The pianist and composer AyseDeniz Gokcin loves classical music so much that she goes to radical lengths to explore the possibilities technology presents for her beloved art form. She showcases her efforts this Friday at the Newman Recital Hall at the Knight Center for Music Innovation, when she joins forces with students and faculty at the Frost School of Music for Classical Regenerated, a first-of-its-kind concert exploring the potential that artificial intelligence, or AI, holds for classical music.
“I’m fascinated by what AI can do,” AyseDeniz (her artist name) said recently from her home in San Francisco. “It totally opens new doors. Most artists hate AI. I’m one of the very few who doesn’t.”
The Frost School’s cutting-edge exploration of music and AI, led by Tom Collins, an associate professor of music engineering technology, enables the school to collaborate with AyseDeniz in ways that expand her efforts, while highlighting its leadership in this expanding arena. AyseDeniz’s work with AI has been showcased at the high-profile events TED AI, the Aspen Institute, the Kennedy Center Creativity + Tech Summit, and the CogX Festival.
“At the Frost School of Music, we are uniquely positioned to innovate, to critically study this moment in music history, and to articulate principles about what technologies should – or should not – be embraced,” Collins writes in a program note. “Positioned between technology, ethics, and artistry, we are charting a new course for music in the age of AI.”
Collins met AyseDeniz at a technology conference last fall, where she impressed him as an artist unafraid to venture into unknown terrain.
“There’s a certain fearlessness to what she’s doing,” said Collins, who proposed Classical Regenerated in response to a call for a faculty concert. “She’s using multiple AI technologies and exploring how they can change her and others’ perspectives on classical music. I’m excited to bring her here because we can show the Frost School community that here’s one way to keep the classical music tradition going and use AI to enrich our appreciation.”
A native of Turkey, AyseDeniz was a child prodigy who performed as a soloist with multiple orchestras in her early teens. She has degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music, two of the world’s most prestigious conservatories, and has performed around the world, including a concert of her own music at Disney Concert Hall.
But she has also long experimented with ways to draw more people to classical music. “When I was nine or 10, performing big pieces by Bach and Mozart, my friends didn’t want to come to my concerts,” she said. “It was a very big issue in my teens. It's beautiful, amazing music that deserves a bigger place in our lives.”
Her arrangement of Pink Floyd’s music in the style of Franz Liszt, released in 2012, went viral and was praised on Pink Floyd’s official Facebook page. A similar Nirvana project was also successful. The Encyclopaedia Britannica included AyseDeniz, Jacob Collier, and Kendrick Lamar in their 2022 list of 20 Under 40: Young Shapers of the Future of Music and Dance. Her music has been featured on National Geographic and Disney+ and she has over 600,000 social media followers.
In 2024 she began experimenting with AI. “It’s good as a musician to figure out what’s happening with these tools and how to use them, instead of ignoring where the real world is going,” she said. “Most people who are not musicians will use AI to write a song. That’s not being a musician. I never use AI in my compositions. I look at it as more for research and interaction.”
Working with the Frost School allowed her to deepen that exploration. “People think I just click a button,” she said. “This is a much more extensive, intense collaboration. I hope to showcase all that and explain the process during the concert.”
In Classical Regenerated, AyseDeniz will play pieces by Frédéric Chopin and her own compositions, as well as “AI Tributes” to Chopin, Vivaldi, Bach, and Mozart. The audience will get to chat with audio avatars, which AyseDeniz created with AI, of Chopin and his lover George Sand, the famous novelist, about their lives and artistry.
Two very different students will be featured. First-year music engineering student, singer, and songwriter Fabiana Lorenzo Perez will perform songs she’s composed with the help of AI and sing an AyseDeniz song arranged with AI. Doctoral composition student and pianist Richard Chang will play his own music and join AyseDeniz on one of her works.
One of the concert's most adventurous and advanced aspects comes via Collins. Using a process called finetuning, he trained a music AI model called NotaGen, created this year, on AyseDeniz and Chang’s compositions, producing custom-made AI versions of their music that they’ll perform on Friday. It’s a far more sophisticated, individual use of the technology that’s not possible in commercial music AI programs.
“Too much of current AI is one size fits all,” Collins said. “Composers and songwriters at Frost may be skeptics or enthusiasts of AI, but I think everyone is curious to hear what it could add to their portfolio, to their own unique voice. This concert shows that we have the expertise and connections to do this kind of work at the Frost School.”
If you go: Classical Regenerated is at 7:30 pm Friday, Sept. 19th, at the Newman Recital Hall in the Knight Center for Music Innovation, 5513 San Amaro Dr., Coral Gables, FL, 33146. Tickets are $15 to $35
