Talking jazz - Avant-garde from Turkey (Pt. 1): Korhan Erel

Istanbul, Galata Brigde - Photo: Ara Guler

I'm directly posting this e-mail sent to me, after my request, by Korhan Erel, improviser, composer, and computer instrument designer. Follow the link above to see his website, and listen to his music on his SoundCloud page.

Turkey has a relatively young free improv scene, which was basically started when my band Islak Köpek started performing free improvised music on a regular basis in 2005. Ever since, there have been other bands, such as Konstrukt and Have You Seen My Birds as well as ad hoc groupings of musicians from the scene that have been playing and recording. 

Samples from Islak Köpek's albums and live shows can be found here: www.soundcloud.com/islak-kopek

Islak Köpek will soon release their third album, which we recorded with German/Dutch flautist Mark Alban Lotz in Istanbul, on the Dutch label Evil Rabbit Records. The album will be pressed in June but the official release will be in September. The first concert to promote this album will be in Istanbul at the Borusan Music House (a very prominent, modern music venue) on November 19. Mark Alban will also play with us.

We are also expecting news of our participation in the Akbank Jazz Festival. I will play with composer, pianist and improviser Tolga Tüzün (an IRCAM fellow) on January 14th at Borusan to promote our album, which we hope to release by then. It's going to be a duet between acoustic piano and computer. 

I am part of an audiovisual project built on the poems by Nazim Hikmet, one of Turkey's great names in poetry. We had our first performance in Moscow on June 3rd as a part of events for his death anniversary (he is buried in Moscow) and a second one in Istanbul in March. Our third performance will be in Strasbourg, France on November 29.

These are the confirmed dates.

 Bird on a Dog @ Gitarcafe Part 1

Şevket Akıncı: Acoustic Guitar (Islak Köpek); Gökçen Dilek Acay: Violin (Islak Köpek);
Jose Blasco: Electric Guitar (Have You Seen My Bird?); Umut Çağlar: Electronics (Konstrukt)
Korhan Erel: Computer, Electronics, Melodica (Islak Köpek); Florent Merlet: Drums (Have You Seen My Bird?); Volkan Terzioğlu: Tenor Saxophone (Islak Köpek); Alexandre Toisoul: Clarinet (Have You Seen My Bird?)