EVENT CALENDAR
Great Hall
The acoustic project of the great hall of 1130 seats was consulted by the British ARUP company which has designed the acoustic project of the Sydney Opera House and the Royal Opera House. The hall has four simultaneous interpretation rooms that can be used for international events, an elevated orchestra pit in front of the stage and a technical infrastructure where all kinds of concert records can be made. Thanks to the lift stage in the great hall, events which require an orchestra pit can be undertaken and 43 spectator seats can be added into this area, as per the needs of the event.
Small Hall
There are four simultaneous interpretation rooms, audiphones, a film screen and professional audio, light and video systems for conferences, seminars and film screenings in the multi-purpose small hall for 243 people.
Exhibition Halls
AASAC has five exhibition halls which can host plastic and current art exhibitions. Connections between the galleries are enabled through bridges and stairs. The lighting of the artworks is provided by architectural and rail spot lighting systems in the hall and aluminum stem bar lifting systems as well as different sized pedestals. For security issues, optical smoke detectors, a fire extinguishing system and a camera system are also available. There are projections and also speakers for music broadcast and announcements.
Foyer
There are a total of three foyers in the downstairs, entrance and upstairs of the 1140 metersquare area in AASAC.
Outdoor
There is an outdoor area of 460 metersquare where activities such as open-air cinemas, exhibitions and live concert broadcasts can be held in AASAC.
Ahmed Adnan Saygun
The artist was born on September 7, 1907 in İzmir. He is a Turkish musician, a music educator, and a music scientist (ethnomusicologist) who gave works in classical western music. Saygun is the first Turkish state artist. Saygun, one of the composers who are known as Turkish Fives in Turkish music history, is the composer of the first Turkish opera. "Yunus Emre Oratorio", one of the most frequently performed works of Turkish music during the Republican Period, is the most important work of him. Saygun's father Mahmut Celalettin, who came from a well-known İzmir family, educated important religious scholars, will later become the founders of the National Library of İzmir, mother Zeynep Seniha, the daughter of a family who came from Konya and settled in Izmir. Saygun became a student of Hungarian Mr. Tevfik in 1922. In 1925, he created a great musical lugatie, translating music-related articles from La Grande Encyclopedie. When he was a teacher in elementary schools he wrote school songs on the poems of Ziya Gökalp, Mehmet Emin, Bıçakçızade Hakkı. In 1925, the young musician, who wanted to enter the art exam that the government opened to send talented young people to major conservatories in Europe for music education, missed this opportunity on the sudden death of his mother. In 1926, he became a music teacher at Izmir Boys' High School for a while after passing an exam to become a music teacher in secondary schools. The artist composed "Re Major Symphony" from 1927 to 1928 and was sent to Paris by state scholarship after passing the test this time for young talented musicians in 1928. He studied with Vincent d'Indy (composition), Eugène Borrel (fugue), Paul le Flem (counterpoint), Amédée Gastoué (gregorian chant). He wrote Op. 1 his first orchestra called Divertissement. This song of Saygun won a prize in a contest in Paris in 1931, when the jury president was Henri Defossé (Cemal Reşit Rey's orchestra conductor). Saygun, returned to Turkey in 1931 and began a period of time as a music teacher; gave music lessons and counterpoint lessons in Music Teachers' College. Ahmed Adnan Saygun and his family received the surname "Saygın" with the request of his father after the Law of Surname in 1934; but after a while the reason of received by someone else their surnames were changed to "Saygun". Saygun composed the first Turkish opera, Opera Özsoy Op. 9, only in one month in honor of the Shah of Iran Reza Pahlavi, who will visit Turkey in 1934 at the request of Atatürk. The opera written by Munir Hayri Egeli, expressing the birth of the Turkish nation and the fraternal brotherhood of the Iranian and Turkish nations. The premiere of the work took place in the night of June 19, 1934, in the presence of Atatürk and Reza Pahlavi. After the performance of Özsoy, the artist presented a report about Turkish music to Atatürk, who accepted him at the summer house in Yalova. This report, which was prepared by being influenced by the theories of sun-language and Turkish history, was published in 1936 under the title of "Pentatonism in Turkish Music". The artist, who was brought to the conductor of the Presidency Orchestra by proxy, was able to perform this task for several months due to his health. He gave his first concert with the orchestra on November 23, 