Ayse Celasun — Piano

Former Assistant Professor at the conservatories of GPSEA/France, Ayse Celasun, native of Istanbul, began her studies at the age of 5 at Istanbul Belediye Konservatuari (currently Istanbul University State Conservatory). 

She  moved to Paris with a scholarship to the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris, in the class of Germaine Mounier. Having obtained the Higher Diploma, in conjunction with a degree in musicology at the University of Paris VIII, she began teaching and playing in several countries. Between 1989 and 1991 she worked with Arkady Aronov in New York. Back in Paris, Ayse continued to teach and play.

She studied conducting with Sergiu Celibidache in Paris and Munich and worked with Lelia Gousseau, A-R Petrossian, Jacques Lagarde, Marie-Françoise Bucquet and played in the Sons Croisés context. Ayse has performed, inter alia, with G.Torma, J.Bourgès-Maunoury, J.Canon, M.Maurer, A.Sicot, F.Masquelier, D.Rachmanov.M. Akalin, Douglas Nestler, Andrew Scultze, just to name some of them. Regularly invited to be a panel member for competitions, Ayse served as a tenured assistant professor at the Conservatoire National de Musique inCréteil (CRR), in France, and took a leave of absence starting in July 2009 for personal reasons.

In 2011 she collaborated with the Coopératif de la Musique Nouvelle, and Prof. Ahmet Yurur and Dr. Alper Maral have written works for her and partners. In 2012 Ayse moved to Chicago where she founded “Fine Arts Music – Performance and Scholarship”, a 501-c-3 non-profit incorporated in September 2013. FAM-PS has a concert series and the revenue goes to three types of scholarships (Turkish female students, French Emerging Talent, and Chicago Area). In October 2014 she founded “Notre École de Musique LLC”, a French curriculum based music school. NEdM’s name is registered, and FAM-PS is also on the way to being registered. Ayse speaks fluent English, French, Turkish and basic Russian. She has two children, a daughter and a son. She loves Dutch painting, chess and sports. Member MTNA, ISMTA, CAMTA, Institut Français Profs, le réseau social de l’éducation en français.