylan Susam'spieces is radically concentrated, often to just a bit of prose and a field of random numbers or single pitches on staves. He's interested in some very basic elements of music—intonation, continuity, contrasts between sounds and silences—and this radical concentration is anything but a naive response to those elements.

In 2009, Susam began working on his ''nocturnes'', composing a one-page

nocturne A nocturne is a musical composition that is inspired by, or evocative of, the night. History The term ''nocturne'' (from French '' nocturne'' 'of the night') was first applied to musical pieces in the 18th century, when it indicated an ensemb ...

every day. Musical Toronto describes Susam's ''nocturnes'' as follows: "The modal arc of this piece traverses the entire keyboard, note by isolated note. The meditative questioning of this night music invites an almost existential concentration." In another review, the piece is said to "

efy Especially For Youth (often abbreviated as EFY) is a week-long youth-oriented seminar focused on fellowship and teaching the principles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). It is run by Brigham Young University's (BY ...

the daily movement we experience toward and away from nighttime, as if night simply were, unchanging and unrelenting in its night-ness." Susam himself has described this piece as a musical exploration of "how our souls are affected by our sometimes faint and doubtful perception of the world." In contrast with the ''nocturness descending melodic lines suggestive of

harmonic modulation In music, modulation is the change from one tonality ( tonic, or tonal center) to another. This may or may not be accompanied by a change in key signature (a key change). Modulations articulate or create the structure or form of many pieces, as ...

, the 2014 piece ''tombeau'', dedicated to the memory of his friend Martijn Teerlinck and commissioned by

, consists of slow, downward arpeggiated harmonies, out of which fragments of melody seem to emerge. Many of Susam's titles are dedications to specific individuals (among them,

Blinky Palermo Blinky Palermo (2 June 1943 – 18 February 1977) was a German abstract painter. Early life and education Palermo was born Peter Schwarze in Leipzig, Germany, in 1943, and adopted as an infant, with his twin brother, Michael, by foster pa ...

Sesshū Tōyō (c. 1420 – 26 August 1506) has been regarded as one of the greatest painters in Japanese history. Sesshū was a Zen-Shu priest painter of the Muromachi period in Japan, prominently recognised for his art of sumi-e (black ink painting). Initi ...

and

Louis Couperin Louis Couperin (; – 29 August 1661) was a French Baroque composer and performer. He was born in Chaumes-en-Brie and moved to Paris in 1650–1651 with the help of Jacques Champion de Chambonnières. Couperin worked as organist of th ...

). This is meant, in part, to reflect his commitment to composing for a certain "someone" rather than for an anonymous "everyone." Susam's approach here has been likened to poet

Frank O'Hara Francis Russell "Frank" O'Hara (March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966) was an American writer, poet, and art critic. A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, O'Hara became prominent in New York City's art world. O'Hara is regarded as a leading figure i ...

's ''personism''.

Selected works

Solo Piano * ''for james tenney'', 2006 * ''for louis couperin'', 2009 * ''nocturnes'', 2009– * ''preludes'', 2010– * ''for john mcalpine'', 2013 * ''tombeau'', 2014 Other * ''for jürg frey'', clarinet, 2006 * ''for john eckhardt'', double bass, 2007 * ''for andré o. möller'', any instrument (with electronics), 2008 * ''for sesshū tōyō'', any instrument, 2009 Ensemble * ''for joseph kudirka'', 2006 * ''for anthony fiumara'', 2006 * ''for blinky palermo'', 2006 * ''for anthony fiumara'', 2007 * ''for chiyoko szlavnics'', 2007 * ''for sesshū tōyō'', 2008 * ''for antoine beuger'', 2009 * ''for maaike schoorel'', 2009 * ''for sam sfirri'', 2010 * ''string quartet (for victor kal)'', 2010 * ''for john lely'', 2011

References

External links

*
Taylan Susam at Edition Wandelweiser
{{DEFAULTSORT:Susam, Taylan 21st-century classical composers Dutch people of Turkish descent Dutch male classical composers Dutch classical composers Turkish classical composers 1986 births Composers for piano Dutch experimental musicians Experimental composers Musicians from Amsterdam Minimalist composers Just intonation composers Living people 20th-century Dutch male musicians 21st-century male musicians