Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol

More recently, the New England Conservatory (NEC) donated 52 historical instruments to MEM from their collection which had been started to be compiled by the founder of the school, Eben Tourjee (1834-1891) whose desire was to create a similar collection to those found in conservatoires in Paris, Brussels and Berlin in the late 19th century.

Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol (born September 24, 1974) is a Grammy nominated Turkish-American composer and CMES Harvard University fellow (2013-15) 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 a full-time faculty member at the New England Conservatory (NEC).

He is also the director of the Intercultural Institute at NEC and the project director/curator of Nilüfer Municipality Dr. Hüseyin Parkan Sanlıkol Musical Instruments Museum.

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.

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 Berklee College of Music.

While at Berklee Sanlıkol studied jazz composition with accomplished composers such as Herb Pomeroy and Ken Pullig.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

While studying Turkish and related regional traditional musics Sanlıkol continued experimenting with newer ways of combining his acquired musical languages.

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.

A second cantata written for PALS children's chorus accompanied by a tenor, Turkish instruments and a chamber ensemble, entitled Keloğlan: The Bald Boy and His Magic Lute, was one such follow-up attempt in 2007.

However, Sanlıkol's permanent return to composition of concert music and jazz occurred in late 2011 when he was commissioned by American Islamic Congress to compose a piece for jazz combo infused with Turkish instruments that was inspired by his own story of self-discovery about coming to learn Turkish music and culture in the United States.

This was followed by commissions from A Far Cry string orchestra, the Boston Cello Quartet and Carnegie Hall which led to premieres and performances at respected venues including Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall by American Composers Orchestra.

Since then Sanlıkol has been getting commissioned by respected organizations including the Jazz Educators Network, Yarlung Records and the Bursa State Symphony Orchestra among others.

On the other hand, his “coffeehouse opera”, entitled Othello in the Seraglio: The Tragedy of Sümbül The Black Eunuch, bridges the musical cultures of opera house and coffeehouse, Baroque Italy and Ottoman Turkey.

Sanlıkol actively delivers papers and talks at academic conferences such as International Conference on Analytical Approaches to World Music and Society for Ethnomusicology and, his first book, entitled The Musician Mehters, about the organization and the music of the Ottoman Janissary Bands has been published during 2011 in English by The ISIS press and in Turkish by Yapı Kredi Publications.

His second book, entitled Reform, Notation and Ottoman music in Early 19th Century Istanbul: EUTERPE, was published by Routledge in 2023

Coincidentally, between the years of 2011-12, Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol was hired as a consultant to help curate the Turkey exhibit at the musical instruments museum (MIM) in Phoenix, Arizona.

Shortly after, Mehmet worked on several projects with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts' musical instruments collection as well as Houston Museum of Fine Arts' musical instruments collection.

After Parkan Sanlıkol's passing Mehmet became the project director and the curator of what eventually became the "Nilüfer Municipality Dr. Hüseyin Parkan Sanlıkol Musical Instruments Museum" (MIM).

With little restoration work and some strategic new purchases, the museum was able to present a diverse collection to visitors when it officially opened in August of 2021.

Sanlıkol's father, Parkan Sanlıkol was a collector of musical instruments who had about 300 instruments in his possession at the time of his passing in 2015.

Parkan Sanlıkol had also convinced the mayor of Nilüfer, Bursa in Turkey to open a musical instruments museum as partners right before he passed.

With music from 16th and 17th century European and Turkish sources, arranged, adapted and woven together with original music by Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol, this unique music drama is being performed on European period instruments and traditional Turkish instruments by an ensemble of specialists in those fields and, it has achieved the unique success of being a new opera that has been performed 14 times within a year and a half since its premiere.

Sanlıkol's first jazz orchestra album was JAZZIZ magazine's Top 10 Critics’ Choice 2014 pick, his second jazz orchestra album was DownBeat magazine's September 2016 Editor's Pick, "The Rise Up", commissioned by NEA Jazz Master Dave Liebman, received a 4 star review from The Financial Times, his trio album "An Elegant Ritual" was listed among JAZZIZ's Top 10 July 2021 albums, and his latest jazz orchestra album "Turkish Hipster" was included in NPR's Jazz Night in America month of July list.

He has composed for, performed and toured with international stars and ensembles such as Dave Liebman, Billy Cobham, Bob Brookmeyer, Anat Cohen, Antonio Sanchez, Tiger Okoshi, Miguel Zenón, John Patitucci, Gil Goldstein, Esperanza Spalding, Boston Camerata, A Far Cry string orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Boston Cello Quartet, Erkan Oğur and Birol Yayla.