t was a grey, overcast day in November when I met the jazz singer Sibel Köse in a café in Cihangir. I first met Sibel when I was living behind Botter Han, an Art Nouveau mansion at the Tünel end of İstiklâl Caddesi, Beyoğlu, and she and other musicians would sometimes call on me before going on stage at the nearby clubs. On this occasion, however, I wanted not to make small talk or discuss her cats and their crimes, but to investigate her history – how and why she came to be known as “the Queen of European Jazz”.

The last time I had seen Sibel perform was at the Nardis Club, hard by the Galata Tower, in January 2023. In my Musical Shares blog on that concert, I wrote: “She hits the high notes with tremendous force and faultless intonation; she improvises creatively with nonsense words even more frequently than before, fashioning them into meaningful episodes within the song as a whole; and her emotional range remains unrivalled within my experience of jazz singers. All this is mixed in with both a searing sincerity and a wry sense of humour. How could anyone fail to enjoy and appreciate her artistry?”

I asked what influences had shaped that artistry, and she named three main figures. The first was the legendary Turkish jazz pianist, saxophonist and composer Tuna Ötenel, whom she had met while still a student of architecture at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. She said she had learnt a lot by performing with him, though he had never given her formal lessons. She also told me the story of how he had acquired his surname. In 1933 his father had come to Istanbul from Bulgaria as the goalkeeper of a football team, though he was also a violinist. After the match he sought political asylum, eventually taking Turkish citizenship. When he went to get his identity card, a process that involved choosing a Turkish surname, he entered the office holding his violin – which the clerk promptly asked him to play. Impressed, the clerk suggested he call himself Ötenel, which means “Singing Hand”.

Her second big influence was Janusz Szprot, a Polish musician who had come to Ankara in the 1990s to head up the Jazz Department of Bilkent University and had invited her to attend a summer school for jazz vocalists in his native country. There she received tuition from Deborah Brown and Rachel Gould, two singers from the USA. The Polish connection is still going strong. At her concerts there, Sibel often cooperates with pianist and teacher Bogdan Hołownia, and sometimes sings 1930s cabaret numbers – in French – by the writer and singer Jeremi Przybora.

Her third major influencer, she said, was the French trumpet player, composer and arranger Jean-Loup Longnon. She has recently made recordings with his big band in Paris. The two have given many concerts in France, Russia and elsewhere. Sibel told me how their taxi from the airport into Dakar in Senegal had broken down outside the city. Her worst fear had been not the prospect of being late for a meeting with the concert organisers, but of being eaten by the lions that were roaming around…

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Issue 67, December 2024 Beauty in the Wilderness
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