PART OF THE NOBLE MISSION

Much has been written about young Azerbaijani composer Turkan Qasimzada, and not only in the local media. This is not just publications stating facts. Turkan Qasimzada is one of the few Azerbaijanis to study at New York's Manhattan School of Music - he received financial support for his education at this prestigious music school from the Heydar Aliyev Foundation. This has opened up great opportunities for him to study world music culture, familiarize himself with new musical trends and also to learn about new musical equipment and musical skills, without which it is impossible to keep abreast of the trends setting the pace in contemporary composition. Turkan believes that he has been very lucky. "I am very grateful to the president of the Foundation, Mrs Mehriban Aliyeva, who is doing so much for the prosperity and promotion of national culture," he said.

In an interview with R+, Turkan said that he was in the class of Reiko Futing, the well-known composer of German descent. He entered the Manhattan school last year and over the past academic year has written more than 20 works, most of which have been performed by professional musicians from the US, Switzerland, Lithuania and Australia. Another important event in Turkan's musical career was victory in a Manhattan school competition for his work "Evening Music for a Quartet of Saxophones", which was awarded the school's Jordan Berk Memorial Prize. Quite recently, Qasimzada took first place in an international competition for young composers in Australia called "Unique Forms of Continuity in Space", organised by the Italian Institute of Culture (IIC) in the city of Melbourne. The competition is led by the world-famous Italian composer, conductor and maestro, Carlo Forlivesi.

This is the second largest festival-contest, and was first held in Japan. The objectives of the festival include the organization of concert programmes in various countries and the promotion of revised works and young composers. The festival-contest differs from other music events in that experts are presented with original musical concepts. The idea of this festival-contest is that young composers from around the world who are not familiar with the Italian language, demonstrate their potential by creating an organic connection between music and an Italian-language text, with different creative approaches to Italian poetry from an individual viewpoint. To this end, composers were given verses by 20 Italian poets. These poetic samples were to be used as material or serve as sources of inspiration for composing new music.

The young Italian poet Rosario Lo Russo was asked to present the poems. About 60 composers from around the world submitted their works to the contest. The jury, consisting of German, Italian and Australian experts, fairly well-known in world music circles, selected 11 of them. The finalist composers from Belgium, Italy, Chile, Malaysia, Japan, Australia and Azerbaijan were invited to Melbourne where their works were performed in the Iwaki Auditorium hall of the famous ABC company. The second round of the contest came down to four finalists, whose works would be performed in Adelaide. The jury included Qasimzada in the four. This was followed by the announcement of the winner - the young Azerbaijani composer. His essay "Vu' cumpra'" for piano, dedicated to the verse of the same name by the Italian poet Vivian Lamarque, was played in Adelaide by Kenji Fujimura and broadcast on Australian radio.

Qasimzada also received an invitation to the gala-concert of winners of international music festivals to be held in the Italian city of Modena next February.

How did Turkan tie his destiny to music? The composer himself acknowledges that his parents did not expect his life to focus on music. It seems that from early childhood, Turkan imagined himself as a man of creativity alongside his now late grandfather Qasim Qasimzada, famous Azerbaijani poet, father of Nariman Qasimoglu and author of the popular translation of the Koran into Azerbaijani. "By the way, my father is also a poet, a writer of interesting poems and he plays our national instrument - the tar - very well. In our family, music was, and still is, valued as an important element of culture; our love was not simply for its entertainment value. I felt this from early childhood and thought that I would probably also have to follow a creative path, like my grandfather and father. In addition to the usual secondary school, I learnt to play the piano at children's music school № 6. The piano compositions I played were so attractive to me that I would improvise for hours on end. Of course, these improvisations were very primitive, but I loved them very much, often recording them on tape and listening to them. Thus, I was firmly decided that music was my destiny. And then I found myself writing my first work on music paper," says the composer.

That was a musical improvisation dredged up from his subconscious, which constantly lured Turkan towards a musical career. After that, he began to compose. His first works were accepted by Xayyam Mirzazada and Arif Malikov as meeting the requirements for admission to the conservatoire. After listening to them, Arif Malikov stated explicitly that Turkan had every right to enter the composition department of the Baku Music Academy (BMA).

He has been lucky with his teachers. His first teacher was Xayyam Mirzazada, with whom he had a warm relationship. "He was friends with my grandfather and is now friends with my father. My father says that, as a child, when he slept on the balcony on summer nights, he listened to Xayyam, our next-door neighbour, composing his works. I learned a lot from him, as well as from the unforgettable Ismayil Hacibayov, who departed this world at an early age, and Aydin Azimov. Song writing lessons from these celebrities were very useful for me from the creative point of view. My compositions at the BMA were chamber, vocal and symphonic works. These included a dance suite (for a large symphony orchestra), a symphony (for a large symphony orchestra) and music for a chamber orchestra. In early 2006, I won the 5th 'Crystal Tuning Fork' International Contest for Young Composers, which was held in Moscow by the Composers' Union of Russia and other music centres. In 2007, I was also among the winners of the qualifying round of the 3rd 'Omnibus Laboratorium' International Festival of Young Composers in Tashkent."

Now Turkan's musical career is developing far from home. And, Qasimzada says, much is being done to promote Azerbaijani culture in the US. Although geographically distant, tours of the US by our cultural figures, concerts organized on the initiative of the Azerbaijani community and the works of the newly created US Karabakh Public Foundation are dedicated to this mission. "I am pleased to see myself as part of this noble mission. In March this year, Americans heard our national song "Lacin", which I had arranged for the piano and voice, in the concert hall of one of the most prestigious museums in New York. The song was sung in Azerbaijani by the talented singer Nani Kang, and she was accompanied by my teacher Reiko Futing on the piano.