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The new season opens with Beethoven’s Ninth

The AKM resounds with the Ode to Joy

By John Dyson | October 24, 2026


The Istanbul State Opera and Ballet Orchestra and Chorus opened their 2026-27 season with a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at the Atatürk Cultural Centre on 19 September. My companions and I were fortunate enough to have good seats in the middle of the auditorium, and so were able...
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Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music

The Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra triumphs again

An inspiring concert by Turkey’s classical musicians of the future

By John Shakespeare Dyson | October 20, 2026


The Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra’s annual Istanbul concert is the brainchild of conductor Cem Mansur, who founded it in 2007 with the help of the Sabancı Foundation, its main sponsor; it now operates under the auspices of the Sevda-Cenap And Music Foundation. The annual concert in Istanbul, this year at...
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Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music

Against reason: Sinopale’s 10th edition

At the contemporary art biennale in Sinop, artists turn to intuition, local knowledge and the sea to navigate a changing world

By Ayla Jean Yackley photos by Monica Fritz | October 11, 2026


Fishermen on Turkey’s Black Sea coast are said to have an expression to describe their reliance on instinct to read the waters. At Sea We Sense, On Land We Reason, the 10th edition of the art biennale Sinopale, borrows the phrase to ask whether different forms of knowledge can help...
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Robert Plant & Saving Grace come to Istanbul

A rock legend performs in Harbiye

By John Dyson | October 8, 2026


It was a sultry evening in early July when I made my way to the Cemil Topuzlu Open-Air Theatre in Harbiye, Istanbul to attend a concert by Robert Plant – the former lead singer of Led Zeppelin, one of the longest-lasting outfits in the history of rock music – and...
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Posted in Music & Performing Arts

Some rollicking brass fanfares to bring the curtain down

The Vienna Symphony Orchestra & Kian Soltani in the 2026 İKSV Istanbul Music Festival finale

By John Shakespeare Dyson | September 21, 2026


And so, on June 24, the 2026 İKSV Istanbul Music Festival came to an end. Much thanks and appreciation are once again due to this marvellous organisation, which continues to bring fine feasts to Istanbul music-lovers’ tables (and I don’t mean on motorbikes). Long may it continue! The grand finale...
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Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music

The Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Bruce Liu at the Atatürk Cultural Centre

By John Dyson | September 10, 2026


The third concert of the 2026 İKSV Istanbul Music Festival that I attended took place at the Atatürk Cultural Centre on June 23. It is always a pleasure to listen to the foreign orchestras who come to Istanbul to play at the Festival, and compare them with Turkey’s own outfits....
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Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music

I Thought I Knew The Odyssey

By Yiğit Tahtalıoğlu | August 27, 2026


I thought I knew The Odyssey. I was wrong. I discovered that in a neighborhood movie theatre in Istanbul. A few days after Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey premiered, I went to a Sunday morning screening. I chose the first showing because I've never liked crowds. It was not even an...
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Take me to your lieder

Ian Bostridge, Feride Büyükdenktaş and Saskia Giorgini at the Süreyya Opera House

By John Dyson | August 20, 2026


The second concert of the 2026 İKSV Istanbul Music Festival that I attended took place at the Süreyya Opera House in Kadıköy on June 22. It featured the British tenor Ian Bostridge, the Turkish mezzo-soprano Feride Büyükdenktaş and the Georgian pianist Saskia Giorgini. The concert hall was half-empty, which I...
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Perfect Timing: The Jussen Brothers and Akademie Potsdam

By John Dyson | July 30, 2026


The first concert of the 2026 İKSV Istanbul Music Festival that I attended took place in the Atatürk Cultural Centre’s Theatre Hall on June 15. I chose this particular event because it featured the Jussen Brothers, a youthful piano duo from Holland that I knew to be top notch, and...
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Posted in Music & Performing Arts

Take your seats for the virtuosi of tomorrow

By John Shakespeare Dyson | July 3, 2026


The ENKA compound on the hill leading down from Maslak towards İstinye was the scene of an inspiring Gala Concert on April 19th. The event featured performances by seven young musicians who had been identified by the jury at ENKA Sanat (‘ENKA Arts’), and it began with a speech by...
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Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music

