Currently based in İzmir, Turkey, Füsun Köksal is a composer whose works have recently been programmed in various contemporary music festivals such as Berliner Festspiele MaerzMusik and Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, among several others in Germany; Warsaw Autumn in Poland; Via Stellae Festival in Spain; Fertile Crescent and Mise-En Music Festival in the U.S.; Centre Acanthes in France; and Timsonia in Romania. She graduated from Hochschule für Musik Köln and received her Ph.D. in composition from the University of Chicago.
Recently awarded the Mario Merz Prize in Music and a Civitella Ranieri Music Fellowship, Köksal is recipient of numerous international awards including the 6th International Henri Dutilleux Composition Competition and 3rd International German-Polish Composition Prize. She won several awards of the SCI/ASCAP composition commissions and was nominated for the 3rd Pablo Casals Award in 2009.
The prominent ensembles and performers who have featured her music include Derek Bermel, Agata Igras, Richard Haynes, Horia Dumitrache, Alfredo Ovalles, Matei Ioachimescu, International Ensemble Modern Academy, E-Mex Ensemble, Penderecki String Quartet, Ensemble Calliopée, Ensemble U, Hezarfen Ensemble, Pacifica Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, Turkish National Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble, and Vertix Sonore.
At MacDowell, she worked on a string orchestra piece commissioned by Fondazione Merz in Italy. She also finished a work for bass clarinet and violoncello to be performed at the end of 2023. About her time at MacDowell, she said “it has been an intense and extremely prolific period of time.”
