Jazz notes

By John Scott | August 31, 2019


With so much amazing talent around, such as the show-stealing Elif Çağlar, it is hardly surprising that Turkey takes its jazz seriously. There are two major festivals in Istanbul alone: the Istanbul Jazz Festival in July and the autumn Akbank Jazz Festival. And there is plenty on offer elsewhere in...
Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

Cem Mansur and a Philharmonic phenomenon

The Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra is born again again

By John Shakespeare Dyson | July 31, 2019

The Turkish Youth Philharmonic Orchestra permformed at the Türkiye İş Bankası megatower concert hall in Levent on Sunday, July 21. The orchestra’s main sponsor is the Sabancı Foundation: the need for a sponsor resulting from the fact that the Turkish State does not support it. In spite of the refusal...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

Snarky Puppy and Shake Stew

The Istanbul Jazz Fest

By John Shakespeare Dyson | July 21, 2019


The New York-based band Snarky Puppy gave a concert at the UNIQ Open-Air Stage on Tuesday July 9. The supporting group was Shake Stew, an Austrian outfit. Whether the music was jazz-rock, or funk, or groove, is immaterial: in any case, I would not be able to tell you, for...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Jazz, - Musical Shares Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

‘The Gentleman of Istanbul’ and other sly tales

Turhan Selçuk smiles satirically, almost vaguely, and you find yourself joining him – Yaşar Kemal

By Luke Frostick | July 12, 2019


And that, as the great novelist said, is what great art is about. Minimalism is the key to Turhan Selçuk’s art – his drawings all bold black lines and harsh angles. However, as is so often the case with the best artists, simplicity can be deceptive. His torpedo passing through...
Posted in Exhibitions, Fine Art, Literature Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

The best pianist in the world?

If you ask Chick Corea, it's Aydın Esen

By John Shakespeare Dyson | July 12, 2019


There are some concerts – not many, just a few – that leave you with a feeling of euphoria, allowing you to forget everything that makes life a burden for just a few precious hours. The concert by the jazz pianist and composer Aydın Esen and his group on Friday,...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

Mr Say takes a bow, and the final notes fade away

The 2019 Istanbul Music Festival's sell-out finale

By John Shakespeare Dyson | July 5, 2019


Sunday, June 30 was the last day of this year’s İKSV Istanbul Music Festival, and the occasion was marked by a concert in which the Shanghai Philharmonic Orchestra and Fazıl Say performed at the Lütfi Kırdar Concert Hall. There were very few empty seats in the auditorium, though whether this...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

Rather too easy does it

With the viola legend Yuri Bashmet on the menu along with a new piece by Alexander Tchaikovsky, you’d expect the works… Hmmm

By John Shakespeare Dyson | June 30, 2019


In the second week of the İKSV Istanbul Music Festival the Moscow Soloists and viola-player Yuri Bashmet gave a concert at Hagia Eirene on Thursday, June 20. Sitting in the grassy area between this venerable Byzantine pile and the inner gate of Topkapı Palace before the concert began, I watched...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

Min Hogg MBE (1939–2019)

Farewll to the inspirational founder of The World of Interiors

By John Scott | June 30, 2019


So soon after Norman Stone, it is heart-breaking to learn that another much-loved contributor to Corncuopia has just died. Min Hogg was the founding editor of the most beautiful magazine in the world and a huge inspiration to many. The Times published a fine obituary this week for the 'flamboyant...
Posted in Obituaries Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

HALI at 40

The story of the carpet connoisseur's essential companion

By Daniel Shaffer | June 29, 2019

This week, HALI magazine marked its 200th issue with a series of celebratory London-based events, including lectures, book launches, an antique carpet and textile art fair, exclusive group access to museum storage and private collections, and a post-event HALI tour of significant English collections of antique carpets and textiles. There...
Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

Happy birthday, HALI

Celebrating 40 years and 200 editions of the magazine

By Cornucopia UK | June 27, 2019


HALI is celebrating its 40th anniversary and the 200th edition of HALI magazine with an exhibition of antique rugs, textiels and tribal art at the Mall Galleries in London, the first time it has held an event at the venue. As always the show is full of panache and charcter...
Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

