Omer Aziz Kayhan is completing an MM in choral conducting at the Eastman School of Music. He was employed for an assistant conducting job with the Cornell Wind Ensemble, giving two concerts in the 2020-21 academic season. His conducting education started with Dr. Mark Shapiro at the Juilliard Institute. He is engaged with the teachings of Nadia Boulanger and Narcis Bonet in keyboard harmony,  counterpoint and analysis, expanded upon by Dr. Phillip Lasser and Dr. Benjamin Boyle. He is a mentee of the conductor Dr. Burak Onur Erdem and has taken part in masterclasses by Frieder Bernius, Aleksei Petrov, Gunter Neuhold, Jan Schumacher, and Martin Sieghart. Recently, he sang as a baritone in a Baroque-Romantic concert that included a basso continuo augmented with traditional Turkish-Ottoman instruments such as ney and tambur. This synthesis has deeply influenced his understanding of orchestration and the possibilities that exist with local instruments.