By J. Cale Strickland

Dr. Evren Kutlay, this semester’s Martha Daniel Newell Visiting Scholar, gave a lecture-performance on the intersection between the arts and geopolitics, “Cultural Diplomacy and Music,” earlier this month.

Kutlay performed 12 pieces in total, seven solo and five alongside students, staff and faculty from the Department of Music.

She says the lecture-performance, which focused on the relationship between Eastern music and international relations, was the result of months of preparation.

“It took me several months because it was not only practicing them on the piano but researching, finding the related pieces from different libraries and archives across Europe, for some, reading manuscripts and doing translations, and coming up with a chronological story to present,” Kutlay said.

“So, it required the process of writing an article and performing in concert. Moreover, at GCSU, with music faculty and students, we conducted a series of rehearsals for the chamber music pieces, some of which had their debut after about a hundred years.”

The night was a collective effort by the Department of Music, as Kutlay was joined by the GCSU orchestra; Dr. Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, a percussionist; Dr. Youngmi Kim, a soprano; the Max Noah Singers Select Ensemble; and Dr. Bryan E. Hall, a violinist.

“It was a wonderful experience,” Kutlay said. “I enjoyed working together with them all. It has been such an excellent opportunity for me to bring an archival repertoire live by collaborating with them. As I mentioned, some of those pieces made their debut. Other than working together toward the presentation of the significance of the pieces, I assume our collaboration served for an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural experience that is promoted in a liberal arts university.”

In addition to serving as a crossroads between music, politics, language and history, the Max Noah Singers Select Ensemble sang in Turkish.

Of course many students, staff, faculty and members of the local community aren’t familiar with Eastern music. This is a challenge for Kutlay, whose work lies in the history of the art and its connections to, and implications in, other disciplines, but it is one she embraces wholeheartedly.

“Throughout my career, it has been a challenge to work in an area that is not familiar to large audiences,” Kutlay said. “But this challenge is meaningful because it includes the joy of exploration, the fascination of discovery and sharing the long-forgotten or unknown to us today.”

The Ottoman Empire’s Imperial Music School, which combined a plethora of musical approaches and styles, both Eastern and Western, was a focal point of Kutlay’s lecture-performance.

“The Imperial Music School acted like a music laboratory, experimenting with combining the Eastern and Western elements in the music, and musical ensembles, and came out with a unique musical language of Western music specific to Ottomans, which was highly appreciated in the Western music world back then.”

Though the school’s contributions to the music world are centuries-old, Kutlay believes the perspectives of its artists are timeless.

“To me, such an approach embraces the applications of ideas and strategies we appreciate and focus on today: diversity, equity and inclusion and thinking globally but acting locally,” Kutlay said.