Biography

Born in Istanbul in 1983, Turgut Erçetin is a composer specializing in orchestral and chamber music with an expertise in computer music and sound studies engaging with space and embodied acoustic environments.

Erçetin received his doctorate in composition from Stanford University in 2014, where he later worked as a researcher at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) in 2015 with a focus on embodied acoustics and 3D modeling of virtual and physical spaces. Putting this research framework in practice, Erçetin participated in projects at CCRMA, for which he contributed his acoustic measurements of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and worked on a computational model that enabled the research team to simulate its inner acoustics.

Awarded with the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD Fellowship in 2016, Erçetin has since expanded his research through projects that unpack architecture no longer standing — namely the 6th-century Basilica of St. John in Ephesus and the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople (please see research). Following the Künstlerprogramm, he moved to Germany, where his artistic praxis led to long-term collaborations with the SWR Symphonieorchester, Ensemble Musikfabrik, Arditti Quartet, and ELISION Ensemble, as well as projects with distinguished ensembles such as Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, JACK Quartet, and Ensemble Mosaik, all together with whom he has further unfolded his research through hypergeometry, tracing spatial facets through design, sound, and memory that otherwise are outside of reach, while also re-thinking architecture beyond enclosures.

With compositional works being performed at leading New Music festivals, such as the Donaueschinger Musiktage, ECLAT Festival, Ultraschall Festival, MärzMusik, and Manifeste, a selection of these commissions are featured on his portrait CDs, “in-between” (Wergo, 2025) and “Panopticon Specularities” (Edition RZ and Deutschlandfunk, 2019).

These collaborations and the related research have also led to publishing Erçetin’s writings in scholarly journals, such as MusikTexte, as well as to giving lectures on his compositional praxis, for example at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe, Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, Institut für Elektronische Musik und Akustik in Graz, Det Kongelige Danske Musikkonservatorium, Stanford University, Columbia University, and the University of Chicago. For a selection of these publications, please see writings.

Currently working on new projects, which include a work written for oboe and string trio for Ensemble Musikfabrik, Erçetin is developing a book project that activates architecture, embodied acoustics, and hypergeometry that extends beyond three dimensions, addressing processes that condition embodied happenings and simultaneities therein.