By John Shakespeare Dyson | June 18, 2019
The last in the series of Istanbul Recitals for the 2018-2019 season was given by the South Korean pianist Jeung Beum Sohn at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum’s Seed concert hall on June 14. There has been a succession of South Koreans performing in Istanbul recently. On March 21, Bomsori Kim...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
The 47th İKSV Istanbul Music Festival gets into gear
By John Shakespeare Dyson | June 16, 2019
And so we have arrived at that time of year when the lime trees are in flower, the watermelons rise to new heights of drippy deliciousness and the İKSV Istanbul Music Festival gets under way. A poem by Rimbaud celebrates the arrival of warm weather with the following couplet:
Que...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
Sandy Jones’s carpets have helped to keep alive Turkish carpet-making in the time-honoured way
By Cornucopia UK | May 28, 2019
Hand weaving in Turkey, often thought a dying art, has continued to survive in some parts of Anatolia due to discerning designers such as Sandy Jones, whose wonderful carpets are produced in anonymous domestic ateliers. “They use natural wool," she says, “and the skeins, looped over the shoulder, are dipped...
By John Shakespeare Dyson | May 18, 2019
The Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son gave a recital of works by Chopin and Rachmaninov at the the Seed, the concert hall attached to the Sakıp Sabancı Museum in Emirgan, on May 11. After last month’s recital, given by Stephen Kovacevich with a dreadful cold, it was a relief to...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
Whitehawk Woman provides a clue
By Cornucopia UK | May 14, 2019
The facial reconstruction of a woman from 5600 years ago found in Brighton suggests that immigrants from Anatolia may have built Britain’s best-known Neolithic monument. Discovered on Whitehawk Hill, the site of Brighton’s racecourse, ‘Whitehawk Woman’ pictured here and now on show in Brighton Museum and Art Gallery’s new archaeology...
Tim Cornwell admires İnci Eviner's Turkish ‘total art’ at this year's Venice Biennale
By Tim Cornwell | May 11, 2019
The French Pavilion has been widely declared the go-to show of the Venice Biennale this year, and so it was that a 90-minute queue snaked up the Giardini in the opening week’s
vernissage of the six-month art event. It deserves the attention: you walk in across a glassy blue sea...
The Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra under the sensitive baton of Nikos Haliassas at the Caddebostan Cultural Centre
By John Shakespeare Dyson | May 7, 2019
On 26 April I ventured across the Bosphorus to attend a concert by the İstanbul State Symphony Orchestra at the Caddebostan Cultural Centre. It was with some trepidation that I took the Metrobus over the First Bosphorus Bridge to its terminus at Söğütlüçeşme, in the hinterland behind Kadıköy: the sight...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
Experimental work from Turkish filmmakers
By Julie W | May 6, 2019
Sunday 5 May, Towermill Cinema, Hawick, Scottish Borders. A selection of shorts demonstrating a range of formal strategies presently at play in the experimental work of Turkish filmmakers. Specially curated on behalf of
Cornucopia by Julie Witford, the screening was both well attended and well received.
Eyup Ozkan’s
Multiple Projection:...
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Film
Revisit exhibitions with Cornucopia
By Cornucopia UK | April 29, 2019
One of the advantages offered by
Cornucopia Bookshop is that it can come up with catalogues for past exhibitions, and they are always worth searching for (see 'Exhibitions sale'). This is clearly the case judging from latest sales figures, which show that a large consignment of
The Four-Legged Municipality, a catalogue for ...
By Cornucopia | April 15, 2019
Friends and family of the textile artist Bettina Franckenberg, who died after a short illness in October, will be gathering in Bodrum later this week to remember a rare talent and a remarkable personality. Bettina's patchwork art sprung initiallly from her fascination with and active involvement in occupational therapy. As...
By Cornucopia UK | April 15, 2019
A well-to-do man in 18th-century England rides a horse-drawn carriage through the countryside with his fur-draped wife. They stare out opposite windows as he puffs away on his pipe and she waves her hand every so often to clear the smoke from her face. Finally, she asks him to stop...
By John Shakespeare Dyson | April 14, 2019
The American pianist Stephen Kovacevich gave the seventh in the series of Istanbul Recitals at The Seed in Emirgan on April 12. Seven may be a lucky number for some, but not, unfortunately, for Mr Kovacevich (the first ‘c’ in his name is pronounced as an ‘s’, by the way,...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
John Shakespeare Dyson is happily surprised by a thoroughly re-energised Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra
By John Shakespeare Dyson | April 14, 2019
Mussorgsky and Shostakovich were on the menu at a concert by the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra on April 5. It was pleasing to see the auditorium at the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall nearly full: classical music concerts in Istanbul are getting more and more popular by the year. Standards...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
Latest Cornucopia sales figures show continued interest in the photographer and collector
By Cornucopia UK | April 13, 2019
The latest sales figures of Cornucopia’s back numbers show an interest in
issue No. 47, from 2012, which had a striking cover photograph of a young Josephine Powell (1921–2007) describing her as Queen of the Nomads (above left). An article by Andrew Finkel accompanied some of her thousands of photographs...
The Istanbul Film Festival is undwerway
By Cornucopia UK | April 12, 2019
The 38th Istanbul Film Festival always has such a gluttony of choice that picking tickets can be overwhelming. Watching a movie without any prior knowledge is a rare experience, so I often try to pop into a film I know little about and let myself be surprised. That’s how I...
New on-line archaeology resource, plus money for wall painting conservation
By Cornucopia UK | March 28, 2019
This map of Seljuk’s historic sites is a sample image from the Getty Conservation Institute’s
Arches, an innovative open-source cultural heritage data management platform, launched at Claridge’s in London yesterday by directors of the J. Paul Getty Trust. The Trust also announced a $5million endowment grant to the Courtauld Institute of...
The Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra with Bomsori Kim
By John Shakespeare Dyson | March 24, 2019
The Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra gave a concert at the Lütfi Kırdar Concert Hall in Istanbul on March 21, 2019 – the day after the Spring Equinox, which happened to coincide with a full moon. The huge open space outside the concert hall, an observation platform set above the valley leading...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
Giudecca is the city’s first permanent arts quarter
By Cornucopia UK | March 21, 2019
The 58th Venice Biennale, opening on May 11, has a new focus on the island of Giudecca, which this week was declared the city’s first permanent arts quarter. More than 60 artists from 30 countries are launching GAD, with a central Giudecca Art District Gallery and Garden adding to ten...
From constructivism to cosmism and an otherworldly intuition for colour: the SSM’s effusive tribute to the Russian Avant Garde
By Jamie Leptien | March 19, 2019
It’s been 73 years since George Costakis saw Olga Rozanova’s
Green Stripe in a Moscow studio and started the collection that, to paraphrase the art historian Margit Rowell, required the history of 20th-century art to be rewritten. Rewritten not just because of the sheer volume and quality of works by...
By John Shakespeare Dyson | March 17, 2019
The series of Istanbul Recitals for 2018-2019 at The Seed (the concert hall attached to the Sakıp Sabancı Museum in Emirgan), continued with a demonstration of pianistic prowess by the Croatian pianist Goran Filipec on Friday March 15. This was, in fact, Hungary’s National Day, the occasion on which Magyarország...
