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At the Ottoman Bank Museum
Music and Politics: Stalin and Music, the Shostakovich Phenomenon

Composer and Assoc. Prof. Hasan Uçarsu will be joining us at "Music and Politics" this month to consider the music policies applied in the Soviet Union during the Stalin period together with the life and work of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. The lecture will be held at the Museum on Wednesday, May 18, at 6:30 p.m. and will be free of charge. Following Hasan Uçarsu's presentation, Emine Serdaroğlu on piano and Dilbağ Tokay on cello will perform the first part of Shostakovich's sonata for cello and piano.

In his lecture, Hasan Uçarsu examines how much a controlled aesthetic understanding - one where the leader and his party's expectations shape and direct art so that the government controls and applies its own guidelines to it - can be determining of a country's music. Uçarsu will discuss whether/and to what extent a highly creative composer like Shostakovich had to compromise his artistic identity under such limiting conditions and how he created himself.

"Music and Politics" addresses the interface of music and politics by exploring musicians and their compositions within the context of the political structure of their times.

Hasan Uçarsu was born in 1965 in Istanbul. He began playing the flute in primary school and continued his musical training part time in the Istanbul Municipality Conservatory. In his last year of high school he took private lessons from Muammer Sun and after graduating from the Kadıköy Anadolu high school (1983), following Sun's advice, he continued his musical education studying composition at the State Conservatory of Mimar Sinan University. His bachelor-level studies in composition were under Ahmed Adnan Saygun and his master-level studies were with Cengiz Tanç. He also took lessons from Cemal Reşit Rey, Bülent Tarcan, İlhan Usmanbaş, Afşar Timuçin and Ahmet Yürür. In 1994, he went to the US where he worked under the guidance of George Crumb and Richard Wernick. Completing these studies in 1997, he obtained his Ph.D. in composition from the University of Pennsylvania and was made associate professor in 1998. Uçarsu currently teaches composition at the State Conservatory of Mimar Sinan University. His compositions have been awarded both in Turkey and abroad and performed at numerous concerts and festivals.  
Voyvoda Street Lectures
Music and Politics

Stalin and Music: the Shostakovich Phenomenon
Assoc. Prof. Hasan Uçarsu
Composition Department
State Conservatory
Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts


Wednesday, May 18, 2005 6:30-8:30 p.m.
Free admission.

The Ottoman Bank Museum
35/37 Banks (Voyvoda) Street
(0212) 334 22 70