Emre Aracı

Emre Aracı is also active as a public speaker on topics relating to Turkish-European musical exchange, having lectured at venues ranging from New York University and the British Museum to the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Sarajevo and Vienna. As cultural ambassador, his lecture tours organised by the Turkish Foreign Ministry and hosted by various Turkish Embassies, have taken him to many parts of the world, from Ottawa to Islamabad. He contributes to Turkish and English journals including Andante, The Court Historian, International Piano, The Musical Times and "Cornucopia", a magazine about Turkish art and culture. As well as taking part in the Izmir and Istanbul International Festivals, Dr Aracı has also worked with various Turkish orchestras including the Presidential Symphony Orchestra, Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, Antalya Opera and the Borusan and Istanbul Chamber Orchestras. He gave a performance with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta in the Netherlands in the presence of HM Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in December 2006 and in May 2008 with Alexander Rudin's orchestra, Musica Viva, in Moscow. Recent performances took place in Latvia and Estonia, including Tartu and Tallinn, the latter being in the historic Kadriorg Palace, as well as a concert in Aya Irini in Istanbul with the Naval Forces Band and the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra on 20 October 2008.

After 2002 Aracı mainly turned to international orchestras for recordings and concerts. Bosphorus by Moonlight which features his violin concerto bearing the same title was recorded in the Rudolfinum by the Prague Symphony Orchestra with the Turkish violinist Cihat Aşkın. The same album also includes miniature musical portrait pieces of the Ottoman Imperial family by Callisto Guatelli Pasha, an Italian who served the sultans as the director of the palace orchestra in Istanbul. Guatelli succeeded Giuseppe Donizetti Pasha in the same post; the eldest brother of Gaetano Donizetti, Giuseppe settled in Turkey in 1828 and remained there for the rest of his life until his death in 1856. Aracı wrote the first comprehensive biography of Donizetti Pasha which was published in Turkish in 2006. He also conducted a commemorative concert in Bergamo at the Teatro Donizetti on 4 December 2007 on the same stage where the Italian bandmaster once appeared in a production.

During his years at Edinburgh, Aracı played an active role in the musical life of the university and founded the Edinburgh University String Orchestra, which still continues to give regular concerts and is run by student volunteers. In 2000 the orchestra established the Emre Aracı Composition Prize which has since been annually awarded to young aspiring student composers.

Thanks to a funding by the Turkish Economy Bank (TEB), between 1999-2002 Aracı was Research Associate at the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies, University of Cambridge, where his interest in the European music of the Ottoman Empire grew. In 1999 he also founded a string orchestra called The London Academy of Ottoman Court Music who performed his own orchestrations of compositions by Italian musicians resident at the Turkish court in the 19th century, as well as original works by Ottoman sultans in the popular dance forms of the period, such as waltzes, polkas and mazurkas. The ensemble which was in existence between 1999 and 2003 performed in London at venues including St James's Piccadilly and St John's Smith Square. At Cambridge they gave an historic concert in the Chapel of Trinity College in 2000. Warner Classics released an album featuring a selection of these imperial compositions recorded by the ensemble in 2002, under the title of Invitation to the Seraglio. In Turkey the same material was pre-released by Kalan Records on two CDs; European Music at the Ottoman Court and War and Peace: Crimea 1853-56.

Aracı studied music at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 1994 with a BMus (Hons.) degree which was followed by a PhD in 1999. Supported by Lady Lucinda Mackay and the Inchcape Foundation, the subject of his thesis was the life and works of Turkey's eminent 20th-century composer Ahmed Adnan Saygun (1907–1991).

Aracı is a Turkish music historian, composer and conductor who has been living in the United Kingdom since 1987. He has made original contributions to the scholarship of Turkish music through his pioneering research focusing primarily on the European musical practice in the Ottoman court.

Emre Aracı (born 22 December 1968) is a Turkish music historian, conductor, and composer.

Istanbul to London Aracı's fourth album released by Kalan Records in Turkey was also recorded in the Rudolfinum with the Prague Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonic Choir and features two choral hymns, one by Angelo Mariani and the other by Luigi Arditi. Both musicians performed before Sultan Abdülmecid I and composed Imperial Anthems in the Ottoman language which were sung by Italians phonetically. The latter's Inno Turco was sung by a British choir of 1600 when Sultan Abdülaziz visited London in 1867 in his presence at Crystal Palace. Aracı's historic reconstructions of these works, although with much limited forces, and recorded by Ates Orga like the rest of his world premiere albums, are significant contributions towards resurrecting the Euro-Ottoman repertoire, hitherto unknown among musicologists. Euro-Ottomania in fact became the title of Brilliant Classic's global release; including the choral numbers as well as August Ritter von Adelburg's Symphonie-Fantasie, Aux Bords du Bosphore, which The Gramophone (April 2008) described as "an unexpectedly attractive collection, and the musical presentation is expert, idiomatic and alive".