Emre Araci | Keeper of Ottoman musical past

“He is authentically a citizen of the world of culture equally at home in the East and in the West. In that sense his last name is symbolically significant as well: Aracı means mediator or intermediary. Dr Aracı mediates between Ottoman and European, Turkish and British, Eastern and Western. He is at once a young Ottoman gentleman, a British aristocrat and a modern Turk. A perfect synthesis of cultures and musical traditions; and if he were alive Atatürk would have adored that".
Professor Talât S. Halman, GBE

Mavi Boncuk |

EMRE ARACI


 

Emre Aracı is one of Turkey's leading younger generation of musicologists. A graduate of the University of Edinburgh, he completed a doctorate on the life and works of the seminal 20th century Turkish composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun. He is founder director of the London Academy of Ottoman Court Music Ensemble, a specialist group performing European music composed in Ottoman Turkey. His critically acclaimed two CDs with this ensemble (released by Kalan Records), European Music at the Ottoman Court and War and Peace: Crimea 1853-56 have both been received with much enthusiasm in Turkey and abroad, and excerpts were broadcast on many international radio networks including Classic FM and BBC World Service. As a composer, his works include Elegy for Erkel (1993), Farewell to Haluk (1994), Marche funèbre et triomphale (1995), a violin concerto (1997), premiered in London in November 1999, The Turkish Ambassador's Grand March (1998) and In Search of Lost Time (2002), a privately commissioned symphonic poem, to mark the Golden Jubilee of HM Queen Elizabeth II. Dr Aracı is also active as a public speaker on topics relating to Turkish-European musical exchange and to this day has lectured at venues which ranged from the Boston Public Library and New York University to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Universities of Cambridge, Sarajevo and Vienna, as well as numerous appearances on a variety of TV and radio programmes. He also contributes regularly to Turkish newspapers and journals, as well as English-language periodicals including The Musical Times, International Piano Quarterly and Cornucopia. He recently completed his studies as post-doctoral Research Associate at the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies, University of Cambridge, where his research on the life and times of Giuseppe Donizetti Pasha was sponsored by the Türk Ekonomi Bankası (TEB). Dr Aracı is also the author of a book, Ahmed Adnan Saygun - Doğu Batı Arası Müzik Köprüsü, which was published by Yapı Kredi Yayınları in Turkey in September 2001. His second book, on the life of Giuseppe Donizetti, is shortly due for publication. At present he is preparing a third CD, sponsored by the Çarmıklı Family, which covers music from the reign of Sultan Abdulmecid, as well as his own violin concerto, entitled Bosphorus by Moonlight recorded at the Rudolfinum in Prague by the Prague Symphony Orchestra under his conductorship in August 2003.

European Music at the Ottoman Court

War and Peace: Crimea 1853-56

Performed by the London Academy of Ottoman Court Music, directed by Emre Araci and produced by Ates Orga (Kalan Records).



Performed by the London Academy of Ottoman Court Music, directed by Emre Araci and produced by Ates Orga (Kalan Records).