Grammy-nominated composer and New England Conservatory faculty member Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol hails from Cyprus and Turkey. A jazz pianist, multi-instrumentalist, and singer, Sanlıkol has been praised by critics all over the world for his unique, pluralist, multicultural and energetic musical voice. The Boston Globe noted that Sanlıkol’s “music is colorful, fanciful, full of rhythmic life, and full of feeling. The multiculturalism is not touristy, but rather sophisticated, informed, internalized; Sanlıkol is a citizen of the world … who could play a decisive role in music’s future.” Sanlıkol has composed for and performed with international stars and ensembles including Dave Liebman, Bob Brookmeyer, Anat Cohen, Esperanza Spalding, Billy Cobham, Antonio Sanchez, Gil Goldstein, Tiger Okoshi, The Boston Camerata, The Boston Cello Quartet, A Far Cry, American Composers Orchestra, Okay Temiz, Erkan Oğur, and Brenna MacCrimmon. His “coffeehouse opera” entitled Othello in the Seraglio: The Tragedy of Sümbül The Black Eunuch, which brings together the musical cultures of opera house and coffeehouse, Baroque Italy and Ottoman Turkey, received the Paul R. Judy Center grant at Eastman School of Music in 2015 and was performed twenty times within three years after its premiere. Sanlıkol’s book about the Ottoman Janissary Bands, The Musician Mehters, was published in 2011 in English and in Turkish. Currently, he is the director of New England Conservatory’s Intercultural Institute and the project director and curator of Nilüfer Municipality Dr. Hüseyin Parkan Sanlıkol Musical Instruments Museum.