KOLEKTİF HAYAL GÜCÜ (KHG)
“The Art of the Collective Imagination”

Kolektif Hayal Gücü (KHG) (“The Art of the Collective Imagination”) is an intercultural music project that involves community engagement, teaching, performance and thinking about music and society.

The Collective is based in Izmir and Bergama (Pergamon), Turkey, under the direction of the founder Dr. Timuçin Şahin. Şahin is an innovative composer, improviser and band-leader with an extensive discography and performance background. His creative practice blends jazz, avant-garde, experimental, and electronic components into a powerful musical statement on collective musical freedom. Şahin started the KHG project in Bergama in 2017 in order to contribute to the cultural enrichment of his region. When he became Assistant Professor and Director of Jazz Studies at Yaşar University in 2018, he expanded the project to include musicians and audiences in Turkey's third largest city, Izmir.

Members of the Collective include students and adults of all ages and from a variety of musical, experiential, and social backgrounds. The Collective operates widely in the region of Bergama and Izmir where there is a mixture and wide range of socio-economic status among its participants including Romani musicians, archeologists, teachers, kids, teens, and college students, and the elderly. Together they explore the capacities and limits of music making under social disruption and economic constraints, and how music education and creative thinking can participate in constructive processes. Open to all, the music creation process is nonetheless rigorous and taken very seriously by its members.

An important component of the Collective is bringing unique artists from around the world who specialize in diverse musics, including jazz, electronic, classical and multimedia, as guest mentors and members of the ensemble. Notable guests artists have included: Aydin Esen (Piano, TR), Ali Perret (Piano, TR), Enric Monfort (Percussion, Spain), Ben Van Gelder (Saxophone, NL), Jim Black (Drums, USA), Reggie Washington (Bass, USA), Lukas Zyta (Drums, PO), Adam Mirza (Composer, USA), Alp Turac (Recording engineer, TR), Hülya Tunçag (Music critic, TR).

An innovative aspect of the performances is conduction; members of the ensemble conduct each other to create original real-time compositions. Şahin developed this conduction language together with the members, following the musical legacies of conductor Lawrence “Butch” Morris and Senegalese drummer Doudou N’Diaye Rose. The philosophical and musical legacy of creators such as John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, as well as the tenets of Afro-American musical experience play crucial roles in creating a bridge to Turkish improvisational musical traditions.

The Collective’s curriculum includes units on musical hybridity, new technologies, the art of listening, music as collective utterance, and “the Sound Memory of the City,” where members of the older generation get together with the young musicians to share their experiences. During the program members attend classes, rehearsals, workshops, and talks. The Collective also highlights dialogue between local and international. The regular instruction is enhanced by the visiting guest artists, who each have distinct musical practices rooted in improvisation and contribute in special ways to the intercultural exchange.

The Collective’s concept of collective musical amalgamation guides its ambition to improve cross-cultural musical education throughout the country by employing high art and critical thinking. Even though the Collective came into life in Bergama/Turkey, it is constructed to function as a mobile and modular project that can intersect with many people and places. Since 2021, Şahin has led workshops, performed and collaborated with American institutions, including Emory University, Manhattan School of Music, Atlanta Improvisers Orchestra, and Mise-En_Place, where he employed real-time music making concepts with students and local musicians.