1934. At the end of November 1934, an opera was ordered to Saygun by Atatürk. The artist who succeeded in composing Taşbebek's opera to be represented on December 27, narrated the birth of the new Republican person in this opera. The work was staged at Ankara community home on December 27, 1934; Saygun directed the orchestra despite being very sick. After the representation, Saygun went to Istanbul and had two ear operations with five months interval. The presidential symphony orchestra and the Musical Military School were suspended for the reason that he neglected his duty and he was removed from the foundation works of the Ankara State Conservatory. Saygun returned to teaching at the Istanbul Municipal Conservatory in 1936; he remained on this mission until 1939. The artist fall out of favour that would last until the performance of his famous work "Yunus Emre Oratorio". The work of establishing a new conservatory in Ankara, while Saygun was in Istanbul, was not the idea of “cultural nationalism” defended by Saygun; was maintained by those who supported the concept of "universal music". The Conservatory was founded in 1936 in the direction of universalist musical views of Paul Hindemith, who was brought in as a consultant for this work. Saygun accompanied Hungarian composer and ethnomusicologist Bela Bartok who came to Turkey upon the invitation of the Community Centers In 1936 on her Anatolian trip. They notated the folk songs compiled from especially around Osmaniye. Their studies have turned into a book titled "Bela Bartok Folk Music Research in Turkey", pressed in english by the Hungarian Academy of sciences in 1976. Saygun accepted the inspectorate task proposed by the community centers in 1939 and traveled to Turkey on the occasion. In 1940 he married Hungarian-born Irén Szalai (who later took the name of Nilüfer), a member of the Budapest Women's Orchestra, who came to Ankara for a concert in 1940 but did not return to his country due to Nazi poetry and they did not have children. In addition to his duty at the community centers, Saygun founded a choir called "Turkish Music Association" in 1940 and regularly gave chamber music concerts with this choir. He published a book entitled "Music in community centers." Yunus Emre Oratorio shared the first prize in the competition organized by CHP in 1943 with Ulvi Cemal Erkin's piano concerto and Hasan Ferit Alnar's Viola Concerto. Yunus Emre Oratorio, completed by Saygun in 1942, was performed at the Faculty of Language and History Geography in Ankara on May 25, 1946 and won great success. The work, which was considered to be the most important work, was then performed in Paris and under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) anniversary by the conductor Leopold Stokowski in New York in 1958. When he was a child, the songs he heard from the Mevlevi dervishes in İzmir Kemeraltı Bazaar on Dervişler Street were moved to Europe and America, and later translated into five different languages. After the first representation of the work in Ankara, in 1946, he was appointed as a teacher of the Ankara State Conservatory, as well as the consultants and inspectors of the community centers. He went to London and Paris on the invitations he received; he studied folk music; gave lectures. He composed Kerem, Köroğlu, Gılgamış, choral works, 5 symphonies, various concertos, chamber music, vocal and instrumental pieces, numerous folk songs, books, researches, articles. His works were performed by ensembles such as New York NBC, Orchestra Colonne, Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Northern Sinfonia, and Julliard Quartet. Adnan Saygun was given the title of the first State Artist in 1971. On 6 January 1991, the artist lost his life due to pancreatic cancer. Saygun has publications in ethnomusicology and music education. The works and other documents are located in the "Ahmed Adnan Saygun Music Education and Research Center" established in Bilkent University in Ankara. The rights of the works of Ahmed Adnan Saygun over the voice belong to SACEM. The copyright of some of the published works belongs to Peer Musikverlag in Southern Music Company, New York and Hamburg. A comprehensive biography taken by the musicologist Emre Aracı was published in 2001 by Yapı Kredi Publications under the name Adnan Saygun – Doğu Batı Arası Müzik Köprüsü; the story of life is also novelized by Miracle Özinal in the name of Dar Köprünün Dervişi (2005). Books • Türk Halk Musıkisinde Pentatonizm, 1936. • Gençliğe Şarkılar: Halkevi ve Mektepler için, 1937. • Halk Türküleri: Yedi Karadeniz Türküsü ve Bir Horon, 1938. • Halkevlerinde Musıki, 1940. • Yalan (Sanat Konuşmaları), 1945. • Lise Müzik Kitabı (Halil Badi Yönetken ile birlikte), 1955. • Karacaoğlan, 1952. • Musıki Temel Bilgisi, 1958 – 1966. • Mod öncesi Ezgilerin Sınıflandırılması, 1960. • Toplu Solfej, I – 1967, II – 1968. • Töresel Musıki, 1967. • Atatürk ve Musıki: Onunla Birlikte, Ondan Sonra..., 1982.
AASAC
Ahmed Adnan Saygun Arts Center (AASAC), bestowed by Izmir Metropolitan Municipality as a gift to the city, opened on December 27, 2008 as a result of a project competition. The owner of the project, architect Tevfik Tozkoparan has transformed this old trolleybus garage and maintenance atelier into about 30 thousand metersquare area of cultural activity center. Since its opening, AASAC has been hosting the weekly concerts of Izmir State Symphony Orchestra, numerous representations of Izmir State Opera and Ballet, IKSEV Izmir European Jazz Festival, which has a prominent place in the urban art life, concerts within the scope of its own organization and the 1 Festival Izmir as well as welcoming several maestros, artists, groups and orchestras such as Fazıl Say, İdil Biret, Gülsin Onay, Güher-Süher Pekinel sisters, Itzhak Perlman, Ricardo Muti, Rengim Gökmen, Genco Erkal, Yıldız Kenter, Mike Stern, Bobby McFerrin, Aziza Mustafa Zadeh, Igudesman & Joo, Michel Camilo,Yo-Yo Ma, Marcus Miller, Maxim Vengerov, Dany Brillant, Richard Bona, Alim Qasimov, Toto Cutugno, Ara Malikian, Anna Maria Jopek, Dhafer Youssef, Ibrahim Maalouf, KODO, Chick Corea, Arturo Sandoval, Sertab Erener, Rustavi, New York Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orkestra La Scala, Vladimir Spivakov and Moscow Virtuosi, Presidential Symphony Orchestra, Borusan Quartet, Kerem Görsev Trio. AASAC, also making a distinguished name for itself with its exhibitions, has hosted a series of important artists and exhibitions like; An Anthology from Istanbul Modern Art Museum, "I Used to Live with Love and Art" exhibition to commemorate Semiha Berksoy's 100th birthday, Impact VideoFest, Salvador Dali in Izmir, Keiko Art Dialogue with Materials, Yusuf Tuvi Retrospective, İsmet İnönü from Lausanne to Republic, AASSM's 10th Anniversary with Aykut Uslutekin's Photographs, World Art Day, Jose Saramago, Lynn Gilbert, Bingül Başarır.
Bus
You can reach Ahmed Adnan Saygun Arts Center; by using the buses 10, 4, 5, 6, 25, 480 and getting off Ahmed Adnan Saygun bus stop.
Ferry
Ahmed Adnan Saygun Art Center is 900 meters on foot from Göztepe Ferry Port. Ahmed Adnan Saygun Art Center is 1,5 kilometers away from Üçkuyular Ferry Port with your vehicle.
Tram
You can reach Ahmed Adnan Saygun Arts Center by getting off at Ahmed Adnan Saygun Arts Center stop on the Halkapınar - Fahrettin Altay Tram line.
Subway
Ahmed Adnan Saygun Arts Center is 800 meters on foot from Fahrettin Altay Subway Station.
Airplane
Ahmed Adnan Saygun Arts Center is 28 kilometers away from Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport. You can reach the art center by getting off at Ahmed Adnan Saygun stop by using bus 202 from the airport.
Izban
You can reach Ahmed Adnan Saygun Arts Center by taking the subway from Halkapınar İzban Station and getting off at Fahrettin Altay Subway Station.