Mine Doğantan-Dack

Mine Doğantan-Dack is a concert pianist whose playing has been described as ‘an oasis’ and ‘heaven on earth’.  Mine was born in Istanbul, and studied at the Juilliard School (BM, MM) with the eminent Russian pianist Oxana Yablonskaya, on a scholarship from the Turkish Ministry of Education for Young Artists. While at Juilliard she won the prestigious William Petschek award. Mine performs as a soloist and chamber musician.  

Mine has a parallel career as a musicologist, holding a PhD from Columbia University. She is internationally regarded as a leading figure in Music Performance Studies, and Artistic Research. She has given concerts in USA, UK, Germany, France, and Turkey, and performed most of the major piano concerti with various orchestras.  She participated in the Mozart Bicentennial Festival in New York and recorded the music of JS Bach and Scriabin for WNCN. She also recorded various programs for the Turkish radio and television.

Mine is the founder of the Marmara Piano Trio, and received an award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for her work on chamber music performance. Mine is also the artistic director of the London-based orchestra Ensemble Vita Nova. In her piano pedagogy, she specializes in teaching adult pianists who suffer from performance anxiety and re-training them for technical comfort and ease at the piano.

Mine published many articles, and several books including the edited volumes Mathis Lussy: A Pioneer in Expressive Performance Studies (2002), and the edited volumes Recorded Music: Philosophical and Critical Reflections (2008), Artistic Practice as Research in Music (2015), Music and Sonic Art (2018), Rethinking the Musical Instrument (2022), and The 21st-Century Chamber Musician (2022). Her article titled “Senses and sensibility: the performer’s intentions between the page and the stage” is the recipient of the 2023 Practice Research Prize awarded by the Royal Musical Association. Mine currently teaches Music Performance Studies at the Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge.