AYÇA MIRAÇ

Ayça (her name means bright as the moon) was born in Gelsenkirchen (Germany) where she grew up in a multicultural, bilingual surrounding. Her father Turkish author and poet Yaşar Miraç played an important role in her early musical development, especially by playing extended improvisations on the piano everyday. Unsurprisingly she followed his example and developed her own singing language before she even knew how to speak. At the age of 4 she joined a children’s choir and had her first stage performances. A little later she started playing the piano and went to a ballet school. As a teenager she participated in various opera productions as a choir singer. She was chosen to be part of a singing workshop series in her hometown and began performing as a soloist.

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In 2007 after secondary school she moved to the Netherlands to study vocal jazz at ArtEZ Conservatory. Right in the beginning she founded her first jazz quartet and did many concerts in Northern Europe and toured through Turkey. During this period the “New York Voices” heard her sing on a workshop and on the spot offered her a scholarship for their vocal jazz camp in the US.

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After graduation Ayça moved back to Germany and started to collaborate with musicians from Cologne. Currently she is studying at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and performs mainly with her quartet around Europe and Turkey.

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To Ayça it is very important to create music that is personal and honest. To accomplish this she is constantly looking for ways to combine all of her cultural roots to create her natural, unique style. Fortunately her family bought a second residence at the Bosphorus in Istanbul where Ayça spent most of her summer holidays. This enabled her to maintain a deep connection to country, language and culture of her parents which is crucial to her music.

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Apart from that it’s her heartfelt wish to preserve the dying culture of her ancestors on the maternal side, the Laz. The Laz are a caucasian minority that has been oppressed in Turkey for a long time (the history of the Laz dates back to ancient times and their language has been classified as “critically endangered language” by the UNESCO).

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In 2017 her quartet recorded their debut album „Lazjazz“ which came out 2018 on Jazzhaus Records (Germany) and 2019 on major label Dogan Music Company (Turkey). Their concert at the 2019 Rudolstadt-Festival was broadcasted live by West German Radio WDR3.

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In 2019 the group was also awarded first prize at the “creole competition NRW“ and was chosen to enter the public funding catalogue “Musikkulturen NRW“.