^{Esin Gunduz, PhD [she / her]}

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For the Turkish composer, vocal performer, and improviser Esin Gunduz, sound originates in the body. Her brave musical works shine a light on multiplicity and unity within our being, the psychological and spiritual undertones of our lives and life itself. She explores life’s energies as vibrations and visceral sensory experience, building landscapes from recorded-voices to surround acoustical instrumental textures, creating breathtaking acoustic vistas that emit an unveiling quality. Her works stemming from her interest in and research of timbre, traditional music, and ancient texts are prominent. These span mediums: acoustic, electroacoustic, or sound installation, and exist within diverse contexts: live / chamber music, sound for theatre, sound with image / moving image, or curating around exhibitions.


Dr. Gunduz had her works performed at Music in the Round, Nonclassical, and Birmingham Opera Company’s Opera Lab (across United Kingdom), Dark Music Days (Harpa Concert Hall, Iceland), National Sawdust’s Digital Discovery Festival (NyCity, Usa), and Banff Center (Alberta, Canada). Her work in close collaboration with Rosie Middleton, En-he-du-an-na-me-en, got several reviews. Often inspired by traditional music, Gunduz had private workshops with two ensembles of cantu a tenòre in Sardinia in 2023.

Gunduz was announced to be one of the Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning awardees of 2021, as a composer and the vocalist of her transformative oboe and voice duo with Megan Kyle:︎Senso di Voce. The duo got their debut album of improvisations with Henry Birdsey: ︎Tierceron released from the Other Minds (OM) records of San Francisco, (Jul 2023).

Originally from Istanbul, Turkey, she currently lives in New York State, Usa and travels regularly for her projects around the world.

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Gunduz’s prominent projects include electroacoustic works based on Sumerian tablets and a piece that turns an alchemical process into sound, ︎coniunctio (2020), for the NyCity-based duo Ultrafizz. Her first work around Sumerian culture, ︎Lights on Inanna (2017) had its stage premiere along with the premiere of Alvin Lucier’s new work Monteverdi Shapero (2019) at Banff Centre for the Arts. The second one, En-he-du-an-na-me-en (2020), is based on the text: Exaltation of Inanna by Enheduanna  (the world’s first author known by name, a Sumerian high-priestess, ca. 2300 BC). This work, that is for voice and electronics, was created in close collaboration with mezzosoprano Rosie Middleton and was commissioned by her for her Voice(less) Commissioning Series:


En-he-du-an-na-me-en was programmed for Iceland Dark Music Days before the pandemic, later been premiered for Nonclassical during Waterloo Festival (Jun 2021), had its second performance at the Iklectic Artlab (Jan 2022), its third performance as part of Music in the Round, Sheffield (Sept 2022) where the composer was hosted in a Q&A —all venues in England, Uk. As a scholar at the Foundazione Isabelle Scelsi, Rosie Middleton gave the work its fourth performance inside the late prolific composer Giacinto Scelsi’s living room in Rome, Italy (Oct 2022). The fifth performance of the work took place as part of Dark Music Days / Myrkir músíkdagar at the Harpa Concert Hall of Iceland (Jan 2023) where it got a review: ︎“A mesmerizing performance of a stunningly powerful work.” by 5:4. Sixth, seventh, and eighth performances of it were staged for Birmingham Opera Company - Opera Lab; open to public, these took place inside the New Street Station of Birmingham! Ninth and tenth performances happened as part of Music in the Round, this time in Portsmouth (Guildhall) and London (Woolwich Works), where the composer was hosted in a Q&A in the latter (Oct 2023).
︎Watch excerpts from En-he-du-an-na-me-en.


An ongoing multi-disciplinary collaborative project of hers is with Simon Wachsmuth, Emre Koyuncuoğlu, and Yasemin Nur. ‘Medea Traveling’ has been staged / showcased in its several versions: As a multidisciplinary event of performances, video art, installation, experimental sound installation, performance, and interactive theater (︎Medea 'on -a thin- line', 2022) which also had Esin as an improviser, as a theatre play (︎Medea Fine-Tuning / Medea'ya İnce Ayar, 2023), along with a feature art-film to be released in coming years (2025) --This project is being supported by Kulturakademie Tarabya / Tarabya Cultural Academy and Allianz Kulturstiftung. Her multi-disciplinary collaborative project with Roosmarijn Pallandt, where Gunduz envisions / creates sounds around field recordings / images / moving images by artist Pallandt, is in-progress.

Her works for museum/art-spaces with Senso di Voce are multi-faceted. Their six-channel sound installation︎Sounding Spaces (2021) was commisioned by and showcased at Play/Ground Festival. The second iteration of this sound installation Sounding Spaces: Passage (2022), was exhibited at the Frontispace Gallery of University of Rochester. An audio-visual output of Senso di Voce’s own curation, Sonic Impressions (2022) was developed in close relation to the Renaissance Impressions exhibition at the Memorial Art Gallery and was streamed in a webinar format of concert and talk by the institution. ︎Watch the audio-visual concert by Senso di Voce: Sonic Impressions.

This program includes Gunduz’s short work: Bogalele which was inspired by the throat-playing tradition of the Teke nomads in Turkey and cantu a tenòre tradition of Sardinia — a tradition that is listed under the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity category of Unesco. Often inspired by traditional music, Dr. Gunduz had the chance of having private workshops with two separate ensembles of cantu a tenòre in 2023: ︎Coro Gabriel (of Tempio Pausania) and ︎Tenore Santa Maria Otzana (of Ottana) in Sardinia.


Dr. Gunduz has presented Lights on Inanna (2016-17), her initial work that was based on Sumerian tablets, under the Music in the Cult section of the Society of Biblical Literature’s (Sbl) Annual Meeting in San Antonio,Tx (Nov. 2021). A researcher of vocal performance, Esin Gunduz has offered workshops for the Indeterminacy Consulting Group & Festival (Ca/Usa), CS1 Curatorial Projects (Usa), and Orchard of Pomegranates in Montréal (Ca). Dr. Gunduz has been an adjunct voice professor at Villa Maria College and holds a PhD in music composition from Suny University at Buffalo.
︎Watch a part of Dr Gunduz’s presentation of her phd dissertation “Lights on Inanna” under the Music and Cult section for Society of Biblical Literature.



*Having been trained in jazz and improvisation (for an undergraduate degree), Gunduz has been on stage as a vocalist & improviser since early 2000’s. Links to some recordings featuring her vocal performance and improvisations are listed below her original works, as well as a link to the list of her vocal performances prior to 2017. If you’d like to know more about her performance practice and how that ties to her compositional work, please feel free to contact her. Thank you.

esingunduz.com

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