Event Pianist

Cagdas Soylar, born in Izmir, Turkey, moved to the capital city of Ankara, at the age of 11 to enroll in the H.U Ankara State Conservatory where she studied the piano for 10 years. After completing her bachelor’s degree in piano performance, she worked as an accompanist at the same conservatory and taught piano at the universities and many private institutions for several years in Turkey. In 2009, she traveled to the United States and started her graduate studies in piano performance at Pittsburg State University with an honor scholarship.
In 2009, Soylar was awarded 2nd place in the KMTA State Artist Piano Competition. In 2010, she was selected as a soloist by the State Symphony Orchestra and performed in the (phone number hidden)1 season. In 2011, she was awarded “Excellence in Professional Service” by the Pittsburg State University Department of Music. In the same year, she granted membership of one the most prominent American national music honor societies established at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in 1918 based on her incredibly high academic and musical standards. Since then, she has performed as a solo pianist in many countries in Europe, Canada, and China including China’s National Center for the Performing Arts Hall in Beijing, one of the most prestigious concert halls in Asia.
In 2016, Soylar completed her second master’s degree in Keyboard Collaborative Arts and then her doctoral studies in piano performance IN 2017. She also lived in the Greater Los Angeles Area and served as a piano accompanist at Azusa Pacific University and taught piano at many private intuitions between (phone number hidden)9. Between (phone number hidden)1, Soylar served as a piano accompanist at Pennsylvania University.
In October 2018, Soylar’s first book on Olivier Messiaen, a prominent twentieth-century French composer, was published by Wipf and Stock Publishers in the United States and has become available in many countries in the world under the title of “Messiaen’s Musial Language on the Holy Child”. The most prestigious universities grouped under the label “Ivy League” in the U.S., added her book to their library collections right after it got published. Also, some other top universities including, University of California-Berkeley, Indiana University, University of Texas at Austin, New York University, University of Chicago, University of California-San Diego, University of Groningen in Netherlands, Jacobs University Bremen in Germany and Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, one of Israel’s leading academic institutions, included her book in their library catalogues in 2019. In the same year, New York Public Library added her book to their Performing Arts Research Collection as well as The Royal Library of the Netherlands. It has also become available in the Hong Kong Academic Library Link, a union catalogue allowing the students and staff of the eight partner institutions to search a mega collection held in the eight participant libraries in Hong Kong.