Kamran Ince

Kamran İnce (born 1960) is a composer of Turkish-American descent.

His life so far

Kamran İnce was born in Glendive, Montana, but at six moved with his family to Turkey. He entered the Ankara Conservatory at the age of ten, where he began studying cello and piano, and he took composition lessons with İlhan Baran. In 1977 came further composition studies at İzmir University with Muammer Sun, but İnce returned to the United States in 1978, where he enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio, and went on to complete his master’s and doctoral degrees from the Eastman School of Music. His teachers included David Burge, Joseph Schwantner, Christopher Rouse, Samuel Adler and Barbara Kolb. In 1987, İnce won the Prix de Rome and the Guggenheim Fellowship and the next year, he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan to become a visiting professor at the University of Michigan. In 1992 he joined the faculty of the University of Memphis, where he teaches composition, co-directs the University of Memphis Imagine New Music Festival. In addition, Kamran İnce founded the Center for Advanced research in Music at Istanbul Technical University, which he has directed since 1999.

His music

Journalist Blair Dedrick described İnce’s music as “characterized . . . by its ability to pinpoint the sonorous strains present in the jagged dissonance of elements such as a smooth cello yearning suddenly broken by an incongruent spatter of drum beats.” Although several of his works display this sudden movement between slow chord movements and the nattering of percussion and / or instruments, such as "Flight Box" (2001) or "Hammer Music" (1990), other pieces use a more consistent texture, such as the energetic "F E S T for New Music Ensemble and Orchestra" (1998) or the subdued "Curve" (1998).

His music can be described as post-minimalist, that is, it makes use of near repetition, tonal language, but avoiding traditional tonal functionality, and influence of world music. Indeed, his "Concerto for Orchestra, Turkish Instruments and Voices" uses an actual Turkish ensemble mixed with Western instruments.

His musical palette tends toward large-scale works, mainly for orchestra or ensemble; he has also composed several smaller works for either solo instrument ( "In Memoriam: 8/17/99" for piano ) or solo instrument and piano ("Lines" for clarinet and piano).

List of works

Orchestra

"Academica" (1998)

"Before Infrared" (1986)

"Cascade" (1993)

"Concerto for Orchestra, Turkish Instruments (ney, kemence, 2 zurnas) and Voices (2002)

"Concerto for Piano and Orchestra" (1984)

"Deep Flight" (1988)

"Domes" (1993)

"Ebullient Shadows" (1987)

"F E S T for New Music Ensemble and Orchestra" (1998)

"Hot, Red, Cold, Vibrant" (1992)

"Infrared Only" (1985)

"Lipstick" (1991)

"Plexus" (1993)

"Remembering Lycia" (1996)

"Symphony No. 1 "Castles in the Air" (1989)

"Symphony No. 2 "Fall of Constantinople" (1994)

"Symphony No. 3 "Siege of Vienna" (1995)

"Symphony No. 4 "Sardis" (2000)

"Viper's Dance" derived from Symphony No. 1, 1989 revised in 1993.

Large Ensemble

"Aphrodisiac" (1997)

"Arches" (1994)

"Evil Eye Deflector" (1996)

"Flight Box" (2001)

"Hammer Music" (1990)

"In White" (1999) Violin Concerto.

"Istathenople" (2003)

"Love under Siege"(1997)

"Night Passage" (1992)

"One Last Dance" (1991)

"Requiem Without Words" (2004)

"Sonnet #395" (1991)

"Split" (1998)

"Strange Stone" (2004)

"Turquoise" (1996)

"Turquoise/Strange Stone" (2005)

"Waves of Talya" (1989)

Small Ensemble (Chamber)

"Curve" (1996)

"Drawings" (2001)

"Fantasie of a Sudden Turtle" (1990)

"Kaç" ("Escape") (1983).

"Köcekce" (1984) (After a Black Sea folk dance).

"Lines" (1997)

"Matinees" (1989)

"MKG Variations" (1998) version for cello."MKG Variations" (1998) version for guitar.

"Tracing" (1994)

Piano

"The Blue Journey" (1982)

"Cross Scintillations" (1986)

"In Memoriam: 8/17/99" (1999)

"Gates" (2002)

"Kevin's Dream" (1994)

"My Friend Mozar"t (1987)

"Sheherazade Alive" (2003)

"An Unavoidable Obsession" (1988)

External links

*http://www.kamranince.com/index.htm
*http://www.eamdllc.com/composers/ince.asp
*http://www.schott-music.com/autoren/KomponistenAZ/show,15123.html