The Bosphorus Trio at Notre Dame de Sion

By John Shakespeare Dyson | June 24, 2026


On Thursday, April 2 I attended a concert at the Notre Dame de Sion French Lycée in Harbiye, Istanbul that featured the ‘Bosphorus Trio’. Founded in 2016, this ensemble consists of violinist Özgecan Günöz, cellist Çağlayan Çetin and pianist Özgür Ünaldı. Özgecan Günöz is the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra’s konzertmeister...
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Art on the edge

The Mardin Biennial bridges the city's fabled image with its contemporary currents

By Ayla Jean Yackley photos by Monica Fritz | June 13, 2026


From its ridge high above the Mesopotamian plain, the city of Mardin in southeastern Turkey appears suspended between Earth and sky, its honey-hued buildings mixing with bands of heat and light. This meeting between the ethereal and the earthly underpins SKYground, the seventh edition of the Mardin Biennial, that brings...
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The Friday 13th Jinx Strikes Nielsen, But Not Chopin

Gülsin Onay and Louise Farrenc at the AKM

By John Dyson | May 28, 2026


On March 13 I attended a concert at the Atatürk Cultural Centre that had been organised to celebrate Women’s Day (March 8th). The previous concert I had witnessed at this venue had taken place on Friday, February 13; that month being of an even length of four weeks, the pattern...
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Theodore Mould – In Search of Phillipo

An Armenian Merchant Between Two Empires

By John Dyson | May 12, 2026


Philip John Nigohrus, known as Phillipo, was an Armenian merchant from the Ottoman Empire whose contributions to Anglo-Ottoman exchange in the eighteenth century have only recently been rediscovered. Long misidentified as an anonymous groom in George Stubbs’s portrait of the Duke of Ancaster’s Eastern horse, Phillipo was in fact a...
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First, grandeur – then gloom, doom and broomsticks

By John Shakespeare Dyson | May 7, 2026


On Friday, February 13 I braved the inauspiciousness of the date to attend a concert at the Atatürk Cultural Centre. This event, one of the DenizBank concerts, brought together two musicians from France: Lionel Bringuier (pictured above), who would be conducting the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, and his pianist brother...
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Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Musical Shares

A walk on the mild side

Vaughan Williams and Beethoven at the AKM

By John Shakespeare Dyson | March 28, 2026


The concert at the Atatürk Cultural Centre on January 16 featured a British viola-player performing a work by a British composer, so I naturally felt obliged to attend it. The Suite for Viola and Orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) is an eight-movement work that was written between 1933 and 1934. It...
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A dose of string fever

By John Shakespeare Dyson | March 6, 2026

On December 5 I returned to the Atatürk Cultural Centre to attend another concert by the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra. This event, one of the DenizBank concerts, featured Italian guest conductor Alfonso Scarano and the Serbian-born Hungarian violinist Robert Lakatoš. Before the proceedings began, there was a recorded announcement asking...
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Rooted: The Garden Within

Four artists invite reflection on how we connect with the natural world

By Clara Robins | March 5, 2026


Işık Güner, Iris gatesii Foster (2025) Yunus Karma’s Kintsugi Moss Sculpture (2025) poised in the Şule Gazioğlu Gallery As Istanbul edges towards spring, a new exhibition at the Şule Gazioğlu Gallery draws our attention to our inner relationship with nature.  Rooted: The Garden Within (26 February...
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Bridge- interconnection of cultures

By Serra Oruç | February 1, 2026


'Passaggi' by Feleksan Onar installed in San Marco Ph. courtesy of artist Since its establishment in 1895, the Venice Biennale has attracted art lovers from around the world. With the Venice Glass Week, and more recently Homo Faber, Venice has also found a way to reveal another essential aspect of...
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London Antique Rug and Textile Art Fair 2026

Cornucopia in London

By Monica Fritz | January 23, 2026


A 17th-entury tapestry fragment at James Cohen Antique Carpets (LARTA 2026) Sadly, sadly, Sunday is the final day of the London Antique rug and Textile Art Fair, (open from 11am to 8pm till January 25th). If you are in London come visit our stand in this wonderful fair full of treasures....
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