Composition Evaluation

In this second year of my Jazz composition studies I learned and experienced many different
things. I had the chance to work together with different people from different fields as well. As my
performance curve there were ups and downs all the time for certain things. However, this curve
was balancing in a way that when I had a down for a certain aspect, there was an up for another and
vice versa.

There were things that I was positive and negative about concerning this year. I will start with
negative things.

First of all, as a student I am not the best one. I skip classes on random subjects, oversleep all the
time and I am completely disorganized. This leads me behaving very similarly in my compositional
process too. It is whether I am full time composing because of deadlines or doing almost nothing.
This attitude keeps me away from becoming a better version of myself by consistent improvements,
even though I have all the chances to do so. I really want to change this and I am making right now
the first efforts to change this such as starting talking to the people that can guide me, waking up
earlier etc. So, the main improvement I want to do is on this topic, the rest is all tied to here.

Second negative self-critic is towards composing more jazz related works. During the winter
holiday I was together with my friends in Istanbul whom are deeply into the jazz performing world.
In the time I was with them, I got the influence to create, listen and focus on pieces from the
instrumentalist perspective. Which we described the character of those pieces with Paul during the
classes as “ECM” sound and aesthetic. After that holiday period I started making and working on
these types of music for jazz lineups such as the ones “conversation, edgy, run-in circles” in the
ongoing works folder. I still like the material but these works never got to be finished. One reason for
these to be left untouched was firstly my laziness another reason is that I was demotivated by the
feedback I got after showing them in the class. Looking from now, I think I should’ve kept it going to
finish them. I will work on them in the near future. The reason I couldn’t finish the work called
“omphalos” to this deadline of portfolio is due to the first attitude of mine, mentioned before. In
that piece there is also another aspect that holds me back, which is the harmonic material that I’m
using. I want to overcome that and finish it properly.

Now starting with the positive things from the first semester. As I wrote in my first semester
evaluation the piece “Through Tunisia” was a work that I feel happy about. There are some parts of
it that I would like to change but overall, I’m satisfied. MidwinterHoornScheep project was also
another success. It was my first experience as a composer in the “outside world” and I believe it
went well. I was really surprised by how much a stamp of “Gemeente Rotterdam” can change the
way people look at a project. I learned and experienced things I wasn’t expecting so.

Next thing in my timeline in terms of finished works was the Stolz Quartet piece. I found it as a
really nice opportunity and I wanted to benefit from it. Meeting and getting a first presentation from
the performers before starting to write or even thinking about it was a useful input. I understood
their capabilities and what they can provide me. So, thinking that in mind I wrote a virtuosic piece
based on the Haiku which I chose. The performance in the concert was not the best of them. I
believe this was caused by them playing the piece too fast in the Tempo. In general, I was satisfied
though. And I’ve received pretty good feedback from colleagues and friends which made me feel
good about it. The writing process of the piece was not a big challenge for me to be honest. It was a
short piece and I’ve focused on one general structure mainly. So, the piece was finished quite fast.
What I’ve learned was what works and what doesn’t work out of the ideas that I tried to realize. I
felt really motivated before and after knowing the fact that the piece was going to be performed by
high level of musicianship.

Moving on I was part in the WdKA Found Footage project. Where we as composers had to work
with the Audio/Visual students and create a short film together. Image was based on the material
they find from the City Archives. The material of the music was based on a piano and its capabilities.
I’ve gone through a nice experience in here compositionally speaking. Not so good in terms of
collaboration wise. It was my first time recording an instrument and using that as a material. So, all
the process of setting the mics, recording, experimenting, chopping, editing was really beneficial.
The relationship with the people in my group wasn’t really nice because they were treating me as if I
was their paid composer instead of a mutual collaboration. Though, this was solved when I stood my
ground and expressed myself towards the end. The outcome as a film, wasn’t my type. It was the
most cliché film ever could be as it’s story wise. I am happy with what I’ve did as sound/music. What
I’ve learned mostly was the experience seeing it in the cinema Lantaren Venster. The mix of the
sound was way much different in their sound system. It made me understand the enormous hard
work put in the production of a movie.

