Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol (born September 24, 1974) is a Grammy nominated Turkish-American composer and CMES Harvard University fellow who is a jazz pianist and singer that also performs a number of Near and Middle Eastern instruments as well as the keyboardless synthesizer Continuum Fingerboard and the SANLIKOL Renaissance 17, a digital microtonal keyboard designed and conceived by himself. The Boston Globe calls Sanlıkol's music “colorful, fanciful, full of rhythmic life, and full of feeling" and "not touristy, but rather sophisticated, informed, internalized”, “...and he (Sanlıkol) is another who could play decisive role in music’s future in the world.” He is currently a full-time faculty member at New England Conservatory's Music History & Musicology Department and is the director of the Intercultural Institute at New England Conservatory.
Biography
Early life
The son of two Turkish-Cypriots, Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol was born in Istanbul, Turkey. His father, Hüseyin Parkan Sanlıkol, was a medical doctor who got appointed by the state to a hospital in Bursa, Turkey to where the family moved in 1975. He studied western classical piano with his mother Fethiye Sanlıkol and started giving piano recitals as early as age five. After studying the first year of middle school in Cyprus Sanlıkol returned to Bursa. Throughout his teenage years he played keyboards in progressive rock bands and participated in rock festivals in Bursa along with Şebnem Ferah and Tarkan Gözübüyük.
Education
Sanlıkol moved to Istanbul in the Fall of 1992 and studied with Turkish composer/jazz pianist Aydın Esen for about a year after which he won a scholarship to [[
lee College of Music]]. While at Berklee Sanlıkol studied jazz composition with accomplished composers such as Herb Pomeroy and Ken Pullig. He graduated from Berklee with a dual degree in Jazz composition and Film Scoring in 1997, and completed a master's degree in Jazz Studies at New England Conservatory in 2000. After studying with composers George Russell, Bob Brookmeyer, and Lee Hyla, Sanlıkol completed a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at New England Conservatory in 2004 .
Career
Sanlıkol formed his first 8-piece jazz band with the support of Berklee College of Music and toured Turkey in 1996 as "Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol and the Berklee Band". In 1997 he co-founded the electric jazz band "AudioFact" with Onur Türkmen. Between 1997 and 2003 AudioFact performed numerous times at distinguished clubs and festivals in the US, South America, Europe and Turkey including Blue Note Jazz Club in NY, Ryles Jazz Club in Boston, Oliverio Jazz Club in Buenos Aires, Istanbul International Jazz Festival, İzmir European Jazz Festival, International Ankara Music Festival and International Bursa Music Festival. AudioFact also released two albums in 1998 and 2003 in which they featured Bob Brookmeyer, Tiger Okoshi, Okay Temiz and Ercan Irmak.
In 2002 Sanlıkol received his first major commission to write a piece for PALS children's chorus with a soprano and tenor accompanied by Turkish instruments and a chamber ensemble. The resulting piece was a cantata, entitled Ergenekon: an ancient Turkish legend. While this piece's premiere was successful, beginning in late 2000 Sanlıkol had already shifted his focus toward extensively studying a wide range of Turkish and related musical traditions of which he knew very little since he grew up with European and American musics in his household. The discovery and exploration of his roots prompted him in helping find the non-profit organization DÜNYA based in Boston, Massachusetts along with Robert Labaree and his wife, Serap Kantarcı Sanlıkol in late 2003. Sanlıkol is the president of DÜNYA, a musicians’ collective and a record label, dedicated to exploring a cosmopolitan view of the world through the lens of a wide range of Turkish traditions, alone and in conversation with other world traditions. The unique nature of DÜNYA resulted in Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol going on the air numerous times on NPR and PRI as well as repeated coverage by the press.