Dündar, Uzunselvi - Boratav Project

Emre Dündar/Mehmet Ali Uzunselvi

Boratav Project is a collaboration that was formed by two composer-pianists, Emre Dundar and Mehmet Ali Uzunselvi, in 2007, for the purpose of showcasing improvisation performances together, individually, or with participation of different artists within an expandable framework, and creating electro-acoustic structures using materials mostly obtained from the recordings of these performances.

Boratav Project takes its name from the famous folk literature researcher, Pertev Naili Boratav. Boratav, who has compiled more than two thousand tales and established the place of ‘story-telling/making up’ in the narrative tradition with his in depth analyses, is a very valuable name for Turkish cultural history. The name of the project is both a reverent dedication, and reference to the relationship between the researcher’s special interest in the act of improvisation in narrative traditions and the new areas pointed out by Dundar and Uzunselvi.