Biography

İlayda Deniz Oğuz (b. 2000) is a Turkish pianist, fortepianist, and composer. She made her concerto debut in 2014 with the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra and has since performed with the Presidential Symphony Orchestra (2017) and the Agora Youth Symphony Orchestra (2020). She has attended masterclasses with Robert Levin, Boris Giltburg, Sofya Gulyak, Dina Yoffe, and Stanislav Ioudenitch.

With a repertoire spanning from the 16th to the 21st century, Oğuz is recognized for her versatility. She has collaborated with distinguished keyboard performers, including Stanislav Ioudenitch, Dina Yoffe, Boris Giltburg, Robert Levin, Geoffrey Govier, Terence Charlston, Jane Chapman, Robert Woolley, Steven Devine, Catalina Vicens, Marcel Pérès, Bart van Oort, Carole Cerasi, Riccardo Cecchetti, and Thomas Allery. She regularly works alongside contemporary composers in performance and creation. In 2019, she performed with the renowned contemporary ensemble Cikada under Christian Eggen. She is a member of the Iridescence Ensemble, a London-based collective amplifying diverse and underrepresented voices, with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century repertoire.

As a composer, Oğuz’s works have been performed by ensembles such as Cikada Ensemble, Trio X, Ergon Ensemble, and the İzmir State Symphony Orchestra. Highlights include the performance of her solo violin work Scenes from Little Prince by French violinist Eliott Bougant at the Lucerne Festival. She won the 2023 RCM Contemporary Music Competition Composer Award for Yakamoz for bass clarinet and violoncello, and received an honorable mention in the 2024 Ihsan Doğramacı Composition Competition for ben o yılların macerasından geldim… for orchestra. She has studied with composers including Francesco Filidei, Mauro Lanza, Dai Fujikura, Mark Andre, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Eivind Buene, and Hanna Eimermacher.

Oğuz studied piano with Dina Parakhina, Dmitri Alexeev, Dinara Klinton, and Gordon Fergus-Thompson; composition with Kenneth Hesketh; and fortepiano with Geoffrey Govier at the Royal College of Music. She was the 2024 – 2025 Mills Williams Junior Fellow, David Young Piano Scholar, and recipient of the prestigious Worshipful Company of Musicians Silver Medal. 

Oğuz is currently the Historical Keyboards Fellow at the Royal College of Music.

Award: Silver Medal 2025

Photo Credit: Inis Oírr Asano