„Echoes Of Life is a musical and visual journey that not only reflects on the thoughts and personal moments that continue to influence my life, but also portrays how I see my role as a classical musician today and how I want to expand my artistic horizon.

The dimensions and possibilities in which we can express ourselves artistically and connect with other art forms are things I have always been fascinated by. With this project I realize a long-held dream of mine to combine the worlds of music and architecture.

The collaboration with architect Hakan Demirel gives Echoes Of Life a physical dimension, a visual narrative. Hakan and his team of 19:4 architects have designed and created a digital world, inspired by an intense exchange of thoughts and ideas over the course of a year. The digital video installation that accompanies the entire length of the music is not a movie. There are no people in it, there is no action, no clear story line. The video shows architectural spaces that reflect the music. It evokes emotions and subtle references that hopefully will invite the audience to find their own stories, memories and echoes within those spaces.“

Hakan Demirel - Architect

Hakan Demirel was born in 1983 in Malatya, Turkey. After graduating from Malatya High School in 2001, he started his professional education at Yıldız Technical University, Faculty of Architecture in Istanbul. He attended several national and international competitions and workshops during his education and has several awards. He graduated from Yıldız Technical University in 2006 and in 2007 he visited diploma projects as a jury member at the same university. For his further studies he lived in New York between 2007 and 2008. Upon his return from New York, he and Arif Suyabatmaz formed a partnership and established Suyabatmaz Demirel Architects. In 2011 he has been selected as one of the most successful young architects of Europe by the “Europe 40 Under 40” Awards organized by The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, together with The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design. Architecture+Design & CERA Awards in 2014 was organised with the participations of Turkish Association of Architects in Private Practice(TSMD), Istanbul SMD and Izmir SMD. After being selected as ‘Best Young Architect’ in Turkey, he has been awarded with the prize ‘The Golden Emerging Architects’, given to 5 architects around the world by Architecture+Design & CERA Awards. He has been tutoring design project classes in Yıldız Technical University as part-time lecturer since 2012. He was a member of the Board of Directors of ‘Turkish Association of Architects in Private Practice’ in 2017-2021, where he became a member in 2015. He established Atelier Hakan Demirel in 2022 and continues his professional work in İstanbul.

https://hakandemirel.ist/

„While until the 19th century, a Prélude represented a prologue or introduction preceding the main work, Frederic Chopin established with his Préludes Op.28 a collection of 24 individual character pieces. They are very different from each other and yet together they form a complex oeuvre. To me they reflect life, which feels built on a series of Préludes: a collection of moments, all connected in some way. One step leads to the next – at times we walk faster, sometimes slower, other times in a circle and there are times we face a dead end and have to turn around. The end of one chapter is always the beginning of another. And as life sometimes is, we come across unforeseen obstacles, we stumble and we may find ourselves on a new, unknown path.

For this album, I selected seven contemporary compositions, and in combination with the Préludes they embody personal experiences and thoughts that have guided and shaped my life thus far. When I first experimented with this idea, I didn‘t anticipate what this would come to mean to me emotionally, and reveal to me musically. I recall the moment when I heard the entire compilation for the first time and realized that the contemporary works confirm how Chopin’s Préludes are modern, provocative and timeless.

We change over time and with the constant challenges we face with our society and environment. Our ways of thinking and our memories change, too. These shifts in perception accompany us from the past to the present and from the present to the future – new shapes and meanings continue to resonate within us – as if they were echoes of our lives.“