Next piece that I’ve finished is “deyyus roma” for viola and a wind sextet. I was inspired by
‘symphonies of winds’ by Stravinsky when we analyzed it in the Instrumentation class. So, I decided
to fuse that idea with the “Heimatlos” concept concert which was put towards me and Max. I
planned to write it for 6 winds and the instrument called Istanbul Kemence. I started writing it for a
friend of mine in Rotterdam who is an amazing Kemence player but she had to cancel it due to a
circumstance so I decided to change it to a viola instead. This time I did something different and I
arranged a meeting with the viola player before writing, to see her capabilities and to get advice on
what can I write for viola. I found that really helpful. The concept of the “Heimatlos” was to
encourage composition students to get inspiration from the folk culture whom feels connected to.
So, I created a story and wrote the piece basing it on folk and earthy elements. In the end the
performance was really nice. I saw that I’ve made a better choice on this one when choosing the
players. I learned a lot from this piece. One was getting to know an instrument and creating material
in specific to it. Second was treating the winds as families. Dividing it to 3 horn, 3 woodwind and
writing to them accordingly really worked in my opinion. Third learning was for conducting because I
had to conduct it twice and it wasn’t an easy piece to conduct so I improved in that aspect of mine.
Musicians were helping me and giving me advices in the rehearsals which I appreciate a lot. This
piece was played for the second time in the Schoenbergzaal in the Royal Conservatory, which had a
lot of different acoustics than the Muziekzaal in Codarts and I was surprised by how much the space
can have an impact on the sound.

Next piece I wrote and was “before I got my eye put out”. This piece was written as the result of a
Percussive Piano XXL project where we had to choose a poem of Emily Dickinson and create a piece
based on it. First, I had some difficulties working on this piece. That was mostly due to my
connection with the poem I chose. I didn’t analyze the poem thoroughly therefore I wasn’t feeling
super inspired by it. I was motivated to work with high level musicians but the poem as the basis
wasn’t working for a while and the limitation of using the piano as a percussion and the percussion
as a harmonic instrument wasn’t really helpful in the beginning. Then we sat with Paul to read the
poem and I realized that I didn’t understand anything from it before. I spent time with it afterwards
and my inspiration was back. We had a meeting with the musicians to see the first drafts and that
was really helpful. I finished the pieces and we had a rehearsal in Amstelveen which showed us what
was working and what not. In the end the concert was cancelled/postponed due to Mezzo-Soprano
losing her voice so I didn’t have the chance to hear the final outcome yet. My learnings from the
process was to understand the power of a voice in music. Also, I am not super happy with how I
composed this piece in terms of clarity of the ideas so I am planning to “recompose” the material
that I have during the summer.

In July 2018 I had the inspiration to write a piece about a massacre happened in Turkey in July
1993. That time I started gathering material about this for an electronic piece. I’ve found a press
speech of a survivor of this massacre whom happens to be a main character this event. I chopped
the parts that I could use and it was there waiting for me for almost a year. After I’ve done the piano
recordings, I got the idea to use the piano sounds for this piece. In the end I used only the speech
and the piano sounds which was recorded for the WdKA project. This was something that I did by
truly believing in it. Since I had an ideological reason behind in making this, I was giving a different
kind of an attention to it. I will share it on the remembrance day of the incident, 2nd of July on the
social media. I am quite satisfied with the end result. I realized that I want to do more of political
pieces. I learned a lot while making this piece on treating and different elements carefully on
electronic mediums.

In the end looking back at this year I see that I’ve finished some works that I am proud and some
which I am not so. As a student I am learning from both of them. I know that I could’ve done much
better because of the reasons I’ve mentioned in the beginning. I will get my head together and start
leading my life according to my dreams.

Ege Şahin