Micheal League is one of the people that you are having trouble deciding where to start talking about him. He is a musician, an owner of a record company and a music festival and also a producer who works with pioneers of jazz, rock and funk industry. We will be seeing him this year, in…
The day after his performance at Sonar Istanbul, I set off for Karaköy to meet Ben Frost. When I come to the tiny park across from the Tophane tram stop, I find him sitting on a bench all by himself, enjoying this first sunshine of spring. Nobody around is probably aware of what this man…
Interest towards theatre is pretty increased in Turkey over the recent years. The transformation in this area is observable in many ways. One by one, new theatre halls are opening in different neighborhoods of Istanbul. Theatre companies which are brave enough to perform various plays are coming together. There is a significant demand to play tickets…
Bartu Küçükçağlayan is a special person who carries every job he has undertaken to a very high level of standards, and makes it seem very easy in spite of all the challenges behind the scene/camera. His performances in theater plays which he is awarded (Kumarbazın Seçimi, Hoop Gitti Kafa), his roles in series that catches…
Kalben is an independent woman who has strength, is talented enough to turn her joys and traumas into creative products, at peace with herself and her past, able to see the problems of the society she lives in and beyond, has a few things to say about these problems, has a high sense of observation,…
What would happen if you were to put Radiohead’s guitarist Jonny Greenwood, Indian band The Rajathan Express and Israeli musician Shye Ben Tzur in the Mehrangarh Fort in India for three weeks? The answer is Junun. The trio collective’s eponymous album recorded in the spring of 2015 strangely blends the music of the West and the East. Performing in many European cities this year, Shye Ben Tzur and The Rajathan Express will also visit Istanbul as part of Istanbul Jazz Film Festival organized by the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts. We talked to Shye Ben Tzur before his concert at Kundra, Beykoz on July 7. ...
“In times like these, we’re in dire need of art to grow hope, to communicate, and to open closed minds and public spaces,” says Cevdet Erek as he gazes at the Bosphorus from a café in Rumeli Fortress. He asked himself “What should we display at Turkish pavilion in a time like this?” with a…
“40 years ago, there was another all-encompassing system. It was in the Soviet Union. But by the 1970s, the system was starting to crack. Russia became a society where everyone knew that what their leaders said was not real. Because they could see with their own eyes that the economy was falling along. But everybody had to play along and pretend that it was real. Because no-one could imagine any alternative. One Soviet writer called it HyperNormalisation. You were so much a part of the system, that it was impossible to see beyond it.” ...
Fazıl Say begins speaking by saying “Recently we did a Nazım Hikmet night in Paris.” ...
Dilara Sakpınar begins her sentence with “I was looking at old pictures the other day…” She adds, “I also listened to a few of our old records,” as she remembers a few of the songs she’s recorded in the past, looking around the studio we’re in. “I feel like I’ve grown up. It might sound like a cliché, however I feel good when I look back at that journey. It’s really nice to still continue doing music.” ...