I graduated as a Master of Music in classical singing at the Royal Conservatoire at The Hague in 2005. One of my biggest solo achievements was singing the part of Konstanze in the opera die Entführung aus dem Serail by Mozart. I performed it more than 50 times in 2 months for schoolchildren in Alleetheater Hamburg.
In Istanbul I have received coaching from soprano Ayşe Sezerman and have worked with pianists Önder Cebeci, Nurser Ugan and Evren Erol Büyükburç.
I founded Istanbul International Chamber Choir in 2009 and I conducted this international group of women until 2014. In the meantime, I had a job as an English and music teacher at Istanbul International School in Çamlıca and I became a mother of a daughter and a son.
After giving birth, I did not continue working as a teacher, as I wanted to be a full time mother for my children. I did miss music, so I taught a small diction class (mostly German and French) to opera students at Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversite Konservatuvarı. This specific class was an idea of my own, which I came up with back in 2008, walking to Dilmer language İnstitute from Beşiktaş Iskelesi to Kabataş. I just walked into the building and asked to speak to Mesut Iktu, a famous Turkish baritone, who was head of school at that time. I suggested (in only a few words Turkish) I could be a diction teacher at the conservatoire, as I fluently speak 4 languages, and there I found myself, 5 years later.
I worked there for a year, as I wanted to focus on my own singing again and went back to performing lied recitals.
In 2016-2017 I was principal of the Dutch school in Istanbul, a job I fulfilled with huge devotion and enthusiasm.
In 2020 I was about to make a big comeback in singing; I had tickets on Biletix and was getting ready to perform a Beethoven solo concert during a chamber music festival. I trained for it for months, as singing is like top sport. Unfortunately, the concert was cancelled 5 days before the date, because of the pandemic.
A few months after that I decided to make a career switch; I wanted to become a personal coach to empower pregnant women and help women recover from a traumatic birth experience. The idea for Anne Koçu was born and I am happy to be able to connect to and be there for so many women, face to face or online.