- Bülent Arel
Bülent Arel (b.
Istanbul ,April 23 ,1919 ; d. Stony Brook,New York ,November 24 ,1990 ) was a Turkish-born composer ofcontemporary classical music andelectronic music .He studied composition at the
Ankara Conservatory and sound engineering inParis . He later taught at the Ankara Conservatory, established the Helikon Society of Contemporary Arts, and served as the first music director of Radio Ankara from 1951 to 1959. He was also a painter and sculptor, and several of his works are in the permanent collection of the Turkish National Gallery.In 1959, the
Rockefeller Foundation invited him to work at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center. In 1962, he worked withEdgard Varèse on the electronic sections of Varèse's "Deserts".He also designed and installed the electronic music laboratory at
Yale University , where he taught from 1961 to 1970, and he established the electronic music program at theState University of New York at Stony Brook , where he taught from 1971 until his retirement in 1989. Besides electronic works, Mr. Arel wrote chamber music, vocal works, and symphonic pieces, including a series of works commissioned by the Mimi Garrard Dance Theater.In the course of his work he invented the 'splicing tape dispenser', as well as other devices for tape handling. He was a pioneer of looping techniques.
His notable students include
Daria Semegen ,Conrad Cummings ,Jing Jing Luo ,Joël-François Durand , andFrederick Bianchi .In later life Arel lived in East Setauket, New York. He died of
multiple myeloma .References
*Obituary. "The New York Times", November 28, 1990 (section D, p. 22).
*Gluck, Robert J. "The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center: Educating international composers" in "Computer Music Journal" v. 31, no. 2 (Summer 2007), pp. 20-38.
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