Evrim Demirel
Evrim Demirel (born November 17, 1977) is a Turkish composer and jazz pianist. Evrim Demirel was educated in Izmir High School of Fine Arts and he studied piano with Nergis Sakirzade. Then he enrolled at Bilkent University in Ankara becoming a student in the Theory-Composition Department of the Music and Performing Arts Faculty. He earned his B.A. from this institution studying composition with Elhan Bakihanov, and went to the Netherlands for further music studies in Rotterdam Conservatory. He studied jazz piano under Rob van Kreeveld, electronic music under Rene Uijlenhoet and composition under Klaas de Vries and  graduated from the composition and jazz- piano departments in 2005. Afterwards he has studied composition with Theo Loevendie in Amsterdam Conservatory and obtained his master's degree in 2007. Demirel is known for his citations of styles and elements which could be called postmodern. About. "Combining Western and non-Western instruments Demirel explores a wide variety of timbres. He does this with a keen intellectual understanding of the various elements he works with, achieving an extraordinary freshness in his music." Being acquainted with Turkish composers since forty years or so, it is extremely refreshing for me to experience a young  highly talented Turkish composer like Evrim Demirel who is capable of exploiting his Turkish roots in music in a more abstract way than the use of folk melodies. Of course there is nothing against that, as we know from Bartók, but as Bartók has shown also, it is more valuable, though more difficult, to integrate elements of folk traditions or any other tradition into a personal idiom. I experience a great joy seeing Evrim going his way on this Path.