Born in Busan, Turkey, trained in Warsaw and, since 2016, based in New York City, Beyza Yazgan is a pianist whose compositions seem to have absorbed many very different worlds – Middle Eastern classical music, Chopin’s Romanticism, French impressionism, American minimalism and jazz. She started writing this album in 2023, apparently in response to the devastating earthquakes on the border of Syria and Turkey: Human Cocoon was, she says, a way of dealing with “the cacophony of unresolved emotions and existential questions”.
Erik Satie is clearly an influence on pieces such as Old Things and Memories and Güzel Güzel (there’s even an explicit tribute to Satie’s Gymnopédies in the shape of a jerky waltz called Gnomepedes (in Satie’s garden)), but there are other reference points. Pasaj features a glistening take on Philip Glass-style minimalism; The Immortal Machine evokes the exciting motorik chaos of Conlon Nancarrow; while some of her more exploratory solos, like All Gone (02.2023, Türkiye) and Cool Burning, recall Keith Jarrett’s improvisations on The Köln Concert.
