Ömer Kurtuluş

Composer, music technologist and sound artist. Sonic archaeology: composing by excavating and re-authenticating an over-saturated archive.

35

Works

35 works, newest first.

Albums and projects

07 works 2026 A Mechanics of Almost Seven fixed-media electroacoustic works, each built from a single source instrument taken to the edge of its physical mechanism — impact, friction, tension, cavity, stored energy — until the instrument is almost gone. Anaculaton · Afterglare · Intergrain · Aerolith · Craquelure · Endobody · Remanence
02 works 2026 Strata An album on the sonic archaeologies — what survives of a sound after everything it has passed through. STRATA · STRATA II
03 works so far 2026 — ongoing What the C*rp*s An ongoing machine-listening project: corpora assembled from other people's recordings, navigated and recombined by Somax2 in live human–machine performance rather than replayed in their original order. Continuant · False Return · Lenition

2026

18

01 AI What the C*rp*s Lenition An alternation between two exciters that never quite settle into one another — falling water, punctual and ametric, and bowed metal, continuous and without attack — with Somax2 changing what it listens for as they trade places.

02 AI What the C*rp*s Continuant A sustained negotiation between a prepared-guitar corpus and an asymmetrical, darbuka-derived exciter, navigated in real time by Somax2.

03 AI What the C*rp*s False Return A heterogeneous vocal corpus treated as an unstable memory whose responses repeatedly disappear and return in altered form, driven by a dry saxophone solo as live exciter.

04 Electroacoustic A Mechanics of Almost IV Aerolith An air-column instrument beside a resonating metal surface: bass-clarinet breath and multiphonics exchanged with a bowed cymbal's slowly transforming partials.

05 Electroacoustic A Mechanics of Almost II Afterglare The zurna's penetrating upper spectrum treated as a physical condition: sustained tones extended, upper partials exposed and separated until the instrument's apparent singularity fragments.

06 Electroacoustic A Mechanics of Almost I Anaculaton Timpani reduced to impact → membrane → resonance → decay, then interfered with: attacks activate virtual resonating bodies beyond the instrument's scale, alongside wind, tunnels, machinery and distant environmental resonance.

07 Electroacoustic A Mechanics of Almost V Craquelure Two forms of stored energy — harp-string tension and ceramic brittleness — brought to a region where their behaviours become interchangeable.

08 Electroacoustic A Mechanics of Almost VI Endobody The body as an arrangement of internal spaces: vocal cavities and a bass drum's enclosed volume, working from their structural similarity.

09 Electroacoustic A Mechanics of Almost III Intergrain A continuous scraping gesture examined at a much smaller scale — a pick's ridge-by-ridge contact across a string, set against the güiro's related structure at another physical scale.

10 Electroacoustic A Mechanics of Almost VII Remanence What remains after a sound's apparent cause disappears: prepared-piano strings, muted attacks and soundboard resonance, with springs holding excitation that re-emerges later.

11 Electroacoustic an arche One cello, three performers, none of them sovereign over it. Bow pressure and contact — not pitch — are the ground, analysed live by FluCoMa and diffused into a quadraphonic ring in which no fixed origin can be located.

12 Electronic P(re)cise Raw data streams, pure sine waves and algorithmic micro-rhythms at the threshold between sterile digital perfection and the fragility of zero-error states.

13 Electroacoustic Arundo_Trachea The oboe stripped of all melodic function and reduced to its physical reality: a vibrating double reed and a hollow wooden tube, heard from inside the bore.

14 Electroacoustic Strata I STRATA A single cut through the ground of Istanbul: every historical layer sounds from the first second, separated only by height. Tuned to a pitch set measured from the call to prayer in Hagia Sophia — which is never heard.

15 AI Strata II STRATA II Twelve channels of Istanbul field recordings eroded in real time by three neural models, none of which has ever heard the city. What survives each pass is not the city but what a machine could still carry of it.

16 AI A Room For The Belated Sentences Written for TAK Ensemble at the KEAR Electroacoustic Residency: an ensemble playing alongside a corpus of its own pre-recorded material, navigated live by SoMax 2 and FluCoMa.

17 Electroacoustic Fazz A commission for Mikayla Farmer, for oboe with electronics and light. Première scheduled for 2026; venue to be announced.

18 Electroacoustic Yörüngeler A commission for Duo Latitude, for two saxophones with electronics and fixed media. Première scheduled for 2026; venue to be announced.

2025

05

19 Acoustic Animal For orchestra, performed by the Toledo Symphony Orchestra at Kobacker Hall.

20 AI eye | outside | eye A corpus built from Joëlle Léandre's double-bass and voice recordings made for Somax2 at IRCAM, navigated live by SoMax 2 against the performer in the room.

21 Acoustic Akdeniz Awarded First Prize in the Mediterraneo album project (Trieste Classica) and released on the album. Premiered by Flam-a Duo in Trieste.

22 Electronic A music for people to relax Written for Ensemble Ipse's "Flash Mass" in Central Park, where up to fifty composers' works sound simultaneously through Bluetooth speakers. A piece about the paradox of relaxation in urban public space.

23 Electroacoustic Focus Commissioned by FLYDLPHN. Ritual traditions from ancient Maya and Egyptian civilisations reimagined through American Expressionist poetry — a dialogue between ceremonial practice and contemporary artistic consciousness.

2024

01

24 Acoustic Uzun Hava A solo for tenor saxophone drawing on the Turkish "uzun hava" — a form defined by free rhythm and deep emotional expression.

2023

04

25 Electroacoustic The Consequences

26 Electroacoustic Lâ!

27 Acoustic Birr

28 Acoustic Ed È Subito Sera

2017

01

29 Acoustic A Lume Spento Selected for performance at the Süreyya Opera House, Istanbul, and premiered by Metin Mert.

2016

04

30 Acoustic Terra Incognito

31 Acoustic From The Strained Glasses And Streets Second Prize at the ISA Festival, Reichenau an der Rax. Known in Turkish as "Vitraylı camlardan, sokaklardan".

32 Acoustic False Solo Three short solos for B♭ clarinet. The first was awarded Second Prize at the International Woodwind Festival, Caddebostan Cultural Center, Istanbul.

33 Acoustic Humoresque Ridiculo In two movements. The first movement was awarded Second Prize at the 12th FIDELIO Piano Composition Competition.

2015

01

34 Acoustic Six Stylistic Pastiches Six short movements for wind quartet, each written through a different compositional idiom.

2013

01

35 Acoustic İhtilaf Selected for performance at the Süreyya Opera House, Istanbul, and premiered by Güneş Hizlilar.