Improvisation 1 Oguz Büyükberber: clarinet Korhan Erel

Improvisation 1
Oguz Büyükberber: clarinet
Korhan Erel: computer & melodica
Demirhan Baylan: bass guitar
Improvisation 5
Korhan Erel: computer & melodica
Florent Merlet: drums
David Brosset: voice
Improvisation 2
Umut Çağlar: electric guitar
Volkan Terzioğlu: tenor saxophone
Korhan Argüden: drums
Improvisation 6
Özün Usta: percussion
Nilüfer Akbayoğlu: keys
Volkan Terzioğlu: tenor saxophone
Improvisation 3
Robert Reigle: tenor saxophone
Kevin Davis: cello
Improvisation 7
Şevket Akinci: acoustic guitar
Giray Gürkal: acoustic guitar
Improvisation 4
Amy Salsgiver: percussions
Burçin Elmas: alto saxophone
Turgut Erçetin: electric guitar
Compiled by Yaprak Melike Uyar
Artwork by Candas Sisman
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Nilüfer Akbayoglu was born in 1979. Her performance
interests include free improvisation and free jazz.
Şevket Akinci is a guitarist, composer and improvisor.
He has performed all manner of musics, from jazz to avant
garde, punk to Turkish classical music. He released his first
album in 1996, a collection of folk compositions and a cult
classic. He then formed the jazz rock group Lifeline, which
went on to release two albums. In 2005 he co-founded the
audio-visual project Mugwump with Korhan Erel. The same
year he became a member of Islak Köpek. In 2009 he released
a free jazz album called Century. He is also a founding member
of Mutant, which is made up of seven guitarists. In June this
year the Konnex label released his album, Dead Country, which
featured guitarist Eugene Chadbourne and leading musicians
from the Istanbul free scene. He has played and recorded
with Le Quan Ninh, Luc Ex, Mark O’Leary, Richard Nunns,
Kirstie Simson, Christian Asplund, Sussan Deyhim, Richard
Horowitz and Ilia Belorukov. Since 2006 he has hosted a radio
show dedicated to free jazz and free improvisation. He also
composes for film, dance and theatre, and is a published poet.
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Şevket Akinci
Korhan Argüden is a drummer who has been playing on
Istanbul’s free jazz and experimental music undergrounds
since the mid–1980s. He is a member of the improvised music
group KonstruKt and also takes part in other improvisation
projects.
www.myspace.com/konstruktist
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Demirhan Baylan is an Istanbul based musician and sound
artist born in 1970. He has been one of the major figures on
Turkey‘s alternative music scene for two decades. Heavily
influenced by Frank Zappa, his solo music ranges from
‘cheesy’ pop tunes to eclectic sound experiments, and is
freighted with a radical political agenda that critiques the
existing production and distribution systems of the art and
music industries. He has released eight solo albums, worked
on more than 40 other albums as a musician, songwriter and
sound engineer, published a book outlining his aestheticpolitical philosophy, and appeared at all major music festivals
in Turkey.
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Demirhan Baylan
David Brosset is a poet, author and singer born in 1976 in
France. In 2005 he moved to Istanbul where he started to tell
stories to children at the French cultural centre and in Frenchspeaking schools, write poetry, songs and short stories, jam
with local musicians on Istanbul‘s free music scene, eventually
joining the free improvisation group Have You Seen My Bird?.
Earlier this year he relocated to South Africa. He is currently
working on a collection of poems written while he was still
based in Istanbul.
Oguz Büyükberber is an improvising bass clarinettist whose
playing draws on contemporary music, traditional Turkish
music and jazz. He has recorded four solo albums, and
collaborated with Butch Morris, Craig Harris, Michael Moore
and many others.
Oguz Büyükberber
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Umut Çağlar is a guitarist and a member of the groups
konstruKt and Dead Country. He has recorded with Peter
Brötzmann, Jürg Solothurnmann and Eugene Chadbourne.
His music is a hybrid of free jazz and Noise. He founded the
re:konstruKt label in 2008 to issue recordings by konstruKt.
The label has subsequently released more than 30 albums,
many featuring musicians from Istanbul’s improvised music
scene, as well as recordings by musicians from the USA,
Finland, Ireland, Russia and Italy, including Dom Minasi,
Eugene Chadbourne, Selen Gülün, Mike Cooper, Mark O’Leary
and Jürg Solothurnmann
Kevin Davis is an improvisor, cellist and composer. Influenced
by the entire spectrum of Euro-American concert music,
American traditions of improvisation and elements of
experimental and commercial music, Kevin’s present work is a
synthesis of the compositional/improvisational space, striving
to create complexity and richness from simple premises. His
current work applies internal logic or structural devices to
improvised performances, using indeterminate elements to
create generative compositions and employing extended,
often timbre-oriented cello techniques.
