Ataç Sezer is one of the most artistically outstanding composers on the current music scene with his compositional oeuvre. His work is based on a musical education that is as broad as it is well-founded and diverse biographical experiences. Born in Istanbul, he initially studied Ottoman music, majoring in Ney, as well as piano and musicology. In 2002 he came to Kassel to begin his composition studies with the Argentinian Diego H. Feinstein. During this time, he also studied with Dieter Schnebel in Berlin and master classes with Beat Furrer and Mark Andre. Sezer passed his artistic maturity examination in 2007. Studies in the master class with Matthias Pintscher at the University of Music and Theater Munich until 2010 completed his education.
The compositional and aesthetic questions that Ataç Sezer has been dealing with since then are a logical result of the complexity and diversity of these experiences. On the one hand, Sezer is pursuing a systematic, discursive examination of the modal tonal systems of the Arab world; and this is accompanied by reflection on the possibilities of microtonal and electronic music from a European perspective. On the other hand, Sezer is pursuing a systematic examination of the techniques and sounds of Ottoman-Turkish instruments such as the long-necked flute Ney or the bowed box-necked lute Kemençe; and this is accompanied by the exploration of new notation systems and playing techniques for European instruments.
The Ottoman-Turkish and European cultural areas, their artistic and compositional practices, mark the double framework for Ataç Sezer's works. However, in terms of composition and performance practice, they form little more than a material basis that Sezer has the greatest knowledge and virtuosity of and from which he advances to an individual musical style. The composition Peshrev Prelude for ney, electric bass and electronics from 2008 was the first to formulate this in a paradigmatic way. The traditional elements do not fall into a false synthesis or symbiosis in which one or the other appears as an exotic, picturesque addition, but rather enter into a mode of mutual reflection and penetration. In this way, Sezer formulates a critical and at the same time independent artistic-aesthetic position in the discourse on new music, which opposes the post-colonialist perspective on classical music from the Arab or Asian region that often prevails today.
Ataç Sezer's work is based on the primacy of new, literally unheard-of sound. Systematically and on the basis of comprehensive compositional expertise, Sezer develops his ideas in a series of works that examine the most diverse instrumentation in terms of this dimension of sound. The recordings on the CD "Garden in Eden" bear eloquent witness to this.