Composition Student Delfin Demiray in I Care If You Listen
“I believe it is every artist’s dream to explore every string of creation comprehensively, and maybe one day find a form of art that will survive and inspire another generation of artists. It is also my dream to one day be able to achieve that.” —Delfin Demiray
Curtis composition student Delfin Demiray was recently interviewed by I Care If You Listen in advance of Curtis Symphony Orchestra’s March 29, 2025, performance of her new work, An Absurd Image for Orchestra, under the baton of conductor Jeffrey Milarsky. Ms. Demiray, the Edith Evans Braun Composition Fellow at the school and an accomplished pianist, studies under Nick DiBerardino, Amy Beth Kirsten, Steven Mackey, Jonathan Bailey Holland, and Richard Danielpour at the school. As a composer, she explores an interplay of ideas, including change versus routine, rationality versus instinct, and perseverance versus adaptability. In the concert hall, her deeply felt and intellectually driven compositional philosophy shines through with music that captivates both the ear and the mind.
The award-winning musician and talented photographer talks about Matem, her first serious work, inspired by Turkish folk music, born from the deep emotions of leaving home for the first time. Ms. Demiray discusses her ever-changing artistic standpoint and pushing herself to incorporate different styles and perspectives as a composer. She also mentions a recent piece, wreck.repair.repeat, which uses data taken from the We Will Stop Femicides platform. Two Curtis sopranos (Shikta Mukherjee and Juliet Rand) sing a duet about the statistics of the women in Turkey murdered by their fathers, brothers, and husbands.
Watch a performance of this poignant work, conducted by Mariana Corichi Gómez, and featuring Bade Dastan (violin), Xiaoxi Annie Li (flute), Tzi-Yi Yu (clarinet), Noah Urquidi (bass trombone), Simon Gregory Bakos (clarinet), Elijah Orlenko (piano), and percussionists Pengyu Bao and Maxence Dauriat.
Ms. Demiray, a native of Ankara, Turkey, reflects on her early years studying piano and her first foray into composition during high school. One of her earliest works, Heartbeat Waltz, featured a striking sound installation incorporating the actual heart of a cow concealed in a nightstand drawer, which blended two recorded heartbeat sounds that gradually merged into a waltz-like rhythm. A fan of Vito Acconci, Chris Burden, and John Cage, her love of conceptual art, drama, and writing spills over into her compositional voice, and in the future, she hopes to see an interdisciplinary blend of all of these concepts, where new dynamics like odors, tastes, and touch through art are explored.
In the interview, Ms. Demiray also shares news of upcoming works that will soon be premiered here at Curtis and a solo marimba commission she is creating for the Cortona Sessions Contemporary Performance Competition. While recognizing she is new to composing, in the years to come she aspires to master Western composition techniques and hopes to merge them with media art, public installations, and artificial intelligence.
Read the interview HERE and visit Delfin Demiray’s official website.
Ms. Demiray and four other Curtis students were spotlighted in a recent New York Times article. Read “At This School, the Students Live Entirely for Music.”
Portraits of Delfin Demiray by Nichole MCH Photography.
