Mircan Kaia


Mircan Kaia is a musician and an engineer from Turkey with her roots in Georgia who has produced several albums and directed and coordinated international engineering projects.

Early years

Born in a mountain village in the Black Sea Region of Turkey, the daughter of a Laz, Mircan's life is the primary source of her music. In her early childhood years she went through a period where she listened so intensely that her family thought she could not speak. Ever since, Mircan has preferred sitting in silence so she can call to mind the sounds of nature.
Mircan started singing very early, in infancy, when she would rather sing adult songs than those for babies and children. Singing with orchestras in wedding ceremonies became an activity for her. At age twelve, Mircan went to the local music shop and bought the guitar she had longed for. She asked the owner of the shop, who was a music teacher, for guitar lessons.
By the time she was studying at Nisantasi Girl's High School in Istanbul, she felt the desire to work on more demanding songs. At age sixteen, having seen an ad on the door of a big music shop she used to walk past every day, she took down the number of a Jewish guitar teacher, called him and said she would like to take lessons. Not long afterward, the teacher took her to Tunel to buy a new guitar. To buy the new black jazz guitar, she sold the gold medallion her father had given her for being the best student at school.
Mircan's songs became more colorful with her new guitar. At seventeen, she wrote her first song. That first song was in English, probably because of her correspondence with pen pals over the years.
When she started university, her goals were to read art and literature, to learn to play the guitar well, to reach an advanced level of English and Arabic, and to dance. So she worked hard at classical Turkish music chorus, traditional folk dance, aesthetic gymnastics, the library at the British Cultural Center, the university library, the Libyan Consulate and a symphonic rock group.
She made her first overseas journey during these years – to Jordan, where she went on a scholarship given by the university. There she saw Petra, the mysterious desert atmosphere and the Dead Sea. The tunes she improvised along the path to Petra were to pave future roads for her.
She and her friends formed a rock band and produced cassettes of songs that they had improvised. Their keyboard player had studied English Literature and the drummer had studied English Language and Literature, while the guitar player, who was a mechanical engineer and a painter, had also written songs from poems by Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, Gulten Akin, Metin Eloğlu and others. During this period, Mircan studied under Erguder Yoldas who, on first hearing her playing guitar and singing, decided he would be her manager. He tried to introduce her to the theater and music communities, but that environment was a distraction and interrupted the development of her instrumental skills – transforming the act of playing guitar into accompaniment for her vocals. Although it stayed together more than six years, the group disbanded without producing any albums.

Career

Music

Mircan Kaya, who lives now for the most part in Turkey and Italy, but has her roots in Mingrelia, has become increasingly well known in recent years for her distinctive music; but she brings to the Turkish cultural scene much more than her music.
After the release of her first two albums "Bizim Ninniler " and "Kül ", in 2006, she expanded the operational scope of her engineering company in advanced engineering and earthquake technologies and founded UCM.She released three more albums in two years time. Sala, Numinosum and Outim.
Numinosum is a musical journey based on the concept of "numinous conscious" used by Carl Gustav Jung. She combined her own lyrics with the poetry of Rumi. This album was recorded in Bristol, UK, with the post jazz group Limbo. Roger Mills and Osman Kent worked on the final edition, mixing, mastering and sound engineering of the album.
Before she set off for her advanced master study at the University of Padua and the Technical University of Catalonia, she released her most avant-garde music project OUTIM – Once Upon a Time in Mingrelia, a work combining journeys to Georgia and Eastern Black Sea of Turkey, writing a book, constructing a house with local materials and carpenters, recording a music album using her own lyrics as well as the words of the Mingrelian poet Xhelimishi Xasani.This album was also recorded with Limbo in Bristol, UK.
Mircan's third album "Sala" was reviewed by FRoots||FROOTS magazine and described as a Pre-Raphaelite tapestry, a genius work full of juxtapositions.
In 2010, she was awarded the best film music award at 47th Antalya International Golden Orange Film Festival with the music she has produced for the film "Kar Beyaz/White as Snow" directed by Selim Gunes. The film music was produced in collaboration with musicians in Turkey, Australia and England. The music contains songs from her albums "Sala", "Outim","Numinosum", "Kul & Ashes" as well as two new songs she composed with the work of great living women poet of Turkey, Gulten Akin.
On her album "Elixir" which was released in 2010 she composed the poems of Gülten Akın. The album was in the "Best of 2010" by the world music program "Crossing Continents" of California KDVS Radio, a program produced by Gil Medovoy.
In January 2012 Mircan Kaia was awarded the Best Film Music Award at the 44th SIYAD Cinema Awards.
In March 2012, Mircan Kaia recorded the first contemporary lullaby album in Laz – Mingrelian language in London with British musicians. The album Nanni contains ten original lullabies in Laz – Mingrelian language and one lullaby in Abhaz language.
In the same year she also released her album Minor on which she rendered the folk songs of minority people of Turkey as well as her own compositions. The album has been reviewed and praised by .
In 2014, Mircan Kaia scored the music of short film The Chocolate Wrapper directed by Murat Kebir in London. The Film was awarded the Best Foreign Film at the International Family Film Festival in the US.
In 2014, Mircan Kaia's first book was published.
Her album Insula which was released in 2018 has been charted by the
In the same year she has released the album Hush covering world lullabies in different languages.
"Kırmızı Gül " and "Tatlı Dilli / Sweet Talker" have followed the album Hush.
The latest musical work by Mircan Kaya is her single "Sevemem Seni Eskisi Gibi).
On all her recent albums she continued to collaborate with musicians from different countries.
Mircan Kaia is the mother of a daughter
and a son

Engineering

She has expertise in project management and Coordination, structural design, structural analysis of historic constructions, earthquake resistant structural design, anti seismic technologies, and earthquake protection devices.
She is the Agent of an Italian company in Turkey and dealing with earthquake protection technologies, anti seismic devices, energy dissipation, expansion joints, etc.
Between 2002 and 2005 she completed several structural projects. During this period she worked for Enka Construction for tender preparation of the three drinking water treatment plants of Oued Athmania, Koudiat Medaouar and Ain Tin in Algeria. She has carried out part of the analysis in Algeria at the Athmania Dam Construction Site.
In 1999–2002 she worked in Enka Teknik, as the civil engineer responsible for the design and supervision of the treatment plants of two power plants in Adapazarı and Izmir.
In 1995–1999, for U+M Architectural Engineering and Consultancy Ltd, she worked as the founding partner of the company.
In 1995– 1997 she worked at Seyas Sey Architectural, Engineering, Consultancy as the business development manager and the head of the infrastructural department. She completed the Samur Apsheron Irrigation Project in Azerbaijan as the project manager, infrastructural projects of Kemer Golf and Country Club in İstanbul. She signed the contract for the Kayseri Waste Water Treatment Plant in Germany.
In 1989–1992 she worked at Yapi Merkezi- Freyssinet International Joint Venture, as the business development manager and deputy general manager. She was trained by the French technical manager during this period on post-tensioned concrete, alternative bridge design, expansion joints, and bearing pads.
In 1986–1989 she worked at Sogreah-Seyas Joint Venture, as the key engineer for the computer based mathematical modelling of the Istanbul Drinking Water Network and SCADA Project.
In October 2008, Mircan began working on an advanced master's degree on historical artifacts with rotations in universities in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Czechoslovakia through a European Commission grant. She also studied music theory in England.
As the founding member of the Turkish Association of Seismic Isolation, Mircan Kaya has acted also as the President of the Association for two years.
She has several published scientific.

Honours