DIDEM COSKUNSEVEN                COMPOSER&MUSICIAN

Didem Coskunseven (b. 1985) is a composer, musician, and sound designer based in Paris. Her work ranges from compositions for acoustic instruments, with or without electronics, to song arrangements where she combines her musical taste rooted in modal jazz with experimental electronic music. Additionally, she creates sound designs for choreographers and visual artists in various projects.

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Coskunseven completed her undergraduate studies in history at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, where she also studied violin with Prof. Murat Tamer from the CSO (Presidential Symphony Orchestra), Turkey. In 2009, she moved to Istanbul to focus on her music and art studies. She initially enrolled in the Faculty of Art and Design at Yildiz Technical University and later pursued her master's degree in music composition at the Center for Advanced Studies in Music (MIAM). In 2018, she continued her PhD studies in music composition at UC Berkeley, California. In 2020, she participated in the Cursus program at IRCAM, Paris. Following the completion of the Cursus program in 2021, she received her doctoral degree from UC Berkeley in 2022. Coskunseven is the recipient of Eisner Prize for Music Composition by UC Berkeley (2022), George Ladd Prix De Paris by UC Berkeley (2020-21), Max Kade Institute Travel Grant (2021) and Berkeley Graduate Division Conference Travel Grants (2018-2020).

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Since 2010, alongside her extensive academic pursuits, Coskunseven has worked as a freelance composer and musician. She plays keys and synths in BLOV (an indie jazz duo), takes on art direction roles in interdisciplinary projects, collaborates with ensembles, choreographers, and video artists, and participates in festivals around the world. She has collaborated with institutions, festivals and ensembles such as IRCAM, Festival Manifeste, Ensemble Nikel, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Ensemble L’Itinéraire, INA GRM, Centre Pompidou, Beaux-Arts de Paris, and France Musique.

In her musical works, Coskunseven blends luminous synth sounds, glitchy beats, and multi-layered textures with a diverse harmonic language. Her studies with one of Turkey’s pioneering jazz composers, Emin Findikoglu, along with her jazz guitar training, have inspired her to delve deeper into her musical preferences, both as a composer and listener. Her musical authenticity, centered around the concept of "musical love/like/taste," finds its intellectual foundation in the term duende, coined by the poet G. García Lorca.

Coskunseven is particularly interested in the collective emotional intensity of live performance—an experience that evokes chills, fills listeners with emotions, and transports them on a journey.

Her work also draws inspiration from Italo Calvino’s exploration of lightness, invisibility, and multiplicity in the arts—elements of magical realism that dissolve the boundaries between the real and the imaginary. Just as Calvino weaves fantastical elements into everyday life, Coskunseven’s compositions blend familiar harmonic structures with unexpected sonic textures, creating spaces where the listener drifts between the known and the unknown. This sense of musical “lightness,” as Calvino describes, does not imply a lack of depth but rather a precise balance—where sound carries an almost weightless, poetic quality, allowing for new forms of perception and experience. In this way, she invites listeners into a world where memory, emotion, and imagination intersect.

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