Müziksev > About Us

İZMİR KÜLTÜR SANAT VE EĞİTİM VAKFI VE MÜZİKSEV

MÜZİKSEV
İKSEV, with its MÜZİKSEV project, also aims to be of assistance in preserving the historical texture of the city. An ‘’Alsancak House’’ which is one of the symbols of the magnificent city culture past of İzmir at the address of Atatürk caddesi No: 458 Alsancak is being restored and prepared to be MÜZİKSEV.

In MÜZİKSEV, whose arrangements are made with the fund provided by İzmir Development Agency and is planned to be actualized in May 2011, traditional Turkish music instruments donated by Güner Özkan will be meticulously exhibited. MÜZİKSEV, whose basis is formed of the record collection of deceased Celasun Muşkara, where valuable notes belonging especially to contemporary Turkish composers, mainly being the works that have participated in Dr.Nejat Eczacıbaşı National Composition Contest and music books as well as records, cassette tapes and CD’s will be possible to be preserved, will serve as a center that the youth receiving music education, researchers, musicologists and city people who are interested in music can benefit from.

İKSEV aims to reflect the rich musical past of our country and city in MÜZİKSEV. The visitors will have the opportunity of listening to the sounds of the exhibited instruments with advanced technology product equipment, from the performances of their best interpreters and will be able to benefit every kind of recordings that will be available in the sound archives, from the gramophone records to festival concerts, from the performances of famous artists to the recordings of the important congresses and seminars mainly being Culture Congresses.

The International Summer Courses, workshop studies and masterclasses that will be organized in MÜZİKSEV will contribute to the musicians of various countries to meet and socialize under a single roof.
The small hall built in MÜZİKSEV’s garden will also bring a solution to the hall problem of the region to some extent. Moreover, this hall will provide the facilities that the youth can receive a more radical and higher-quality music education by the courses at various levels, conferences, concerts, workshops and exhibitions that will be organized by İKSEV with its extensive resources.

As known, İKSEV has also been organizing ‘’Dr. Nejat Eczacıbaşı National Composition Contest’’ biennially. This Contest that has been organized since 1996 with the purpose of encouraging our young composers, has added 150 new works to the contemporary Turkish Music so far. These works need to be reproduced, vocalized, perpetuated and credited to wide masses. This requirement is not only for the works of our young composers, but it covers the creations of all our Contemporary Composers. Printing, preservation of these works that are the most precious pieces of our musical culture and ensuring them to be performed at the universal level are among the goals of MÜZİKSEV.

While İzmir Foundation of Culture, Arts and Education carries on the works of MÜZİKSEV it considers as a valuable contribution to Izmir, the highly warm reaction and support that this effort receives in art circles is very pleasing.

Muziksev sound archive presentation
After Thomas Edison around 1880 invented sound recording, the sound panorama of humanity changed radically. For the first time it was possible to capture and preserve the elusive vibrations of music in the air. The industrial sector of music recording and record production grew very quickly in the XX Century and became very influential both financially and culturally. Historical moments acquired their soundtrack, and the evocative quality of sound revealed itself to be the best to represent cherished or dramatic moments in a person's life.
The technologies kept also quickly changing. From Edison's cylinder to the flat disc, from acoustic to electric, from fragile 78 to indestructible vinyl, carrying with them innovations in marketing, design and taste. The latest revolution was the switch to digital recording, production and distribution through the Internet, that makes possible for each of us to reach an ocean of music through our fingertips even while traveling.
A sound archive and a record library is a memory of this latest era of sound that humanity traversed and serves many purposes. It's a testimony of cultural changes, a repository of precious materials, a source for inspiration for musicians and listeners, a nostalgic visit and a look to the future.
Many people think that one can find “everything” on the Internet. This is only a ready made phrase, or the expression of a potential, but not the truth. Digital information has its own fragilities, as we all know. A ruined Cd becomes unplayable and the music disappears, while from even an old scratched 78 one can still listen to it. And much of recorded music did not make the transition to vinyl from 78, and even less to Cd from vinyl. Not to mention the many other sound carriers that are now archelology, from wire recordings to Stereo 8 and Laserdisc. Especially regional and uncommercial music is always in danger to disappear, carrying with itself a piece of our culture and traditions. Early interpretations of classical music and opera, independent productions in jazz and rock, local folk artists: all these treasures are preserved in a sound archive until some listeners will discover them in the future.
Digital technologies give us a chance to organize, preserve and make available for listening these artifacts; and sound archives play an increasingly important role besides the great libraries of the world, like the Library of Congress of Washington and the British Library of London, where the original artifacts are preserved waiting for new technologies that will be able to read a broken record or better clean old recordings from hiss and scratch: no sound is too humble to be not able to say us something about the people who made it and their times and places, and the first collections in the Muziksev archive are only the seeds for a flourishing to which everybody can contribute. The sound archive is a place for the music student, for the music lover, and for everybody who is curious about how it changed with our and our ancestors' lifes, and we warmly invite everybody to visit and listen.

Francesco Martinelli