music

Making a splash back home in Turkey

Portico Staff — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 15:11:51 +0000

As Bartu Suer’s final semester in the University of Guelph’s marketing management program loomed, his singing voice boomed over airwaves in his home country of Turkey.

Suer is the lead singer of çatıkatı, a high-energy, Turkish language alternative rock band. The group started in Istanbul and continued to evolve in Guelph, where rehearsals and songwriting binges happened in a small, off campus apartment. The songs ignited a music career back home.

Guitarist-vocalist Can Ozyurt, also an international student at U of G, and keyboard player Ural Turan, a student in England, are the other members of çatıkatı. The band leapt onto the Turkish music scene a few years ago after winning a major talent contest.

One of the prizes was a professionally produced video of a song called merhaba that took off after it was released late last year. The band signed a recording contract with Turkish record label Lucky Ones, a company that has a distribution contract with Sony Music Turkey.

Merhaba is about being real with each other, not two-faced, Suer said. The video for the song, whose title means “hello” in English, grabbed thousands of views on YouTube and tens of thousands of streams on Spotify in the first days of its release. The next step for the band is to cut an album.

Suer said everything he has learned in his marketing management program has helped in his music career – whether insights gained into contract negotiations or the strong communication skills he was taught.

Suer was unaware of the existence of Guelph until he began searching for a top international university to attend.

“I was impressed with U of G’s rankings.”

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Renovations to benefit audiences, performers

Portico Staff — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 18:07:00 +0000

A major renovation of the MacKinnon Building to start this spring will result in updated performance space and a new look.

The renovations aim to inspire the next generation of artists, musicians and performers who will shape the Canadian and international cultural landscape.

Work is expected to begin this month and be completed by fall 2020. The renovation will make the building fully accessible and provide new practice rooms and landscaped open space.

Through Canada Foundation for Innovation funding, the ImprovLab will get dedicated space in the current building courtyard, fulfilling the courtyard’s originally intended purpose as a theatre space.

In addition, the George Luscombe Theatre (above) and the Goldschmidt Room will receive significant updates.

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Next Chapters, Sights and Sounds – Spring 2018

Portico Staff — Mon, 14 May 2018 04:00:00 +0000

Sally Cooper

Smells Like Heaven

Published by ARP Books in 2017, the stories in Sally Cooper’s Smells Like Heaven are woven together by the connecting thread of the transformational power of love. The author of two previous novels, Love Object and Tell Everything, Cooper, BA’88, will publish a third novel this year.

Martin Golland

Now

Martin Golland, MA ’06, merges seeming dichotomies — representation and abstraction, fragmentation and totality — in his most recent series of paintings. The work in Golland’s late 2017 exhibition at Montreal’s Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran, entitled Now, explored unlikely juxtapositions and themes of entropy.

Chioma Ifeanyi-Okorom

My African Corner

When Chioma Ifeanyi-Okorom, B.Comm.’10, realized that word of mouth was the predominant means of marketing businesses owned and services offered by members of Toronto’s African diaspora, she came up with a better way. Along with Abdul-Aziz Garuba, she co-founded My African Corner, which promotes businesses, events, arts and culture owned by members of the African diaspora. Launched in 2017, their venture now features more than 50 listings in the GTA, and plans to go global.

Sarah Cale

Potpourri

Visual artist Sarah Cale, MA ’05, cut, glued and assembled thousands of tiny bits of coloured paper and paint flecks to come up with the collages in her recent transitional Potpourri exhibition at Roenisch Gallery in Toronto. In a novel process combining painting and collage, Cale often paints on plastic, then peels the dried paint and pastes it to canvas or linen.

Bonnie Rozanski

Damaged People

A multi-generational novel with an edge, Damaged People by Bonnie Rozanski, M.Sc. ’97, is rooted in leading-edge science. The book addresses the genetic imprints left by tragic events and how those genetic scars impact future generations. The author of nine novels and five plays, Rozanski now lives in Philadelphia.

Karrilee Fifi

CDM Generation

As leader of Trinidad’s CDM Generation, Karrilee Fifi, B.Comm ’10, promotes Caribbean dance music (CDM), which combines Caribbean musical genres with electronic music. Fifi returned to her Trinidadian homeland in 2010. Three years ago, she started the CDM Conference to bring international attention to the flourishing musical scene in Trinidad and Tobago. The third edition of the conference was held in late 2017.

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