Honored with 2021 »Fromm Commissioning Award« from Harvard University, MacDowell Fellowship (2022 and 2019), »Salvatore Martirano Composition Award«, »Ettelson Composer’s Award«, Chamber Music of California’s »California Prize«, and »Nicola de Lorenzo Prize in Composition«, Selim Göncü aims to create a personal balance of contrasting polarities in his music. Raw gestures are contrasted with transparent textures, elegant timbres are interrupted/combined with abrupt impulses, obsessively-mechanical loops are interpolated with freely flowing improvisations.

His works have been performed by acclaimed ensembles including Ensemble InterContemporain, L’Instant Donné, Ensemble Proton Bern, Ensemble Échappé, Quatuor Tana, oenm, Ninth Planet and Alarm Will Sound in festivals such as ManiFeste, Festival Musica, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Firenze Suona Contemporanea, Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik and Missouri International Composers Festival.

Selim graduated from the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz with the highest distinction and finished his doctoral studies in composition at the University of California, Berkeley. His primary teachers are Franck Bedrossian, Clemens Gadenstätter, Reinhard Febel, and Edmund Campion.

He currently is in the artistic board of Ninth Planet New Music Ensemble, and is contributing director of sfSound. Between 2017-2019, he also was Composer-in-Residence of New York based new music sinfonietta Ensemble Échappé.

The following seasons will feature a new work for string quartet and electronics to be premiered by JACK Quartet, a quintet for Splinter Reeds, and a concerto for synthesizer and ensemble, commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation, to be performed by Ninth Planet Ensemble.