Germany
Musician, Composer
Hijri Unknown-Present (AH); Common Era Unknown-Present (CE)
Aylin Aykan is a pianist and composer, born in Munich to a Turkish family from Istanbul. Ms. Aykan studied philosophy and musical science at Ludwig Maximilian University. She received a Concert degree in Chamber Music at the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich where she studied piano with John Strathern. According to critics, her musical style shows both “intelligence and intuition". Ms. Aykan’s “search for her roots” let her focus shift away from the typical classical music genre. Over the past decade, Ms. Aykan has become known through her cross-cultural projects, specifically her programs which present musical connections across different cultures in both an understandable and entertaining way. Ms. Aykan co-produced the poetic/musical program Pesüs, which played on the border separating Greek and Turkish Cyprus. From 2001 to 2004 she organized the highly successful music program for the cultural festival Turkish October in Munich. In 2004 the festival was awarded by the Körber Foundation as a “German-Turkish Dialogue Project.” In 2007 she ran a workshop for “Cross-Cultural Chamber Music” in Rotterdam, NL. Ms. Aykan’s first performance of “voices, shadows,” a commissioned composition for “Deutschlandfunk broadcasting,” took place in Cologne, Germany in 2007. One of her most recent projects is a program where classical western and traditional oriental music encounter in arrangements of religious and mystical tunes for piano, church organ, oud and voice. First presented for the international “Daniel Pearl Music Days 2008” at a Protestant church in Munich, the project is meant to overcome borders and be expanded to as many different houses of worship as possible.
