The Composers Conference is honored to announce 2025 Fromm Foundation Composer Fellow Cem Güven as the 2026 Susan Horvath Chamber Music Workshop Composer.
Cem will attend the 2026 Conference at Avaloch Farm Music Institute for rehearsals and the premiere of the new work for our 2026 Chamber Music Workshop.
CMW participants, CPI Fellows, Conference Ensemble members, and our New Music Conductor Fellow will come together to prepare and perform Cem’s wonderful new work at our home at Avaloch Farm Music Institute in Summer 2026.
ABOUT CEM
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in New York. Cem was nominated for the Gaudeamus Award 2024 and he was also one of the finalists in MA/IN Award 2024. He is the recipient of awards in various composition competitions and organizations worldwide, such as the Petrichor International Music Competition Grand Prize, Royal Academy of Music Composition Postgraduate Prize, Leverhulme Trust Arts Scholarship, Alblaze Records Award, Academia Musica Vienna (2nd Prize) Franz Schubert Conservatorium in Wien (2nd Prize) and KLK New Music competitions such as “Musica Per Archi” (2nd prize) and “Orient-Occident” (3rd Prize). Güven’s music is performed by well-known ensembles such as Ensemble Musikfabrik, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Attacca Quartet, Riot Ensemble, Wet Ink, Coma Ensemble, Tbilisi State Opera Chamber Orchestra, KLK New Music Orchestra, Sydney Contemporary Orchestra, Loadbang Ensemble and New European Ensemble.
ABOUT HIS MUSIC
Cem’s music imagines a macrocosm of ear attention communicated through elements of multidimensionality while using dramatic narratives and contrasting sounds as tools to construct overall forms and pacings. Güven describes his music as “Earround Music, “ more specifically, “harmonic germinations surrounding the ears” since his ambition is to create surrounding sonorities with the contrast of high and low pitches/textures expressed with a variety of dynamics, as well as to emphasize the tension between twelve-tone and beyond twelve-tone pitch collections. Cem is particularly interested in the feeling of motion that emerges from chord progressions. Güven works with imaginary atmospheres that give the feeling of dreaminess, as the emphasized sonorities disappear and reappear with ambiguous pacings. Turkish music is highly inspirational to him in terms of its pitch collections and its gestural content.
IN THE COMPOSER’S WORDS
I am honored to be selected for the Susan Horvath Chamber Music Workshop commission award. The Composers Conference was one of the best music festivals I have ever been in my life. Imagine a farm that becomes a wonderland to many artists worldwide, who bring something fresh from their interesting personalities. Imagine the collective effort of making something immersive becoming an immersive experience itself. This forms an environment in which composers can be deeply expressive. I would like to compose a piece that responds to the vibrant energy of this wonderful atmosphere. Wonder was the key feeling I had during the festival, which can also be the key element to the new piece.