Umut Fırtına Kıral is a Netherlands based composer, sound artist, drummer and producer whose work spans concert music, sound design and interdisciplinary collaborations. Working across improvised music, electroacoustic practices and contemporary classical music, he creates compositions for ensembles, solo instruments, and immersive audiovisual projects, while also developing original music and sound design for films, theatre, dance, fashion and visual arts. Besides his compositions and performances, he creates artworks for different occasions, painting being another creative outlet where he follows similar principles that he uses for his compositions.
His recent projects include music for the Louis Vuitton Foundation curated by Brawhaus Paris, the soundtrack Rift for a science-fiction universe, and The Portrait, Meditations and a Distant Land, a suite for large ensemble. His concert works include Meditations No. II, a spatial composition for twelve metronomes and chamber ensemble and a solo piano work Confronting Silence for the 58th Spring Festival, Den Haag, alongside commissioned works for ViV Woodwind Quintet and KonCon Saxophone Ensemble. His work also extends to fashion and visual art, with original music for a jewellery campaign by Evren Kayar and Invisible Cities, series of immersive compositions accompanying video art by Balkan Karisman, presented in Istanbul and Barcelona.
Born in Istanbul in 1993, he studied Composition, Production and Sound Technologies at Kingston University Londonand Istanbul Bilgi University, before completing a master’s degree in Jazz Composition at the Royal Conservatoire The Hague. During his studies, he received the Excellence Scholarship and support from Corendon Funds. His practice brings together a diverse musical background and an interest in spatial composition, improvisation and the expressive possibilities of a single idea.