Murat Parlak

Murat Parlak (* in Kempten (Allgäu) ) is a German composer , pianist and singer who is known both as a long-time member of the British new wave icon Anne Clark and through several of his own band projects and various commissioned works, among others in theater circles. As a musician, he serves different styles from classical to jazz and electronic music to rock music and hip-hop .

Live and act

Childhood and musical career

Murat Parlak comes from a Turkish- Kurdish family and grew up in the Allgäu . In his youth he learned to play the piano and has given concerts in Europe, Costa Rica, Panama and Honduras. His repertoire includes compositions for orchestra, choir and solo instruments as well as theater music and commissioned compositions for advertising films.

Collaboration with other musicians

Parlak worked with jazz musicians such as Franco Ambrosetti , Egberto Gismonti and Branford Marsalis and made classical music for Yehudi Menuhin and the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra, among others . As a commissioned work in the form of a private classical concert in Budapest, he also wrote a “World Peace Hymn” for the Dalai Lama , which was performed in his presence at a celebration of the Club of Budapest .

In 2002 Parlak accompanied the British musician Anne Clark on her European tour and on her album From The Heart - Live In Bratislava on the piano in the Floating Stone ensemble . Since then he has been a permanent member of the artist's band as a pianist and singer, with whom he has been touring Europe since 2002 and performing at numerous concerts.

In addition, Murat Parlak was and is active in several of his own music groups: He plays jazz concerts all over Europe with the "Murat Parlak Trio" (Murat Parlak, piano / Wladimir Napoles from Cuba, bass / Matteo Piazza from Switzerland, drums). The band "Parlaque" based in Lugano / Switzerland mixes rock elements with jazz and pop. Other projects include a. the trio Hitchcoques and Soul Babies . In 2016 Parlak founded the piano-drum duo Esmeralda with drummer Timm Schauen , which sometimes also works with a bassist.

Parlak also works with the actor Dominique Horwitz . Murat Parlak has been on tour with Horwitz and band with the rock crossover opera Me and the Devil since 2013 . In 2019 the Dominique Horwitz Band was on tour with "Beggar's Opera".

Production for theater, radio and audio books

In 2007 Parlak was the musical director of the performance of René Goscinny's Little Nick at the Stuttgart State Theater . In addition, he was the musical director of Harald Schmidts Elvis lives. And Schmidt can prove it , which also premiered at the Stuttgart State Theater on October 12, 2007, was shown on television (3sat) and was performed in May 2008 at the Ruhr Festival . In addition to the theater ensemble, Elvis Lives also used Parlak's trio "Baby Grand".

Since 2008 he has written several radio play music, for example for the ARD radio crime scene Mordlauf or for the SWR radio play Super Elli by Heidi von Plato as well as for other radio play productions of the SWR. From 2009 he worked with the director Kai Grehn on radio plays and audio books. Murat Parlak recorded the composition “Be drunk” together with Anne Clark for the radio play production “The Artificial Paradises” (based on Charles Baudelaire). As an audio book, “The Artificial Paradises” were awarded the German Audio Book Prize in 2012 in the category “The Special Audio Book / Special Daring”. For Kai Grehn's radio play “Sturmhöhe” based on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, in which u. a. Bibiana Beglau, Alexander Fehling, Franziska Wulf , Jule Böwe, Jens Wawrczeck and others have also contributed, Parlak has composed several shorter piano pieces to which Anne Clark recites poems and texts by Emily Brontë.

Parlak as a songwriter

Murat Parlak is less known as an independent singer-songwriter who also writes his own lyrics on his CD Prisoners' League.

Discography

Independent publications:

• 1997 - Metamorphoses (CD; own compositions of modern classical music)
• 2007 - Prisoners' League (CD; rock music with his own band)
• 2008 - "Hitchcoques" (EP; with the band "Hitchcoques")

Piano and vocals in Anne Clark's band:

• 2003 - From the Heart - Live in Bratislava (recorded in the Slovenský rozhlas studios in Slovakia during the European Acoustic Tour on November 17, 2002)
• 2008 - The Smallest Acts of Kindness
• 2013 - Enough with Anne Clark

Radio play music with SWR / ARD:

• 2008 - ARD Radio Tatort "Murder Run" by Christine Lehmann
• 2008 - SWR "Cosima", director: Günter Maurer
• 2008 - SWR “Thea's Lachen” - radio play by Heidi von Plato
• 2009 - SWR "Super Elli" by Heidi von Plato
• 2012 - Charles Baudelaire - The artificial paradises (radio play by Kai Grehn and others with Jeanne Moreau, Nouvelle Vague and others)
• 2013 - Enough - Live in Zurich (with Anne Clark and Murat Parlak, solo piano)
• 2013 - Emily Brontë "Sturmhöhe" (small compositions for piano and voice)

Guest posts for Floating Stone , the band led by Anne Clark's guitarist Jeff Aug :

• 2006 - Arco's Third Eye (double CD; piano with Song For Anne , vocals with Song Istanbul )

Album releases as producer:

• 2010 Jeff Aug: Livingroom Sessions
• 2012 Jeff Aug: Wedding Song

Reviews

Especially in solo concerts, critics regularly state, Murat Parlak can develop his virtuosity and his talent to let the sparks jump to and from the audience: “When Murat Parlak sits down at the grand piano, he does not (only) begin to play the piano in the real sense , he switches on a power plant ... ", or as early as 2003:" He can enchant and rage like a musical berserk ", after a few bars Parlak seems to effortlessly establish direct contact between artist and audience.

Parlak succeeds in building dynamic ballads with dramatic tension out of intuition. His improvisational playing as a soloist and piano accompanist has been certified by several critics as having a "Scriabinian depth", that is, a "poetry of ecstasy" reminiscent of Scriabin .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hill: Musical Berserk in Webams. Murat Parlak raptures the audience. Augsburger Allgemeine, April 19, 2003.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Jan Ulrich Welke: Unleashed tones. Stuttgarter Zeitung, November 10, 2003.

literature

• Freddy Schissler: Crazy guy. In: City Talks from Kempten. Gmeiner Verlag, Meßkirch 2014, pp. 60–65.

Web links

• www.murat-parlak.de
• Murat Parlak at Discogs (English)
• Works by and about Murat Parlak in the catalog of the German National Library