Kevin Davis
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Umat Caglar
Burçin Elmas aka JaZzJuLiEt is an alto saxophonist and
electronic music composer born in 1981 in Istanbul. Her
practice encompasses electroacoustic music, improvised
music and video.
Burçin Elmas
Burçin Elmas myspace
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Turgut Erçetin
B e l o w
T h e
Turgut Erçetin is a composer, guitarist and improviser born
in 1983. As a composer, Erçetin deals in spectralism as well as
computer-aided music.
Korhan Erel is an improvisor, sound designer, instrument
builder and composer based in Istanbul. He is a founding
member of Islak Köpek, Turkey’s pioneering free improvisation
group. He has twice been an artist-in-residence at STEIM,
Amsterdam. He has performed solo and in groups in Turkey,
Austria, Holland, Germany, Finland, Ireland, the UK, Russia and
Israel with musicians such as Karlheinz Essl, Kirstie Simpson,
Le Quan Ninh, Mark Alban Lotz, Michael Fischer, Michel
Doneda, Oguz Büyükberber, Richard Nunns and many more.
He has performed telematic concerts over Skype in Germany,
Spain and the US (New Mexico). Korhan has played on five
albums, including two with Islak Köpek. He has done sound
work for dance, films and theatre.
Giray Gürkal was born in 1988 in Istanbul. He is an improvisor
and composer who plays electric guitar with an innovative
approach using different techniques and effects. He is the
founder of the trio Limbo, a ‘spontaneous sound fiction
project’ based in three different cities: Istanbul, Turin and
Weimar. He is also a member of the ‘seven guitars’ project
Mutant. His first solo album Hey People! was released on
re:konstruKt in 2009.
Giray Gürkal
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Korhan Erel
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Florent Merlet is a French musician who has been living and
working in Istanbul for more than seven years. He plays drums
as part of the free improvisation groups Have You Seen My
Bird? and Karosri Kasap, as well as performing regularly with
other artists from the Istanbul free music scene. Recently he
participated in the Caravan Project, an international project
organised by the Istanbul Transit Festival.
Florent Merlet
Robert Reigle is an American ethnomusicologist, free
improvisor, composer and tenor saxophonist now based in
Istanbul. He taught ethnomusicology and saxophone at the
University of Papua New Guinea from 1990 to 1993, where he
served as Dean of the Faculty of Creative Arts. He is currently
teaching ethnomusicology at Istanbul Technical University,
and composers Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram have
written several new compositions for him.
Amy Salsgiver is a percussionist and composer born in
Cleveland, Ohio. She has played with various orchestras
including The Philadelphia Virtuoso Orchestra, Alarm Will
Sound, The National Orchestra Of Ireland and The National
Composers Guild, and has performed at festivals in New York,
Dublin, London, Los Angeles, Bogota, Ankara and Istanbul.
Up until 2003 she was based in New York City, where she
performed in a wide variety of ensembles, including classical,
contemporary and experimental music groups, Dixieland
bands, Off-Broadway musicals and Afro-Cuban ensembles.
In 2003 she moved to Istanbul, where she co-founded the
percussion group SA NE NA, which performs the group
members‘ own compositions, new works by young Turkish
composers, and important repertoire from the 20th and
21st century. She is also a member of the free improvisation
trio Cymbal In Ruin and the Istanbul-based experimental
alternative groups Ceylan Ertem and Kpar Kpoh Naah. She
is currently a member of The Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic
Orchestra, Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, and The Hezarfen
Ensemble and Diskant Ensemble, which are dedicated to the
promotion of new music.
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Amy Salsgiver
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Candas Sisman is a visual artist born in 1985 in Izmir, Turkey.
His art has been seen at a variety of festivals, exhibitions and
performances in Turkey and abroad.
Candas Sisman
Volkan Terzioğlu is a saxophonist, broadcaster and
music critic who was born in 1967. He began playing tenor
saxophone on the recommendation of Anthony Braxton, who
performed in Istanbul in 1995. He is a member of Islak Köpek,
one of the hosts of a free music radio show on Acik Radyo
94.9FM (acikradyo.com), and a contributor, writing on free
jazz and improvisation, to sol.org.tr.
Özün Usta was born in 1977 in İstanbul. He plays various
instruments with Korhan Futacı & Kara Orkestra, Dinamik,
Konstrukt, Murat Taner, Cem Tan, Bir Gecelik Aşk and Selim
Saraçoğlu, as well as on his own.
Özün Usta
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Yaprak Melike Uyar is a music critic, lecturer, radio
programmer and in-the-making musicologist living in Istanbul.
Yaprak Melike Uyar