A two-day event entitled “Welcoming Maqam” took place on September 27-28 at the Bilkent University Faculty of Music and Performing Arts. Organized by the university’s Ahmet Adnan Saygun Center and Department of Composition with the support of the Berlin Capital Cultural Fund and the Berlin Senate Chancellery of Cultural Affairs, “Welcoming Maqam” featured seminars, a panel discussion, individual and collective master classes, and rehearsal and discussion of works written by Bilkent Composition students. The event culminated with “Aleppo Dialogues,” a concert by the young collective neophon ensemble from Germany.
At the center of the event’s scientific, artistic and pedagogical activities was the qanun (“kanun” in Turkish), a many-stringed, plucked instrument widely used in Turkey and the surrounding regions to play traditional and classical music based on sets of notes called “maqamat” (singular, “maqam”). A dialogue between the qanun and international currents in contemporary music, including various dimensions of the sociocultural and artistic issues that arise in this interaction, served as a theme throughout the seminars and discussions as well as in the final concert.
The first day of the event featured a seminar by Dr. Stefan Pohlit on “Form, Seyir, and Pure Intonation in Sufi Music,” in which he elaborated on the background research and overall conceptual framework of the “Aleppo Dialogues” project. Dr. Pohlit also offered composition master classes on both days of the event. Another master class, “Usûl and Traditional Instruments in Turkish Music” was presented by Dr. Osman Öksüzoğlu and Tolga Volkan Kılıç on the first day, which concluded with a panel discussion on “Performance Practice Issues in Contemporary Music” by the members of the neophon ensemble.
The second day began with the performance of works by Bilkent students Aslıhan Keçebaşoğlu, Emre Eröz, Nadir Kaya and Arda Yurdusev by the neophon ensemble and continued with a dress rehearsal for the evening’s concert, including explanatory commentary. The event concluded with the “Aleppo Dialogues” concert performance, comprising works for solo qanun and large ensemble by composers Julien Jalâl Eddine Weiss, Klaus Lang, Catherine Lamb, Arash Yazdani, Ezequiel Menalled, Stefan Pohlit and Konstantin Heuer.
Aslıhan Keçebaşoğlu and Yiğit Aydın, text
Yunus Thurston, English translation
Arda Yurdusev, photography