How peaceful it is living with 40 animals – much more so than it would be with 40 humans
By Kim Erkan | June 21, 2020
It’s midsummer's day and my daughter, Ceylan, and I have spent two and a half months at Bird Island Farm, the animal sanctuary founded on a hill above the Aegean town of Kuşadası by my grandson Alican’s wife, Chantal Özbaş. It is the kind of place you meet gentle souls...
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‘Taste, harmonic sensibility, the love of pure lines, of unexpected and colorful modulations’
By John Shakespeare Dyson | June 11, 2020
With this, the fifth instalment in our series of articles on composers who wrote
chansons – French art songs – we continue our exploration of the songs of Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924), this time covering his middle period. Previous instalments have focused on the songs of Reynaldo Hahn, Debussy’s earlier and...
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On Wednesday, June 10, the auction house launches London’s long-delayed spring sales of Islamic and Indian art
By Cornucopia Connoisseur | June 6, 2020
After an auction-starved spring, hats off to Edward Gibbs, Benedict Carter and the Islamic Department at Sotheby’s London for persevering with their postponed sale
Arts of the Islamic World & India including Fine Rugs & Carpets, originally planned for April – and what a handsome sale it is. The sale...
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Pera’s opera house, star of Istanbul’s cultural scene, survived tempestuous rivalries before going up in smoke on June 5, 1870
By Emre Aracı | June 4, 2020
Exactly 150 years ago, on June 5, 1870, Istanbul’s Italian opera house, the Naum Theatre, burnt to the ground in the great fire of Pera which ravaged a large section of the neighbourhood from Taksim to Galatasaray, including the British Embassy. Fanned by strong winds, the theatre’s ashes were scattered...
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By John Shakespeare Dyson | May 25, 2020
We now come to the last in our series of explorations of the works of composers of
chansons – French art songs. The purpose of the series, which has so far covered Reynaldo Hahn and Achille-Claude Debussy, is to give people something to occupy them while in isolation. This instalment...
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Josephine Powell, intrepid photographer and nomad-follower, died in 2007. She would have been 101 today
By Monica Fritz | May 15, 2020
‘She was a sort of Canute, trying to halt the tide of modernity she saw eroding the nomad's dignity.’ (‘A nomad among nomads’, by Andrew Finkel,
Cornucopia 47)
Josephine Powell, photographed by Jürgen Frank (see Cornucopia 30, 2003) … I only met Josephine Powell a few times
(writes Monica Fritz),...
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Marianne Crebassa and Turkish pianist Fazıl Say at the Wigmore
By John Shakespeare Dyson | May 13, 2020
And now the review of the concert at the Wigmore Hall streamed online on May 11-12. The French mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa and Turkish pianist Fazıl Say performed songs by Debussy, Ravel, Fauré and Duparc. Mr Say also played some solo piano pieces by Debussy and Satie, as well as two...
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Some notes on the programme
By John Shakespeare Dyson | May 11, 2020
Truthfully (a prefatory adverb that ought to set alarm bells ringing), I was just preparing a further blog on
chansons last week, this time on the songs of Gabriel Fauré, when – lo and behold! – the editor of the august publication in which these pieces appear seized me by...
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By John Shakespeare Dyson | May 9, 2020
Every Monday evening the Wigmore Hall releases a video stream of one of its acclaimed recitals, marvellously recorded and (invisibly) filmed live in what the great counter-tenor Philippe Jaroussky described at a recent performance as London's 'temple to music'. Each concert is streamed for 24 hours – from 7.30pm in...
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The pioneer of installation art in Turkey is chosen for the Turkish Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale
By Ahmet Furkan İnan | May 5, 2020
The Venice Biennale, now rescheduled to take place between May and November 2022, offers an exciting opportunity to observe developments in contemporary art across the world as each country projects its own carefully curated examples. In 2019 the Turkish Pavilion confirmed its growing reputation with İnci Eviner’s installation
We, Elsewhere,...
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… in Moda
By Monica Fritz | May 3, 2020
Spring has arrived in Istanbul, and the ancient gum mastic trees (
sakız ağacı) of Moda are just coming into leaf. Only the crowds were missing on May Day… In Cornucopia 52, Monica captured the tree in happier days for
Cornucopia's four-part Istanbul Unwrapped series, available on line here. Elsewhere, Moda...
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From Javanese gamelan music to the ‘Songs of Bilitis’ …
By John Shakespeare Dyson | April 29, 2020
This is Part B of the second phase of Mélodies: Debussy in Pamphylia, Fauré in Isfahan, Reynaldo Hahn in Istanbul, a serialised blog intended to keep people’s minds off their troubles while they are in isolation. This one continues an account of the
chansons – art songs – of Achille-Claude...
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A tribute to the woman who made headlines by turning the male-dominated world of archaeology upside down
By Rupert Scott | April 28, 2020
On July 21, 1969, in her mid-30s, Iris Love (photographed above by Michael Chesser) made the discovery that would see her become, for a short time, perhaps the most famous archaeologist in the world. She was in her third season of excavations at Cnidus, in the extreme southwest of Turkey ...
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The archaeologist Ulrich Mania’s eye is usually trained on the ruins of ancient Pergamon. Here he records a deserted Istanbul
By Ulrich Mania | April 27, 2020
On a dark Saturday morning in March I set off on my bicycle to explore a silent, empty Istanbul. But my enthusiasm for the idea of experiencing the normally bustling districts of Taksim, Sultanahmet and Üsküdar with
no people around quickly gave way to a realisation: how difficult it is to...
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The second in a series of articles on the French chanson
By John Shakespeare Dyson | April 18, 2020
This is the second part of
Mélodies, a serialised blog that is intended to keep people’s minds off their troubles while they are in isolation. Just like the first part (which was about Reynaldo Hahn), this one focusses on a composer who wrote
mélodies – French art songs – in...
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By Kim Erkan | April 17, 2020
April 2020, Kuşadası: I was alone in Aydın when quarantine was announced. My family, concerned at my being alone, sent a driver to take me to Bird’s Island Farm, on the hills of Kuşadası, to stay wth my grandson, Alican Ozbaş, his wife, Chantal, their two small sons and my...
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The first of a three-part series in which our music correspondent finds gentle escape in the French Chanson
By John Shakespeare Dyson | April 1, 2020
Mélodies: Debussy in Pamphylia, Fauré in Isfahan, Reynaldo Hahn in Istanbul. This new series of blogs is designed to provide a welcome distraction from for those in isolation, while at the same time introducing them to music that may be new to them and will give them pleasure. It is...
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By Thomas Roueché | March 18, 2020
Marina Abramović is one of the world’s most famous living artists. Her iconic 2010 retrospective at MoMA in New York,
The Artist Is Present, is perhaps one of the best-known exhibitions of the past decade; one of very few that can be said to achieve such a level of fame....
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‘Creating the real out of the ideal’
By John Shakespeare Dyson | March 18, 2020
That the latest in the series of Istanbul Recitals was given is, in itself, remarkable considering… My companion and I boarded the boat that leaves Eminönü at ten past six and spent an hour watching the shores of the Bosphorus sweep by on a cloudy, overcast afternoon that was turning...
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By John Shakespeare Dyson | March 14, 2020
On Wednesday (March 11) I attended a concert given by the Avrasya Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Rengim Gökmen, at the Zorlu Performance Arts Center. This was part of a series entitled Vestel Gururla Yerli Konserleri, organised jointly by the Performance Arts Center and ‘BKM’, which I assume stands for ‘Beşiktaş...
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