in-between is the portrait CD of Turgut Erçetin, whose music is marked by many-sided colours, virtuosity and a tension between ruptures and connections. As the title says, he explores in-between spaces in many dimensions. At the centre of the album stands a cycle in which a Baroque ensemble and a modern symphony orchestra play at the same time.
Erçetin was born in Istanbul and took his doctorate in composition at Stanford University in 2014. He then worked as a researcher at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), among other things on 3D modelling of virtual and physical spaces, and made acoustic measurements of the Hagia Sophia for a model that let the team simulate its interior acoustics. Three formations take part. Ensemble Musikfabrik plays two works, one of them conducted by Aaron Cassidy. Musicians of the ELISION Ensemble appear in all three parts of the central cycle, and in its largest part they meet the SWR Symphonieorchester under Brad Lubman. The booklet text is by Paul Griffiths. He describes the composer's interest in the space between instruments or groups, between harmony and noise, and between what is played and what resounds from the hall.
Das Phonem zwischen zwei Wörtern (The Phoneme Between Two Words) draws, in its largest part (b), on one of Erçetin's research fields, vanished architecture. Here it refers to two demolished Byzantine buildings. The Baroque ensemble and the large orchestra are not set up as opposites but act on each other like interacting seeds. The smaller parts work as fanfare and epilogue: (a) is a duo for cornet and trombone, and (c) is for oboe, clarinet, bassoon and piano. They condense the themes of fusion and separation, and finally lead the ELISION musicians back to modern instruments.
Thousand Dead Bodies Under My Bed, All Cloaked with the Breath of the Living, for three simultaneous chamber ensembles, recalls how the past lives on, in art, in memory and in trauma. Characteristics drift from one group to another while the nature of the whole piece gradually shifts. Resonances (b) is for solo clarinet and string trio. The album was nominated for the Quarterly Critics' Choice 1/2026 of the German Record Critics' Award.
CD, Wergo WER 6446 2, released in 2025 in the German Music Council's Edition Zeitgenössische Musik, running 71 minutes. The Council's Podium Gegenwart programme has issued these portraits of emerging composers on Wergo since 1986.
