Timur Selçuk

As a vocalist and composer, Timur Selçuk has carried on the time-honored tradition that his father established. After attending Lycée de Galatasaray, he received his vocal, harmony and piano education at the Istanbul Municipality Conservatory. In 1964, he went to Paris and attended L’École Normale de Musique de Paris. Beginning in 1965, he began composing songs based on the poems of Ümit Yasar Oguzcan and Faruk Nafiz Çamlibel. In 1967, Selçuk recorded his first record. When this record gained attention, he composed songs based on the poems of Orhan Veli Kanik, Nazim Hikmet and Attila Ilhan. He began giving concerts and performing his songs on the piano in front of audiences. He concentrated on his chamber music and composition for theater and film after he returned to Turkey in 1974. In 1977, he founded the Istanbul Chamber Orchestra. With this orchestra, he performed his interpretations of pieces selected from the Turkish traditional music in addition to his own songs. The same year, he founded the Çagdas Müzik Merkezi (Contemporary Music Center) under his own name, and began educating new students. Starting in 1975, he took vocal lessons from Saadet Ikesus. In both his orchestral productions and arrangements as well as in his stage and film music, he implemented an orchestration rich with rhythmic, melodic and harmonic elements, used modern composition techniques, and achieved a dramatic, lyric and musical atmosphere. Selçuk considers his knowledge of Turkish traditional music to be a resource and often draws on it in his work.