Oscar Macchioni
Oscar Macchioni enjoys a versatile career as solo and collaborative pianist, teacher and mentor, author, adjudicator, recording artist, and higher education administrator. In 1992, he obtained a scholarship to study piano at the Academy of Music of Krakow. Oscar decided to continue with his Masters in Piano at SUNY-Fredonia, later transferring to Louisiana State University. Finally, completing his Doctoral piano studies at the University of Arizona (UofA). While a student at the UofA he won a summer Graduate Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Latino Initiatives where he conducted research on the impact of the Argentine tango in the music of the US. He has also published articles in piano pedagogy and literature
A dedicated teacher and mentor, Oscar received the prestigious University of Texas System Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award in 2015, and in 2019 was inducted into the UTEP Academy of Distinguished Teachers. His lecture-recitals and presentations at international conferences have received numerous accolades, including the Second International Vernacular Conference in Puebla, Mexico (Outstanding Musical Presentation), and The European Piano Teachers Association (Diploma of Excellence). He received the Music Teachers National Association StAr Award and was named ‘Distinguished Graduate Student’ by the University of Arizona.
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Gürsel Leblebicioğlu
Prof. Dr. Gürsel Leblebicioğlu, former senior faculty at Hacettepe University Faculty of Medicine, is hand surgeon and professor of orthopaedic surgery and traumatology.
Starting from 2009, Dr. Leblebicioğlu served as a member of the Examination Committee of the Federation of European Societies for Surgery for eleven years. Between the years of 2014-2020, he was elected as the chair of the Journal Committee in the same institution and a member of the Management Committee of the Journal of Hand Surgery European. He is currently a member of the editorial board of this prestigious journal.
Dr. Leblebicioğlu’s main areas of interest are obstetrical brachial plexus palsy, peripheral nerve, Kienböcks disease and musician’s hand. He was the coordinator of 'Physiological Foundations of Music Performance', a BA course designed for instrumentalist students at Hacettepe University Ankara State Conservatoire.
Prof. Dr. Gürsel Leblebicioğlu is the co-editor of two significant publications: Current Treatment of Nerve Injuries and Disorders (2013) and Evidence-Based Date in Hand Surgery and Therapy (2017).
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Burak Tüzün
Graduated from Hacettepe University Ankara State Conservatoire of Prof. Server Ganiev's violin class, Burak Tüzün studied theory with Sami Hatipoğlu and conducted with Alfred Mishurin. In the six years of education at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, he studied with the Russian State Artists, symphony maestro Prof. Leonid Nikolaev, composer Prof. Yuri Butsko and musicologist Prof. Margarita Karatigina, completed his graduate studies in the Department of Opera and Symphony Conducting as well as in the Department of Musicology. In this process, he was supported by the Eczacıbaşı Culture and Art Foundation.
Between 2004-2011, he was the Founding Conductor and General Music Director of the Anadolu University Symphony Orchestra. Burak Tüzün has been nationally awarded and recognized for his concerts, projects, recordings, and new repertoire performances. The artist has albums recorded with Hacettepe University Symphony Orchestra, Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Presidential Symphony Orchestra, Mersin University Academic Chamber Orchestra, Anadolu University Symphony Orchestra, Bilkent University Symphony Orchestra and Eskişehir Metropolitan Municipality Symphony Orchestra.
Currently, Tüzün works as a professor at Hacettepe University Ankara State Conservatoire, and he is the General Music Director of the Hacettepe University Symphony Orchestra.
Türev BERKİ
Born in 1970 in Ankara, Türev Berki completed his piano education as a student of Elif and Bedii Aran at the Aran Music Centre, established by these renowned duo-pianists. He was awarded the first prize at the 29th International Steinway Piano Competition organized in Berlin in 1982. Berki also ranked among top five prize winners at the Senigallia International Piano Competition held in Italy in 1983.
Türev Berki was the first Turkish pianist to be invited to the Sopot Music Festival in Poland in 1990. In 1993, he gave a recital in Washington D. C. as a cultural ambassador to the United States of America within the framework of the events marking the 70th anniversary of the Turkish Republic. His performance at the world-famous Carnegie Hall of New York in 2001, as part of the Moons and Stars Project, received great reviews.
1991 was the year when Berki decided to continue his career from a different perspective and with a different intensity as a pianist and a music theoretician. Born to a mathematician father and a lawyer mother teaching at university, this decision grew out of his lifelong interest in scientific work and a lifestyle as an academician as well as his passion for understanding music. In 1997, with the academic coaching of Prof. Dr. Ali Uçan, he completed six years’ work on his doctoral dissertation entitled A Framework Cadenza Model on Mozart’s Piano Concertos, to be a clarification of Mozart’s view of cadenza and received with great enthusiasm among scientific and artistic circles. This different identity both as a performer and a scientist paved for Berki to be acclaimed in 1998 as the Outstanding Young Person of Turkey in the field of Culture by Junior Chamber International, one of the world’s largest career organizations, and to be awarded the Hacettepe University Art Prize in 2008.
Prof. Dr. Berki continues to work on musical analysis and systematic musicology in the Department of Music Theory, Ankara State Conservatoire, Hacettepe University.
As a soloist, Berki has performed on the same stage as some of the most prominent conductors including Andrey Anihanov, Antonio Pirolli, Burak Tüzün, Erol Erdinç, Hakan Kalkan, İnci Özdil, Naci Özgüç, Orhun Orhon and Sıdıka Özdil Gardner, for the concerts he has given together with highly reputed Turkish orchestras. Within this framework, his professional collaboration with the Özdil sisters since 2006 has produced outstanding performances of contemporary Turkish composers’ works staged at world and Turkish premieres. Among those, the world premiere of İlhan Usmanbaş’s Piano Solo and 12 Instruments was performed by Berki and orkestra@modern conducted by İnci Özdil for the 25th International Ankara Music Festival in 2008, 16 years after the work was written. Türev Berki, Sıdıka Özdil Gardner and members of the Antalya State Symphony Orchestra performed at the Turkish premiere of Özkan Manav’s Reflections, Op. 20b in 2007.
Berki’s contribution to the promotion and recognition of contemporary Turkish music is not limited to the activities listed above. In almost all the recitals he has given abroad, a work of a Turkish composer has been included in the programme. During his recital at the University of North Texas in 2006, Berki’s performance of the Ten Etudes on Aksak Rhythms, Op. 38 by Ahmed Adnan Saygun was enthusiastically received and later added to the repertoire of the DMA Programme in Piano Performance of the University’s College of Music.
In recent years, Berki has been concentrating on themed concerts and conference-recitals shaped by a musicological perspective. These include Barber Night embodying comparative analyses, where he performed all the works for solo piano by Samuel Barber in 2006 and a Bartók performance in which he shared the same stage as pianist Pamela Mia Paul and the percussionists Christopher Deane and Mark Ford in 2008. The Project called Two Countries, Two Cultures, One Performer created by Berki and organized by Rotary International has been instrumental in presenting works by a wide range of Austrian and Turkish composers from Wagenseil to Usmanbaş and from Schmidt to Erkin for a large number of music lovers, attracting a great deal of interest in both countries.
Türev Berki has been a Steinway Artist since 1998.
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