Composer and pianist Kaan Bulak works between cultures and explores diverse musical approaches. As a composer his works found their ways into the repertoires of international classical soloists, as a performer he developed a signature sound with for his augmented piano and strings ensemble, powered with custom-built radial speakers by Martion.
Kaan will be playing at the next MINSKBAR in Potsdam on Thursday, 20.6.2024, alongside a DJ Set by Perera Elsewhere.
FACTS:
1: You don’t do anything, you let it evolve.
2: I don’t know why people expect art to make sense, when they accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.
3: What if I told you, since we are in the matrix, all your analogue gear is actually digital.
QUESTIONS:
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
Nature.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
Someone let me play their piano as I was 5 and for some reason I looked for chords,
so I started taking lessons.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time?
Zeichnungen des Patienten O.T. – Einstürzende Neubauten
Pripyat – Marina Herlop
Lachrimæ Caravaggio – Hèsperion XXI, Jordi Savall
Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 – Aphex Twin
Bitches Brew – Miles Davis
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
My grandpa studied here at TU in the 1930s and despite all the things going on, he was able to enjoy excellent music here. Regardless of whatever is around you, art can put you in a state where nothing can get to you. Despite all the ugliness going on in the world and here, I cherish people who don’t give up and continue to run spaces such as Traumabar and Arkaoda where you can simply be.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Tiergarten.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
Film. I’d be trying to shoot those marvellous Rerberg multidimensional long-shots in
Tarkovsky movies.
7. What was the last record/music you bought?
Gebrüder Teichmann were playing after me at Club der Visionäre and they gifted me their record with Robyn Schulkowsky “Time Bends” – what a legendary record it is.
8. Who would you most like to collaborate with?
Gaye Su Akyol, I would love to accompany her pieces in a chamber music setting with the augmented piano and strings.
9. What was your best gig (as performer or spectator)?
Performing in the sold out grand hall of Opernhaus Zürich with soprano Siena Licht Miller and my ensemble. Ever since I have been working on an idea of an electro-acoustic “Liederabend”.
10. How important is technology to your creative process?
Currently I am working on my first opera and incorporating the idea of some form of intelligence in its score that will evolve over time by which all performances and casting decisions will have an influence on the opera itself and its future stagings. The details are still evolving but I must say that the discourse I have been following on the podcast “Interdependence” by Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst has inspired me a lot.
11. What can we expect from your next concert at DAS MINSK?
The concert at DAS MINSK will be an electronic perspective on everything that I’ve done from my album tracks to chamber music. It will be more about getting into a (danceable) flow than presenting a classical concert setting. This has been a great excuse to sample all the recordings I have in my archive and bring them to life in a new setting.
