Kamran Ince

Kamran Ince is a Turkish-American composer, cello player, and pianist. He was born in Montana, but at the age of six moved with his family to Turkey. He entered the Ankara State Conservatory at the age of 10, where he began studying cello and piano, and took composition lessons with İlhan Baran. In 1977 Ince entered the İzmir University where he studied composition with Muammer Sun, but returned to the United States in 1978. He enrolled at the Oberlin College in Ohio in 1980, earning a bachelor of music degree in 1982, and went on to complete his master’s and doctoral degrees from the Eastman School of Music in 1984 and 1987. His teachers there included David Burge (piano), Joseph Schwantner, Christopher Rouse, Samuel Adler, and Barbara Kolb (composition). Ince won a Rome Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987, and the Lili Boulanger Memorial Prize in 1988. In 1990, he moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan to become a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, and in 1992 joined the faculty of the University of Memphis, where he teaches composition and 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 has been 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). Although several of his works display this sudden movement between slow chord movements and the nattering of percussion 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).

MacDowell

MacDowell NYC

Studios

Van Zorn (formerly Kirby)

Kamran Ince

Studios

Van Zorn (formerly Kirby)

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