Story by GCSU senior Cale Strickland

D r. Evren Kutlay is the spring 2024 Martha Daniel Newell Visiting Scholar. Thanks to an endowment by Georgia College & State University alumna Martha Daniel Newell, experts in the arts, humanities and social and physical sciences have been visiting campus for over a decade.

Kutlay is the embodiment of scholarship and the interdisciplinary nature of Georgia College’s liberal arts mission.

Born and raised in Turkey, she developed a love for the piano early on. One of her neighbors, a professor, taught lessons from home. Transfixed by the sounds coming from her apartment, Kutlay would listen for hours through the walls of her family’s home.

“I could hear her teaching the piano, and I was always there and listening, even from afar,” Kutlay said.

In fact, it was this same neighbor who encouraged her to take the next step in her musical journey: auditioning at a local conservatory. She was told she was “too old” to be a piano student. She was, however, accepted as a violin student. Still enamored with the piano, she took private lessons with her neighbor while studying violin.

Early on, it became clear she was a gifted pianist. She took three years’ worth of lessons in one year.

“I was curious,” Kutlay said. “I loved listening and just watching and listening and so on, and I had that passion in me, somehow.”

Because of her preternatural knowledge and skill, she was able to transfer out of the violin program and pursue other subjects, including mathematics. 

At the University of West Georgia, on a full scholarship, starting her MBA, Kutlay didn’t realize the college had a music department until professors and faculty members learned of her interest in and love for the piano and encouraged her to apply.

“In the first semester, I was told that at the University of West Georgia, there is also a music department,” Kutlay said. “I went there and asked professors if there were pianos I could practice with — just by myself. When we talked about my musical background, they encouraged me to enter the auditions, because I was already a fit in terms of my repertoire.” 

The next semester, she was accepted to the college’s music department as a graduate student. Today, she has performed across Europe and the United States, written books and contributed to various Turkish music journals, the national newspaper Star and the public broadcast channel TRT. 

She says her extensive resume and list of accomplishments are the result of taking opportunities as they arise.

“Nothing was planned,” Kutlay said. “So, that’s what I would say to these [Georgia College] students. You should pursue your passions, dreams, and you should expand your horizons. Explore things and ask questions about them and see that nothing is separate.”

That idea — exploring and questioning topics, seeing that nothing is separate and everything is interconnected — is the basis of Kutlay’s class this semester, “East meets West or West meets East?” It’s also connected with a public performance and lecture she’s hosting in April, and a further example of her commitment to Georgia College’s liberal arts mission. 

Her course focuses on the back-and-forth relationship of the music in the Ottoman Empire and the countries that once formed the Ottoman Empire, Europe and the United States. Class opens with a discussion of the empire’s influence over Western music before shifting to the West’s impacts on Eastern music, since the French and Industrial Revolutions.

The intersection of music and history is not exclusive to her course. A lifelong learner with a wide range of academic interests, Kutlay became fascinated with the gaps in music literature between different genres and eras. She has dedicated her career to filling these gaps in — through a multi-disciplined approach.

“You may ask, ‘How is it related to math?’ My systematic approach to things, which I think I inherited from my problem-solving abilities, which come from what I learned studying math. So,” Kutlay said, “those are the things that I’m combining and working on and bringing as a new output, a niche that didn’t exist in academic literature at Georgia College.”

Kutlay’s performance will be at 7:30 p.m. on April 4, in Max Noah Recital Hall. It will examine music’s effects on diplomacy. Some of the pieces are chamber ensembles, and Georgia College students will also perform.

Kutlay will give a lecture at 6 p.m. on April 12, at Allied Arts of Milledgeville, further expanding on topics covered in her course. She will discuss Western musicians who spent time in Turkey, particularly Istanbul, and their influence over the region and its music. All Georgia College faculty, students, staff and alumni are encouraged to attend.