The story of "Nilay's Dream" - PART 1
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It was a lovely spring morning in London in the year 2007. I woke up in my mould-riddled flat. I got dressed and casually headed out to catch a bus to Abbey Road, the home to the world-renowned studios forever embedded into the history of recorded music, not to mention their pioneering recording technologies and as the studio that housed The Beatles and Pink Floyd. As a Cypriot who recently moved to London, I was surprisingly unaware of the immense cultural heritage I was heading to. Just a mere seven years ago, I could barely, if at all, read music and struggled to teach myself to play the piano. But here I was, with a recording session at the Abbey Road Studios, where my first orchestral piece would be performed by none other than the London Symphony Orchestra. Little did I know that this immense career jump would never have sustained its own weight and was doomed to come crashing down – hard.
Recording session of Nilay's Dream at Abbey Road Studios (2007)
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Once the session was over, I was once again riding on top of a double-decker bus heading back home when I couldn’t help but feel on top of the world. This was it - after all the hard work, dedication, sweat, tears and persistence - I finally made it. An unknown composer from a little-known country has somehow managed to make it in the big city. The euphoric feeling didn’t last too long though. Once I entered my home, I saw my half-finished coffee and the bed in the condition I left. A distinct feeling of despair started to settle, a sense that nothing had actually changed. I sat on my sofa, sounds of a bustling city outside, the room dead quiet, my mind racing to grasp what had happened, what it meant, and… what now?
If this were a movie scene, the director would position me in the dead center of the screen while the camera slowly zoomed in. After all, the main character was having a crucial moment. I zoomed in and started to scrutinize my past. To avoid the impossible question of ‘what now?’ I tackled, ‘How did I get here?’ Flashbacks of all those moments that led me here came one after the other.
When I enrolled at the Eastern Mediterranean University in 2000, the music department was only in its second year. Both the department and the University itself were first in the unrecognized Northern Cyprus. Nevertheless, it was teeming with activity and a vibrant community of lecturers from all over the world. Each year, we had more and more lecturers coming in from Europe and the US who all brought their cultures, experience and knowledge to our footsteps. The future looked bright.
Half the class I was in had no understanding of music theory; we could not read music and knew nothing about the history of Western Music, counterpoint, solfege, etc. I played the guitar at some level and had my own band in college, and we were writing our own material at some point. Before enrolling at the University, I had some prior preparations, like singing single notes and recognizing basic intervals. I even started to learn the piano, an instrument in our house since childhood, but now, it has gained a newfound importance and relevance.
This was me at that point, and I would soon find out that I was no match for a group of classmates from a conservatory; they all had music education from the age of 11 or earlier. I, and others like me who came from a non-musical college, were simply no match. This gave me a crucial advantage, however, as I was even more motivated to try and catch up with them. Where they felt they were breezing through the classes - and often being bored, I felt being presented with new challenges daily. It worked like a charm.
When I first enrolled, I didn’t even know that ‘composition major’ was a thing. All I knew was that we had to pick an instrument as our major, so I went with Guitar. I soon discovered that composing music and learning theory and harmony fascinated me more than anything. I was detached from classical guitar and the vigorous, repetitive, and frustrating training required to become a performer. My teachers soon found out about that, too. My guitar teacher tried to bring me closer to the guitar; some other teachers tried to reason with me that I could become a composer even after my performance-oriented education. Nothing worked. I knew composition was my passion, and I wanted to prove it.
Every Friday, we had a department-wide short lunch-time student recital. It was an excellent opportunity for some and a nightmarishly dreadful day for others. For one of the recitals, I composed and notated a piece for piano and violin. It was my first composition to have been notated, and one resembling Western music conventions of harmony and instrumentation. I completed the piece and rehearsed it with a violinist on my own efforts. I requested to perform it at one of these lunchtime recitals, and they gladly provided me with a slot. However, my guitar teacher intervened and demanded that I should also perform a short guitar piece at the same recital. This was a bit of a setback, but I was determined to showcase my composition no matter the circumstances. The recital was a success in my eyes, a tiny triumph in my journey. My solfege teacher reached out after the recital, congratulated me, and offered to give me some of his composition-related reading material. My harmony teacher offered to provide me with a session of one-on-one guidance, which he did, and to this day, I remember the value of his suggestions. Everything was coming together so nicely, I thought.
What didn’t work so much was that my father was, at the time, the dean of our faculty. Whenever I had a good grade or sometimes for the fact that I merely passed, I would be the subject of my peers, claiming it was all due to my father being the dean. They did this jokingly, of course, but one couldn’t help but see that some took this as a fact. It was disheartening, to say the least. However, this whole thing proved to be the second most crucial part of the equation that led to me where I was. It gave me the determination to prove I was getting good grades on my own. This was a significant motivational element; it meant that I was out there attending all activities, writing several essays, or fixing the work of my peers who had little interest in the topic. By the third year, I was the go-to guy for anything related to theory, harmony, music history and essays!
Sometime during my third year, I was to attend a composition workshop in Ohrid, Macedonia, where I would study under my first true composition mentor, Goce Kolarovski. It was also where I would meet my future mentor, Miroslav Spasov, who, unbeknownst to me then, would join our university the following semester and would be why I willingly lengthened my studies just to be mentored by him further. It was a beautiful time; for the first time in my life, I felt I was doing something good with my life, and I had wonderful people around to guide me. I couldn’t wait for the fourth year to start, and I didn’t, just one bit, want this chapter of my life to end.
To be continued...
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