İlkim Tongur

"Ilkim Tongur is a Turkish-Canadian composer based in Calgary. Whether composing for solo, chamber, orchestra or electronic media, her compositions create a capturing atmosphere in a highly expressive context. Her music is influenced by the multicultural texture of Istanbulite and Canadian communities capturing the elegant combinations of their music and creating a passionate fusion of their expressive qualities. She explores transformations of a variety of musical materials, ideas and atmospheres derived from the varied musical cultures. Her works are an elegant reflection of an aesthetic exploration of the blending of musical ideas between and among different traditions that resulted from centuries of communal interaction, all of which are distilled by her own contemporary sensibility. As a composer, she has been commissioned by the GroundSwell, Jari Juhani Piper, Sarah Kirsch, Lacie Marchand, Edmonton New Music Showcase and Damla Tuncer. Her works are performed in Canada, Turkey, Switzerland, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Among the leading ensembles performed Tongur’s music are Hastings Philharmonic Orchestra, Land’s End Ensemble, Musica QuLacoza, Winnipeg Symphony Wind Ensemble, and TimpePoint Ensemble. Ilkim completed composition and conducting undergraduate, and master’s programs at the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University in Istanbul, composition master’s degree at the University of Manitoba and she holds a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Calgary. Hasan Uşarsu, Babür Tongur, Michael Matthews and Allan Bell. were her composition teachers. Her Dissertation topic focused on combinations of several musical traditions, architectural features and cultural symbols of varied cultures who shared the Golden Horn peninsula and composing of a multi-movement large-scale work based on this research, Sacred Voices of the Golden Horn."

Biography taken from https://ilkimtongurcom.wordpress.com/about/.