David Ezra Okonşar


David Ezra Okonşar is a Turkish-Belgian pianist, composer, conductor, writer and educator. He was previously known as "Mehmet Okonşar".

Biography

David Ezra Okonşar was born in Istanbul with the first name "Mehmet" and lived in Paris during his first schooling. He started studying piano at the Hacettepe University Ankara State Conservatory, with and Necil Kazim Akses. Thanks to the rich resources the Ankara Conservatory then possessed and the Médiatheque of the Centre Culturel Français d'Ankara, he grew up studying the music of Pierre Boulez, Edgard Varėse, Olivier Messiaen and Pierre Schaeffer, composers who would have a strong influence on him.
After about a year and half studying at the Ankara Conservatory, the family moved to Belgium where he entered the class of :fr:Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden|Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden at the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music. Vanden Eynden, who was to entirely re-shape the keyboard technique of Okonşar, is a dedicated follower of the style of :fr:Eduardo del Pueyo|Eduardo del Pueyo.
The keyboard technique of del Pueyo and Vanden Eynden is based on the work of Marie Jaëll, a pupil of Franz Liszt.
A change of Government in Turkey and the political turbulence of 1977 forced the Okonşar family to return to Ankara. Back at the Ankara Conservatory he was put in the class of for piano and of Nevit Kodallı for musical composition. Okonşar did not attend either class with much assiduity.
During this period he was connected on both a friendly and a professional basis with the pianist and conductor :fr:Selman Ada|Selman Ada. From this friendship he learned the basics of the keyboard principles of Pierre Sancan of whom Selman Ada has been a student.
His first important recital took place in 1979. The program included Préludes by Messiaen and the Pictures of an Exhibition by Mussorgsky.
Just before the military coup of 1980 the Okonşar family returned to Belgium. He resumed studying with Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden. In 1980 Okonşar was awarded the Premier Prix avec Distinction. His program included the Dante Sonata by Liszt. His studies continued after the sudden death of his father with a special scholarship and he was awarded the Diplôme Supérieur de Piano Avec la plus Grande Distinction, Premier Nommé in 1986 by performing the Piano Concerto Op. 42 by Arnold Schoenberg.
At the end of his piano studies, Okonşar had the privilege of working with one of the greatest composers of Belgium: Madame :fr:Jacqueline Fontyn|Jacqueline Fontyn. He also studied with a pupil of Messiaen, Claude Ballif. In 1989 he obtained his degrees in Composition-Orchestration from the Royal Conservatory of Music of Brussels.
Alexis Weissenberg, after listening to a recording by Okonşar invited him to study in Switzerland.
He endorsed the Belgian citizenship in 1992 but at the same time the president of Turkey Suleyman Demirel awarded him the title "State Artist of the Turkish Republic". Therefore, Okonsar settled in Turkey with his wife, the painter Lale Okonşar.
Okonşar works now from Turkey on a busy schedule concertizing, composing, writing and teaching. He owns and manages a CD label exclusive to his own recordings, LMO-Records, and a publishing company "inventor-musicæ".
In August 2014, he took the first name: David Ezra.

Career

His international career began with the first prize at the International Young Virtuoses Competition of Antwerp in 1982. His orchestral début was the Third Concerto by Rachmaninoff performed at the in Antwerp. His other prizes are:
The "Académie des Arts Contemporains" of Enghien, Belgium rewarded him in 1991, for his acoustic and electronic compositions the Gold and Bronze medals respectively.
Okonşar performed with the following orchestras: Utah Symphony, deFilharmonie, Poznan Philharmonic and Lublin Philharmonic. Some of the conductors he played with: Joseph Silverstein, Charles Dutoit, Sylvain Cambreling, Ingo Metzmacher, Christof Escher.
In recital he appeared at London's Royal Opera House, the Salle Gaveau in Paris, in New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Kyoto, Bruxelles, Anvers, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Rome, Athens, Calgary, Salt Lake City, Ljubljana.
His noted concerts included the premiere in Turkey of the Concerto for piano by Schoenberg and his performances of the Concerto for piano by Lutoslawski in Poland.
He has been a guest judge at the National Piano Competition of Japan under the auspices of the P.T.N.A.. His researches on music and technology were presented in a lecture at the Yamaha headquarters in Hamamatsu, Japan. Okonşar wrote and presented a documentary series on the National Television Broadcast of Turkey, the T.R.T.
Okonşar is a published writer in several music related periodicals in Turkey. His articles published in Andante the most important Turkish periodical on classical music, were featuring imaginary interviews with "Mephisto" on the subject of the global decadence of the quality of classical music, in Turkey and in the world, a subject often worked on by Okonşar. His other published subjects are mainly about musical composition, analysis, music history. Okonşar publishes also in English and French.

Repertoire

His repertoire encompasses a range from the early 17th. century including among others Orlando Gibbons and Giles Farnaby and extends to late 20th. century with the works by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Witold Lutoslawski. Notable works in this repertoire are: J.S. Bach "The Art of Fugue" performed on organ and harpsichord; the Goldberg Variations, the integrale of Well-tempered Keyboard.
Okonşar has performed recitals featuring the complete piano works by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Despite he refuses all sort of "musical specialization", his repertoire is heavily on the "modern" side with Igor Stravinsky "Three Movements of Petrouchka" the "Sequenza" for the piano by Luciano Berio and the Klavierstücke by Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Discography

Solo piano published by the artist's own, independent label "LMO-Records":
On other labels:
With other artists:
Adept of Free Music philosophy, Okonsar publishes all his recordings and writings as well as his compositions on the Internet under the GNU GPL or Creative Commons licenses.

Composer

David Ezra Okonşar started composing at the age of 11. His role-models were Arnold Schoenberg and Pierre Boulez.
The compositions by Okonşar were from the beginning exploring unusual ensembles in an avant-garde line. During the eighties atonal Jazz specially by Cecil Taylor and the intricate voicings by Bill Evans had strong impact on the total serialism Okonşar always used. Other extra-serialist influences are Krzysztof Penderecki, Iannis Xenakis and György Ligeti.
The electronic works created in the fifties and early sixties by Ligeti, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Xenakis, Henri Pousseur and others created a new and previously unheard approach to orchestration. The sound possibilities of the classical orchestra started to be conceptualized by the composers in terms of "sound envelopes", "sound filters and formants. Okonşar followed a similar path in his orchestrations, in the nineties.
The music by Okonşar is extremely structuralist and calls for an analytical approach. This structuralism is presented in the finished score in a very detailed, complex and refined musical écriture.

Compositions

[The Art of Fugue] by Johann Sebastian Bach

[The Goldberg Variations] by Johann Sebastian Bach