Grammy nominated composer & CMES Harvard University fellow, Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol made his Carnegie Hall debut in April 2016 premiering his commissioned piece Harabat/The Intoxicated with the American Composers Orchestra. Other recent works have been heard at Tanglewood’s Ozawa Hall & Jordan Hall. He hails from Cyprus & Turkey, and is a Jazz pianist, a multi-instrumentalist, a singer, an ethnomusicologist as well as a full-time faculty member at the New England Conservatory. He has been the recipient of numerous respected awards including the South Arts Jazz Road Creative Residency Grant in 2021, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Grant twice in 2016 & 2020, as well as the New Music USA Grant twice in 2020 & again in 2024. A musical polymath, Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol has composed for, performed & toured with international stars & ensembles such as Dave Liebman, Bob Brookmeyer, Billy Cobham, Antonio Sanchez, Anat Cohen, Ingrid Jensen, Miguel Zenón, John Patitucci, Esperanza Spalding, The Boston Camerata, The Boston Cello Quartet, American Composers Orchestra, Okay Temiz, Erkan Oğur & Birol Yayla. He pairs Turkish instruments such as zurna (double reed wind), ney (end-blown flute), kös (large kettledrums) and nekkare (small kettledrums) with the jazz orchestra/combo to perform his Turkish music-influenced compositions, in which Turkish makam (mode) and usul (rhythmic cycles) are intertwined with modern jazz as well as specifically film noir influenced music. To achieve the same goal on keyboard instruments he has designed & conceived the SANLIKOL Renaissance 17, a digital microtonal keyboard with 17 keys per octave. Mehmet studied western classical piano with his mother and started giving piano recitals at age 5. Later on he studied with the internationally acclaimed Turkish composer/pianist Aydın Esen and won a scholarship to Berklee College of Music. While at Berklee, Sanlıkol studied jazz composition with such accomplished composers like Herb Pomeroy & Ken Pullig. After studying with composers George Russell, Bob Brookmeyer & Lee Hyla, Sanlıkol completed his Doctor of Musical Arts Degree in Composition. During his doctoral studies, he also focused on Turkish music & ethnomusicology as a result of which he helped find the organization DÜNYA based in Boston, where he acts as the president. It’s a musicians’ collective dedicated to contemporary presentations of Turkish traditions, alone and in interaction with other world traditions, through musical performance, publication, & educational activities. Since its founding Sanlıkol has produced, performed & delivered talks at over two hundred DÜNYA events and released 17 albums, 3 singles, a concert DVD, a feature film of Mehmet’s opera “Othello in the Seraglio” and a documentary film. You can often find Mehmet actively delivering papers & talks at academic conferences such as International Conference on Analytical Approaches to World Music & Society for Ethnomusicology. 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 Yayınları. His second book, entitled Reform, Notation and Ottoman music in Early 19th Century Istanbul: EUTERPE, was published by Routledge in 2023. Currently, he is the director of New England Conservatory’s Intercultural Institute and the project director and curator of Nilüfer Municipality Dr. Hüseyin Parkan Sanlıkol Musical Instruments Museum.
I had the chance to catch up with Mehmet a day or two ahead of the debut concert featuring the R-17 and we got right into it. He described the where it idea (not necessarily a new idea) came from, how it resonates with his desire to reconnect with his Turkish culture, and how this innovation will lead to more exploration. I was and am fascinated by all of this. the concert left nothing to the mind. It took a walk thru history with ancient instrumentation and combined it with a climb into the bed of the future with his new sonic tool to take off with. We talk about the R-17’s small place on his soon to be released album, 7 Shades of Melancholia, out 4/25 on DÜNYA and dive into the creation and ins and out of the new record. For me to get into these types of discussions with Mehmet was a nice push in the ‘we keep building’ direction, as the sonic bridges we create keep getting stronger with each new step added, and new directions we can head. We are constantly moving, and the R-17 is certainly a mover and a shaker.

