Zeynep Uçbaşaran

Zeynep Uçbaşaran was born in Istanbul. She started her musical studies at the Istanbul Conservatory when she was 4 years old, one of the youngest students ever to be admitted. In 1987, she started her studies in the Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest and worked with Prof. Zempleni Kornel, Prof. Katalin Nemes (pupil of Bela Bartok), Balazs Kecskes and Prof. Istvan Lantos. She obtained her teaching and concert artist diploma from the Liszt Academy of Music in 1994 but continued her studies with Prof. Dr. Tibor Szasz in Hochschule für Muzik, Freiburg, Germany and obtained her diploma in Aufbaustudium I. She also obtained her MA (2000) and DMA (2004) degrees in piano performance from the University of Southern California. Zeynep Uçbaşaran has given solo recitals and concerts in Turkey, Egypt, Hungary, England, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Belarus, Estonia, Slovenia, Lithuania, and the United States in addition to several chamber music performances. She has received several awards: American Liszt Society Award, Rozsnyai Memorial Award, Ina Broida Award from UCSB, and USC Associates Music Merit Scholarship. Uçbaşaran received the MAA 2001 Aspen Summer Music Festival Scholarship, where she was selected to play in the distinguished artist Master Class of Leon Fleisher. She was the prize-winner in the 1996 and 2000 Los Angeles Liszt Competitions. She was selected as a "woman of distinction in the year 2003" by the Daughters of Atatürk organization in the US. She has recorded for Eroica Classical Recordings the music of Franz Liszt (Santa Barbara Liszt Album, 2001) and (Liszt / Sonata in B minor, 2003), Franz Schubert (Virtuoso Schubert, 2002) works of W. A. Mozart (Mozart, 2005) and Scarlatti through twentieth-century composers (Scarlatti / Beethoven / Saygun / Bernstein / Muczynski, 2005) to critical acclaim. Her most recent recording for Eroica is another collection of Mozart sonatas (Mozart, 2007). Her recording of piano works of the Turkish composer A. Adnan Saygun will be issued by Naxos records in 2007.