Young Turkish flutist wins British Flute Society award

Young Turkish flutist Ece Selin Yüksel has received the "Best Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Composer Performance Special Award" from the British Flute Society.

She won the award with her instructor Hakan Halit Turgay's composition, which he dedicated to her.

Yüksel, 23, who is a graduate student at the Ankara University of Music and Fine Arts and also studied soloism at École Normale de Musique de Paris in France, told Anadolu Agency she has been taking flute lessons since she was 9 years old.

She said she and her teacher Turgay, whom she met when she got into the Istanbul University State Conservatory, never part ways, adding it is important for her to move forward with Turgay's compositions.

"I have a debt of loyalty. I want to introduce other works of my teacher to the world," she said.

She said she regularly follows the events of the British Flute Society and saw an announcement for the competition on social media and decided to participate in the contest in the "Best Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Composer Special Award" category.

"We are a nation with a rich composition repertoire, but we do not have a flute repertoire. So I applied for the 'minority composer' category as part of the competition.

"There is a system that our teacher Hakan Halit designed to contribute to the Turkish flute repertoire. A system that started years ago at the Paris Conservatory," she said.

Explaining the system, Yüksel said that French composers compose for each student who will graduate and these students play these compositions in order to graduate.

She went on to say that her teacher, using the same method, composed 'Aegean Whispers.'

"I recorded the piece for the contest with my pianist friend and sent...