Ataç Sezer (born 1979) studied piano and musicology in his Turkish homeland, along with Ney, the traditional flute of Ottoman court music. Sezer gained his first compositional experiences with the Argentine composer Dr. Diego H. Feinstein, later he continued his compositional studies with Dieter Schnebel in Berlin and at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Munich in the master class of Matthias Pintscher.
Ataç Sezer’s compositions draw from a variety of sources: from 24 different tonal systems of maqam music, for which he has developed new forms of notation, from microtonality and electronic music. He likes to experiment with new playing techniques and loves to combine western and eastern instruments.
He achieved his first successes with projects for the Deutsches Theater Göttingen (2005) and DOCUMENTA (2007). His work Peschrev, a piece for ney, electric bass and electronics, earned Sezer the 2008 Music Scholarship of the City of Munich. In 2009 he was a scholarship holder of the Kunststiftung NRW in the artists’ village Schöppingen. In 2010 Sezer was commissioned by musica viva, MusikTriennale Köln, HörBlicke21 and was invited to the International Music Festival “Heidelberger Frühling” with his works.
In 2010 Ataç Sezer moved into the Atelier Galata in Istanbul for the first time as a musician within the international residency program of the Kunststiftung NRW. In 2011 Sezer’s piece “mirror-reversed”, a commissioned composition for the Young Euro Classic, was premiered in Berlin.
In 2013 Sezer received a commission for the musikFabrik Cologne.
A portrait CD with his compositions was recorded in November 2011 in collaboration with the NRW Kunststiftung, Deutschlandfunk and GENUIN classics and released internationally in spring 2014. In 2014 and 2015 Ataç Sezer received commissions from Bayerischer Rundfunk for musica viva, Munich Chamber Orchestra and BOZAR Festival Brussels for Scharoun Ensemble Berlin.
His works have been performed by the leading music festivals and institutions for contemporary music such as Berliner Festspiele (Maerz Musik), Ensemblia Mönchengladbach, Münchener Biennale-Klangspuren, Siemens Stiftung-Junge Solisten, Ensemble musikFabrik, Bayerischer Rundfunk musica viva, Münchener Kammerorchester, Dornbirn Klassik and BOZAR Festival.
The composer lives in Munich.