A new era for Cornucopia

Online edition free to subscribers

By Cornucopia UK | June 27, 2019

The latest issue of Cornucopia, No 59, is just out, and it marks the start of a new phase for the magazine, as it goes online. From now on, all issues will be available for subscribers to scroll through the elegant pages not just of the latest issues, but back...
Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

Norman Stone (1941–2019)

A fond tribute to the the historian Norman Stone, a fearless advocate of Turkey, who died at his home in Budapest yesterday

By David Barchard | June 20, 2019


If Norman Stone and Professor Ali Doğramacı, then rector of Bilkent University, had not shared a flash of inspiration during an international conference in Ankara in 1995, the love affair between the country and its most famous international academic friend might never have begun. Norman was in Ankara, at a...
Posted in Obituaries Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

Pleasure and pain on the night of the full moon

Daniel Müller-Schott and the Tekfen Philharmonic at the Istanbul Festival

By John Shakespeare Dyson | June 19, 2019


The Tekfen Philharmonic Orchestra gave its second concert of this year’s İKSV Festival in the Lütfi Kırdar Concert Hall on June 17. As with their Spring Concert on March 21, it was the day of a full moon, and once again the spacious terrace outside the building was an ideal...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

Jeung Beum Sohn

By John Shakespeare Dyson | June 18, 2019


The last in the series of Istanbul Recitals for the 2018-2019 season was given by the South Korean pianist Jeung Beum Sohn at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum’s Seed concert hall on June 14. There has been a succession of South Koreans performing in Istanbul recently. On March 21, Bomsori Kim...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

A certain lightness of being…

The 47th İKSV Istanbul Music Festival gets into gear

By John Shakespeare Dyson | June 16, 2019


And so we have arrived at that time of year when the lime trees are in flower, the watermelons rise to new heights of drippy deliciousness and the İKSV Istanbul Music Festival gets under way. A poem by Rimbaud celebrates the arrival of warm weather with the following couplet: Que...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

An enduring tradition

Sandy Jones’s carpets have helped to keep alive Turkish carpet-making in the time-honoured way

By Cornucopia UK | May 28, 2019


Hand weaving in Turkey, often thought a dying art, has continued to survive in some parts of Anatolia due to discerning designers such as Sandy Jones, whose wonderful carpets are produced in anonymous domestic ateliers. “They use natural wool," she says, “and the skeins, looped over the shoulder, are dipped...
Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

Yeol Eum Son

By John Shakespeare Dyson | May 18, 2019


The Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son gave a recital of works by Chopin and Rachmaninov at the the Seed, the concert hall attached to the Sakıp Sabancı Museum in Emirgan, on May 11. After last month’s recital, given by Stephen Kovacevich with a dreadful cold, it was a relief to...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

Did Anatolians build Stonehenge?

Whitehawk Woman provides a clue

By Cornucopia UK | May 14, 2019


The facial reconstruction of a woman from 5600 years ago found in Brighton suggests that immigrants from Anatolia may have built Britain’s best-known Neolithic monument. Discovered on Whitehawk Hill, the site of Brighton’s racecourse, ‘Whitehawk Woman’ pictured here and now on show in Brighton Museum and Art Gallery’s new archaeology...
Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

A subtle depth in Venice

Tim Cornwell admires İnci Eviner's Turkish ‘total art’ at this year's Venice Biennale

By Tim Cornwell | May 11, 2019


The French Pavilion has been widely declared the go-to show of the Venice Biennale this year, and so it was that a 90-minute queue snaked up the Giardini in the opening week’s vernissage of the six-month art event. It deserves the attention: you walk in across a glassy blue sea...
Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries

Spark of light, burning bright, in the forest of Asia’s grim towers

The Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra under the sensitive baton of Nikos Haliassas at the Caddebostan Cultural Centre

By John Shakespeare Dyson | May 7, 2019

On 26 April I ventured across the Bosphorus to attend a concert by the İstanbul State Symphony Orchestra at the Caddebostan Cultural Centre. It was with some trepidation that I took the Metrobus over the First Bosphorus Bridge to its terminus at Söğütlüçeşme, in the hinterland behind Kadıköy: the sight...
Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares Tagged balkans, bosnia-herzegovina, museums, national galleries
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