Timuçin Şahin

Timuçin Şahin — Biography

Timuçin Şahin, born 3 February 1973, is a jazz guitarist and composer from Turkey. He picked up the guitar at sixteen and in 1992 enrolled at the Hilversum Conservatory in the Netherlands to study jazz guitar. Classical composition followed: first under Daan Manneke at the Amsterdam Conservatory, then under George Crumb at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. He has also been described as a doctoral candidate in composition at New York University.

Şahin devised a double-necked guitar of his own, which lets him blend Indian scales and African rhythms into Western jazz improvisation. Randy Brecker, Greg Osby, Robin Eubanks, Kai Eckhardt, Mike Mainieri, Donny McCaslin and Tyshawn Sorey are among the musicians he has performed and recorded with. His band On the Line won the Dutch Jazz Competition in 2001. In 2002 his composition Occult earned second prize at the Jur Naessens Music Award, and in 2006 he finished second at the Deloitte Jazz Award with the Concertgebouw Jazz Orchestra.

On record he has released The Unexpected, Slick Road, Window for my breath, Bafa and Inherence, plus Nothing Bad Can Happen and Funk Poems For 'Bird' with his New York quartet Flow State. Turkish jazz festivals have also featured him on stage.