Zeynep Ucbasaran

Pianist Zeynep Ucbasaran began her music studies at the age of four at the İstanbul Conservatory. She received a Concert Artist Diploma from the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, and after advanced studies at the Hochschule für Musik, in Freiburg, Germany. She earned her MA and DMA degrees in Piano Performance from the University of Southern California.

Ucbasaran has won professional awards such as the American Liszt Society Award, and she was a prize-winner in the 1996 and 2000 Los Angeles Liszt Competitions. She was designated a “woman of distinction in the year 2003” by the Daughters of Atatürk organization in the United States.

Ucbasaran has given recitals and concerts in many countries, making her Wigmore Hall debut in November 2004. She has given master classes and lecture recitals throughout the United States, and in Brazil, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. In addition to concertizing as a solo performer, she has toured with international musicians in various chamber music configurations. In 2019, as a part of the 47th İstanbul International Music Festival, Ucbasaran performed a four-piano recital with George Lazaridis, Cyprien Katsaris and Janis Vakarelis as the “Four Musketeers of the Piano.” These collaborations will continue into the future.

Her recordings on the Eroica label include the scherzos and polonaises of Chopin, the complete piano sonatas of Mozart, music by Liszt, Schubert, Scarlatti and Beethoven; and twentieth- century composers including Leonard Bernstein and Robert Muczynski.

Ucbasaran’s recording of the piano music of Ahmet Adnan Saygun is found on the Naxos label. Her recordings have been received with acclaim: Gramophone
magazine remarked that “An agreeable elegance pervades pianist Zeynep Ucbasaran’s playing.”

As a part of the “3 Piano Project” she has performed and recorded music for three pianos with her colleagues Sergio Gallo and Miguel Ángel Ortega Chavaldas for Divine Art, and album which includes the premiere recording of Saygun’s Poem, Op. 73 for three pianos. 2020 has also seen the release of an album of music for piano four-hands with Sergio Gallo, also from Divine Art.

Ucbasaran’s performance of the works that Franz Liszt performed in İstanbul when he visited the city in 1847 was broadcast by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to all of Europe as part of the celebration of Liszt’s 200th birthday in October 2011. A compilation of these selections interpreted by Ucbasaran was released in 2013 under the title “Liszt in Istanbul.” She has recently completed her solo project of recording the complete set of Mozart’s variations for piano. The All Music Guide raved, “As a Mozart player, Ucbasaran touches the sublime.”

For more information, please see her website, www.zupiano.com