Battle of the big bands
By John Shakespeare Dyson | December 21, 2024
On November 01 I went to the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall in Harbiye to witness an unusual event – a jazz concert involving two orchestras playing simultaneously on the same stage. Although the event was advertised as a ‘clash’, it was in reality a friendly cooperation, an experiment whose...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Jazz, - Musical Shares
Travel notes
By Monica Fritz | December 18, 2024
Our Nemrut trip and slightly beyond. How we got there: Hüseyin Aydin, the owner of Güneş Motel came to pick us up at the Adiyaman airport in a comfortable 6 seater van, took us to a kebab restaurant for dinner outside of town and we got back to the hotel...
By John Shakespeare Dyson | December 1, 2024
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ISTANBUL Nardis The longest-running jazz club in Turkey is Nardis, close to the Galata Tower. Opened in 2002 by guitarist and jazz mentor Önder Focan and his wife Zuhal, who runs Jazz Dergisi (‘Jazz Magazine’), it hosts over 300 Turkish and foreign musicians every year. Concerts – of which there...
By John Shakespeare Dyson | November 25, 2024
On October 16 I made my way to the Süreyya Opera House in Kadıköy to hear the violinist Bahar Büyükgönenç and the pianist Tutu Aydınoğlu play works by Zoltán Kodály, Johannes Brahms, Manuel de Falla, Robert Schumann and Fikret Amirov. For the first time I had the privilege of sitting...
Jazz pianists Aydın and Cenk Esen mesmerise at the opening of the new Rahşan Düren exhibition, ‘Verwegenheit’
By John Shakespeare Dyson | November 10, 2024
On October 15 I made my way to Beyoğlu for the opening of an exhibition of paintings by the artist Rahşan Düren entitled
Verwegenheit, which I believe means ‘audacity’ or ‘boldness’ in German. I had been told that Aydın Esen, described as the best jazz pianist in the world by...
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Exhibitions, Music & Performing Arts, - Jazz
Zenia Duell admires a magnificent Uzbek recasting of Handel's Tamerlano
By Zenia Duell | November 9, 2024
The curtain rose to reveal an enormous sculpture of a horse’s head, equalling the height of the theatre and encased in a cube of LED-lit scaffolding. This was the opening night of Handel’s
Tamerlano, presented by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation, directed by Stefano Poda and performed at...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Opera
By Alexandra de Cramer | October 22, 2024
Opening night. The triptych in the background is titled Repair/Lapis Lazuli by Ahmet Doğu İpek. Galerist kicked off the 2024-2025 art season with the exhibition
Distilled From Scattered Blue, curated by Károly Aliotti, who brings a wealth of experience from his roles at Meşher and Arkas. The show features the diverse work of...
Join us at the Chiswick Book Festival in London on Saturday
By Andrew Finkel | September 13, 2024
I am looking forward to participating in the Chiswick Book Festival this Saturday afternoon to talk about my novel
The Adventure of the Second Wife, a tale that revolves around the last great Ottoman Sultan, AbdulhamidII’s fascination with Sherlock Holmes. I will be speaking to Prof. Maureen Freely, a distinguished...
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Highlights Around The World
By Andrew Finkel | September 11, 2024
A friend once confessed the frustration of setting a story in Istanbul, a city where not even the past stands still. The place you think you should start is never the place you actually start – and umpteen drafts later you find yourself starting from somewhere different again. And so it...
Why isn't Cem Mansur's astonishing Turkish Youth Orchestra touring the globe
By John Shakespeare Dyson | August 26, 2024
On July 24 I went to the Atatürk Cultural Centre to see the Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, the brainchild of conductor Cem Mansur, perform in a programme of works by Hector Berlioz, Sergei Rachmaninov, the young Turkish composer Ege Gür and Sergei Prokofiev. (I thank Mr Mansur for kindly providing...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
Gounod’s Faust, Sheherazade’s Istanbul connections and the brilliant Edgar Moreau
By John Shakespeare Dyson | August 17, 2024
On Sunday June 9 I went to the Atatürk Cultural Centre in Taksim Square to attend the last orchestral concert of the 52nd İKSV Istanbul Music Festival. This event featured the Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Aziz Shokhakimov, and the French cellist Edgar Moreau (photograph by Salih Üstündağ) in a...
Early Glass, Mozart's tribute to Haydn, Reich's Jacob's Ladder: Borusan Quartet and Synergy Vocals in the Süreyya Opera House
By John Shakespeare Dyson | August 3, 2024
On June 8 I took a train on the Marmaray line to Söğütlüçeşme, the station in the valley behind Kadıköy through which the Kurbağalıdere Stream passes on its way to join the Sea of Marmara. Söğütlüçeşme actually means ‘Fountain with Willow Trees’, and Kurbağalıdere means ‘Stream with Frogs’, but I...
Cinili Hamam in Zeyrek
By Alexandra de Cramer photography by Monica Fritz | August 1, 2024
By John Shakespeare Dyson | July 29, 2024
This concert, one of the last in the 2024 İKSV Istanbul Music Festival, was also one of those organised within the framework of the ‘Hungarian-Turkish Year of Culture’. Hungarian musicians featured prominently in this year’s events: violinist Kristóf Baráti (a recipient of the Kossuth Prize, his country’s highest cultural award)...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
Art on the island of Chios
By Monica Fritz | July 19, 2024
DEO is a non-profit arts operative promoting contemporary art on the lovely island of Chios, or Sakız Adası, as it is called in Turkish. Facing the breezy Çeşme Peninsula, it is famed for producing a legendary, health-giving commodity, mastic (
sakız). Founded in 2021, DEO is now into its fourth season....
Raci Pişmişoğlu and group at the Nardis Jazz Club
By John Shakespeare Dyson | July 7, 2024
On Monday May 27 I made my way along Büyük Hendek Caddesi towards the Nardis Jazz Club, picking my through the throng of selfie-taking tourists taking advantage of the unique backdrop of a round, stone-built watchtower, built by the Genoese in the mid-14th century, that has become rather famous. On...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Jazz, - Musical Shares
A review of the 2024 İKSV Istanbul Music Festival opening concert
By John Shakespeare Dyson | June 24, 2024
The 2024 İKSV Istanbul Music Festival – the 52nd in the series – opened with a concert at the Atatürk Cultural Centre on May 21. As usual, the proceedings began with speeches by administrators (including Mr Bülent Eczacıbaşı, Chairperson at the İKSV – the ‘Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts’)...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
By Cornucopia Connoisseur | June 4, 2024
Elmadağ Kilim on display at Tophane-İ Amire. The ICOC (International Conference on Oriental Carpets) is back in Istanbul for the first time since 2007 and Cornucopia will be there to greet you at our stand at the Dealers Fair at the Marmara Hotel in Taksim, June 6-9. A superb conference...
The Photographer’s Testimony
By Annette Solakoğlu and Monica Fritz | May 23, 2024
Ozan Sağdıç Ph. Annette Solakoğlu Istanbul Modern’s latest photography exhibition,
Ozan Sağdıç, the Photographer’s Testimony was a wonderful surprise to both of us, unfamiliar as we were with this important figure in the history of Turkish photography. Perhaps a career mostly taken up by press photography, as opposed to being promoted...
By John Shakespeare Dyson | May 23, 2024
On April 25 I made my way to the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall in Harbiye to listen to the Cuban jazz pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba – a treat I had not experienced since October 2022, when I heard him perform with singer Aymée Nuviola at the Zorlu Centre. Although I...
