Cem Güven (b. 22.11.1997) is a composer of acoustic and electronic music, from Türkiye/Istanbul (The Juilliard School/Bachelor’s Degree, Royal Academy of Music/ Master’s Degree), who is currently pursuing his doctoral degree (DMA) with a fellowship at Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in New York. Cem Güven is a composer of the Universal Edition of Wien, where his scores are being published and distributed; he is also an artist of Talent Unlimited. Cem is nominated for the Gaudeamus Award 2024 and he is also one of the finalists in MA/IN Award 2024. He is the recipient of awards in various composition competitions and organizations worldwide, such as the Petrichor International Music Competition Grand Prize, Royal Academy of Music Composition Postgraduate Prize, Leverhulme Trust Arts Scholarship, Alblaze Records Award, Academia Musica Vienna (2nd Prize) Franz Schubert Conservatorium in Wien (2nd Prize) and KLK New Music competitions such as “Musica Per Archi” (2nd prize) and “Orient-Occident” (3rd Prize). Güven’s music is performed by well-known ensembles such as Ensemble Musikfabrik, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Attacca Quartet, Riot Ensemble, University of Texas Wind Ensemble, Coma Ensemble, Vice Ensemble, Tbilisi State Opera Chamber Orchestra, KLK New Music Orchestra, Sydney Contemporary Orchestra, Loadbang Ensemble and New European Ensemble. Güven participated in various music festivals as a composer, such as Gaudeamus Festival, Valencia International Performing Academy, Curtis Summerfest, and Soundscape.

Cem Güven’s music imagines a “utopia of ear attention” within the listening experience while using dramatic narratives and contrasting soundworlds as tools to construct overall forms and pacings. Güven describes his music as “Earround Music, “ more specifically, “harmonic germinations surrounding the ears” since his ambition is to create surrounding sonorities with the contrast of high and low pitches/textures expressed with a variety of dynamics, as well as to emphasize the tension between twelve-tone and microtonal pitch collections within continuously expansive progressions, for the listeners to feel like all the invisible partials of their ears are filled with contrasting sounds. Güven works with imaginary atmospheres that give the feeling of dreaminess, as the emphasized sonorities disappear and reappear with ambiguous pacings. The tension between twelve-tone and microtonal pitch collections is one of the key elements in Cem’s music, and Turkish music is highly inspirational to him in terms of its pitch collections and its gestural content.