COMPOSITIONS

Impure was commissioned by Marta Klimasara, a former professor who guided me through many stages of my personal journey. While composing, my mind was occupied with ethical questions—building and dismantling, creating and destroying, and the complexities of human relationships. At times, the boundaries of what is morally right felt uncertain, and the concept of good became blurred. Perhaps this reflects a modern crisis, where our search for permanence in politics and relationships persists, while everything around us feels more fleeting and elusive than ever. We often find ourselves lost in an overwhelming and unnatural transformation. These reflections shaped the piece, accompanying me throughout the process of writing the music.

The first note of the Shapes was written in a hotel room in Wuppertal. The piece is mainly constructed on a recurring three-note bass line improvisation taken from one of the improvisations I played that I couldn't take out of my head, which is the opening of the piece.

To me, the piece is not only rhythmic and energetic but also melancholic and nostalgic in a way. Some passages of the piece were composed firstly as an electronic music track in the drum and bass style and later transferred onto paper. Some of the ideas came from an improvisation I played, and others came into existence through the intellectual work directly put on paper.

These different working styles and aesthetics nourish each other and are very important to my writing process. As I strongly favour vibraphone's sound, its musical potentiality, and the sense of playing, it was an enormous pleasure for me to write this piece for Vanessa Porter, who came to the idea to commission it.

Emil Kuyumcuyan

As a child or adult, I have spent unforgettable times around the Mediterranean coasts or on the prince islands of Istanbul. During the covid time, I had enormous longing or in german "Sehnsucht" for the sea. So I started to hear the piece as a journey, along the coasts around the waves, people, and cities. It is like an imaginary journey and returning to the same haven to share the stories.

The marimba solo and tape play together and complete each other rather than the tape being in background accompaniment. I had a Turkish pop influence that I grew up with, and it evolved more to the IDM world (intelligent dance music) that I like to listen to and produce. So I always wanted to combine marimba with those sound worlds.

I had immense fun during the composing process; I hope you will also have it while playing!

Review:

“Azure” is an advanced, nine-minute work for solo marimba and tape suitable for a professional player or advanced university student. Commissioned for the 7th World Marimba Competition in Stuttgart, Germany (2022), it requires the performer to groove comfortably in constantly changing odd meters along with a click track. While the marimba part does not present an overwhelming technical challenge, it requires a substantial level of musical maturity. Along with the score, the player is granted access to the backing track with and without click track.

The composer cites a longing, or Sehnsucht, for the sea as the primary influence for the piece. The music immediately puts the listener on an island coast, with the first 40 seconds of tape introducing a soothing aquatic timbre and distant bird calls. After a short ritardando, the marimbist enters into a duet with the tape, which now presents the sounds of fleeting waves and a thick, resonant bass line reminiscent of electronic dance music. The audio playback becomes increasingly intense and unapologetically electronic, while the marimbist continues unrelentingly for several minutes, until a sudden arrival at a slower, more ominous middle section, during which the performer plays more lyrical single-line passages. The marimba part gradually picks up steam, supported by increasingly aggressive electronic bass. Finally, there is a brief return to the soothing sounds of the introduction, while the marimbist restates the opening material, carrying the listener to the end.

Emil Kuyumcuyam masterfully combines different influences to create a piece that is soothing, exciting, intense, and stunningly beautiful. I would not be surprised to see “Azure” become a staple of the marimba repertoire.

—Marco Schirripa

Commissioned by the International Percussion Education Association Shanghai for the IPEA Competition.

A 3-note ostinato pattern characterizes the opening of Youth by Emil Kuyumcuyan. Throughout the piece, this and similar patterns alternate with more complicated contrasting passages. At one point, a two-bar left hand melody is provided and the performer is invited to improvise with the right hand for as long as they wish. Another contrasting passage occurs after that and the piece closes with the same 3-note pattern with which it began.

Included on the album Better Me.

Created for and premiered in the multimedia concert “Better Me” at Heidelberger Frühling on 11 April 2024, by Vanessa Porter and Emil Kuyumcuyan.

Created for and premiered in the multimedia concert “Better Me” at Heidelberger Frühling on 11 April 2024. Co-composed and performed by Vanessa Porter and Emil Kuyumcuyan.

Created for and premiered in the multimedia concert “Better Me” at Heidelberger Frühling on 11 April 2024, by Vanessa Porter and Emil Kuyumcuyan.

Created for and premiered in the multimedia concert “Better Me” at Heidelberger Frühling on 11 April 2024, performed by Vanessa Porter and Emil Kuyumcuyan.

Created for and premiered in the multimedia concert “Better Me” at Heidelberger Frühling on 11 April 2024, performed by Vanessa Porter and Emil Kuyumcuyan.

Created for and premiered in the multimedia concert “Better Me” at Heidelberger Frühling on 11 April 2024. Co-composed and performed by Vanessa Porter and Emil Kuyumcuyan.

Created for and premiered in the multimedia concert “Better Me” at Heidelberger Frühling on 11 April 2024, performed by Vanessa Porter and Emil Kuyumcuyan.

Created for and premiered in the multimedia concert “Better Me” at Heidelberger Frühling on 11 April 2024, by Vanessa Porter and Emil Kuyumcuyan.

Premiered at TONALi in Hamburg on 15 December 2023 by Nina Gurol and Vanessa Porter as part of the project “58 Minuten”.

In those days when I was writing Cultural Dysfunction, the dominant themes in society were the refugee crisis, the rise of right-wing populism, integration, fear of the impact of the cultural clash and society's reactions.

Naturally, this certain atmosphere thus shaped me and inspired me to write this work. Discord and collision in people's living spaces, where differences collide, and at the same time acclimatisation.

My imagined sound world was permeated with irrelevant motifs merging into each other, contrasts converging and uniting, and force through physical effort. While composing this virtuoso work, I was inspired by the playing of pianist Felix Nagl and percussionist Lucas Gerin, whereupon I dedicated the work to these two artists.

Premiered at the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on 25 March 2025, performed by Lukas Böhm (percussion), Emil Kuyumcuyan (percussion) and Agostinho Sequeira (percussion).

Premiered at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Lübeck on 22 July 2025, performed by Alexej Gerassimez, Sergey Mikhaylenko, Lukas Böhm and Emil Kuyumcuyan.

Premiered at the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival in Lübeck on 22 July 2025, performed by Alexej Gerassimez, Sergey Mikhaylenko, Lukas Böhm and Emil Kuyumcuyan.

Commissioned by TRIO vis-à-vis. Premiere: 10 May 2025, Stuttgart (TRIO vis-à-vis).

Pilgrim Trance grows out of a collision of councils and rituals. The memory of Eastern Christian liturgies, which form part of my cultural background, meets a Buddhist ceremony I encountered on a recent journey. Across these different influences, I did not find the same experience, but a strikingly similar architecture: a single melodic line carried by many voices; words repeated until they dissolve into rhythm; and a community that slowly shifts from discourse into trance.

The fragmented text of the piece moves between languages like a group of pilgrims arriving from distant cities. It imagines a Nicene council inhabited by many cultures, as it might exist today – touched even by Buddhist influences – trying to carve, out of disagreement and difference, one fragile line of breath they can walk together.

Premiered at the Montforter Zwischentöne festival on 27 November 2025 by the percussion classes of Karlsruhe, Frankfurt and Feldkirch. Commissioned by Montforter Zwischentöne.

Commissioned by TRIO vis-à-vis. Premiere: 10 May 2025, Stuttgart (TRIO vis-à-vis).