The 2020 İKSV Music Festival defiantly opens
By John Shakespeare Dyson | October 8, 2020
‘Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”’ It...
By John Shakespeare Dyson | September 22, 2020
Following my blog on Saturday, the much-anticipated concert on Büyükada – given by an assortment of young string-players from Turkey, the United Kingdom and Germany – duly took place at the San Pacifico Church that same evening, and was streamed online. The orchestra, conducted by Dr James Ross, played works...
Canavar: portrait of an artist in pursuit of the unpleasant
By Paul Benjamin Osterlund with photographs by Monica Fritz | August 22, 2020
The home and studio of the Istanbul-based artist Canavar (Turkish for ‘monster’), whose work above graces the walls of Marmara University building, is tucked away on a backstreet in the heart of Kadıköy’s Hasanpaşa neighbourhood, one of the few areas in the district that has not been gentrified or was...
Monica Fritz, Cornucopia’s photographer-at-large, shares images from her travels in the Troad and beyond last September
By Monica Fritz | August 1, 2020
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WAITING FOR THE RIGHT LIGHT… Last September I had the honour of accompanying the famed photographer Sir Don McCullin (pictured at Assos, left) and the author/publisher Barnaby Rogerson (right) on what turned out to be a very fun road trip to the west of Turkey for Cornucopia's issue No 61....
A tribute to one of Turkey’s best-loved novelists
By David Barchard | July 16, 2020
Adalet Ağaoğlu, who died on Tuesday, July 14, at the age of 90, was one of the country’s most accomplished novelists in the last quarter of the 20th century, and very widely read in her own country, though undeservedly ignored elsewhere. Two of her novels, however, were translated into English...
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Literature, Obituaries
Our favourite city escape has just reopened. Andrew Finkel is heading straight for his Bosphorus-side Adirondack chair
By Andrew Finkel | July 14, 2020
The very words ‘hospitality industry’ have always struck me as not just an oxymoron but slightly sinister. In my mind’s eye I see dark satanic mills fuming suntan oil or holiday camp animators with surgically enhanced smiles. But of course it is exactly that US$ 35 billion tourism industry in...
In the first of a series of online exhibition highlights, we remember Nazimî Yaver Yenal (Istanbul Research Institute)
By Rose Shepherd | July 5, 2020
Nazimî Yaver Yenal: Imaginary World of a Paper Architect Istanbul Research Institute The story of Nazimî Yaver Yenal's career as an architect, spanning nearly 50 years, might be seen as one of stellar failure. Born in 1904, he trained at the Imperial School of Fine Arts, where his precocious talents...
John Shakespeare Dyson completes his series of articles on the French ‘chanson’
By John Shakespeare Dyson | June 27, 2020
With this, the sixth and final instalment in our series of articles on composers of chansons – French art songs – we conclude our exploration of the songs of Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924). In this particular blog we will be examining the songs he wrote later in his life – from...
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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
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...
Posted in
Good causes
‘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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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
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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Islamic Art
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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Architecture, Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music
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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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
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),...
Posted in
Photography, Travel
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...
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...
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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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
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,...
… 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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Photography
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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Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares
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