Mircan Kaya

Mircan Kaya — Biography

Mircan Kaya carries two careers in one life: a civil engineer working on structural design and earthquake-protection technology, and a songwriter, singer and music producer. She is known for lullabies and for work with lyrics in Laz and Megrelian, and releases her albums through her own company, UCM. In international publications her name is also spelled Mircan Kaia.

Her first major step in music was Bizim Ninniler (2005), made under the musical direction of Emin İgüs; gathering Anatolian lullabies, it was the first serious project of its kind and came to be treated as a reference abroad. On Kül she also sang traditional Bosnian and Georgian pieces. In 2006 she founded UCM Productions, and next came Sâlâ, which turns the funeral prayer of that name into a hymn in English, Numinosum, recorded in England with the jazz group Limbo and drawing on Rumi's verse, and OUTIM (2008), centered on a mountain village in the eastern Black Sea region. Elixir (2010), setting poems by Gülten Akın, and Nanni and Minor (2012) followed; publications such as FROOTS spoke of her work with praise.

She studied civil engineering at Yıldız Technical University and earned a master's in earthquake engineering at Boğaziçi University. A founding member of the seismic isolation association, she served as its president in 2012. Her music for Selim Güneş's 2010 drama White as Snow won best film music at the 47th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival and at the 44th SİYAD Awards.