Evin İlyasoğlu

EVİN İLYASOĞLU

Born in Istanbul, she started piano lessons at the age of seven with Marie Çobangil. She continued her music studies at the Istanbul Municipal Concervatory between 1957 and 1963 studying under Özen Veziroğlu, Şerif Yüzbaşıoğlu, and Raşit Abet while taking private lessons from Ferdi Ştatzer. She graduated from the American College for Girls (Robert College) in 1966 with  Halide Edip Adıvar Literature Prize.

She won the first prize in Yeni Dergi Critique’s Contest in 1968 with her essay on the  Nazım Hikmet poem, The Song of the Weeping Willow, where the jury comprised Asım Bezirci, Berna Moran and Memet Fuat.

She attended the Music Criticism and Comparative History of Music seminars at the Michigan State University, (U.S.A.) between 1969 and 1971.

She produced and presented Classical Western Music programmes on  Radio Istanbul for some twenty years starting in 1973. She was also the producer and presenter of a number of TV series between 1982 and 1992: Searches in Music, Musical Interviews, From our World of Music and Music from Yesterday to Tomorrow.

She won the Turkish Language Society’s 1978 Radio and TV Language Prize with her radio series Folklore in Contemporary Music. Her book, Music Over Time, was commisioned to her in 1994 by the Yapı Kredi Bank, for its fifttieh anniversary. She was the curator of the Istanbul Music Exhibiton within the Habitat II conference in 1997. She is one of the founders of soprano Zehra Yıldız Foundation and head of the trustees of this foundation. She is also a board member of Mersin Music Festival.

Her reviews, essays and interviews have been published in numerous magazines, newspapers and encyclopedias since 1968. Her novel Theodora’s Enemies is translated into Greek and released by the Livanis Publishers of Athens in 2007.

In 2008 she received the Turkish Writers’ Sendicate Award  and the Special Award of the  Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Senate.

Currently she is a lecturer at the Boğaziçi University and the organizer of the weekly classical music concerts of Albert Long Hall. She has been the classical music reviewer of Cumhuriyet Daily since 1991. She is married to Prof.Dr.Eyüp İlyasoğlu and is the mother of Ekin İlyasoğlu Muslu.

Books:

Twentyfive Turkish Composers (In English)-(Pan Publishers,1989)

On the Wings of Music-Interviews (Pan Publishers, 1992)

Gift to İlhan Usmanbaş (Sevda Cenap And Foundation Publications, 1994)

Music Over Time  (A history of Western Music)–includes a 10 CD set (Yapı Kredi Publishers, 1994, seventh edition 2004)

Cemal Reşit Rey “Journeys in a Musical World” –includes a 2-CD set (Yapı Kredi Publications, 1997)

Composers from Galatasaray- includes one CD (İyi Şeyler /Müzikotek, 1997)

Necil Kazım Akses “A journey from the Miniature to the Epic” –includes a 2-CD set (Yapı Kredi Publications, 1998)

Zehra’s Story –Remembrance of soprano Zehra Yıldız-includes one CD-(Boyut Publishers, 1998)

Contemporary Turkish Composers  (In English) (Pan Publishers, 1998)

İlhan Usmanbaş-“Those were the Immortal Seastones” –includes a 2-CD set (Yapı Kredi Publications, 2000)

Would you listen to Ayla? –A biographical novel of violonist Ayla Erduran-(Remzi Publishers, 2002)