On November 26 I visited the Atatürk Cultural Centre’s Theatre Hall to hear the TRT Istanbul Radio Light Music and Jazz Orchestra – in other words, the TRT Big Band – accompany vocalist Sibel Köse in a series of rollicking jazz classics. The last time I had heard Sibel sing was in April last year, when she took part in a concert celebrating the life of Ayten Alpman, a Turkish jazz and pop singer of the 1960s and 70s. Before Sibel came on stage in November, I had mentally prepared myself for a reduction in the volume of sound she would be able to produce. After all, time takes its toll on all of us, doesn’t it? How wrong I was!
The first number – Aha! – was purely instrumental. We heard some fine brass playing from the five trumpets and four trombones on stage. There was also some well-coordinated blaring from the five saxophones, among whom I was pleased to see some musicians I had previously listened to at closer quarters in various jazz clubs. Although I might have wished to hear more of the pianist (he was drowned out by the other instruments in this number), I could tell immediately that Serkan Özyılmaz, a graduate of the Composition Department of the Mimar Sinan University State Conservatoire, was going to make some satisfying ventures into atonal space, launching himself a good deal further out into that risky realm than most would dare to.
Then Sibel made her entry wearing a blue outfit that was most appropriate to her Libran Sun sign: pastel hues such as pink and blue are said to open the heart, soften one’s presence and bring to bear a calming influence. In accordance with the predilections of Venus, their co-ruler, Librans tend to seek harmony, and (of course) balance. She began A Foggy Day accompanied only by the piano, and after this came an impressive guitar solo from conductor Cem Tuncer, who laid down his baton and girded his instrument at several points during the concert.
Recently Sibel has been working with the French trumpet-player, composer and arranger Jean-Loup Longnon; a couple of years ago, in fact, she made recordings with his big band at the Studios Ferber in Paris. The two have given a large number of concerts in France and Russia – even one in Senegal, a former French colony, where French is the main foreign language. As a result, her English numbers are now interspersed with songs in French, and the third item in her programme – which I believe was called Ce soir – was one of these. I was pleased to see that she captured its insolent 6/8 slinkiness to perfection.
One special feature of the concert on November 26 was the emotional range Sibel achieved in the slower numbers, and it was one of these – Our Love is Here to Stay – that came next. On occasions where feistiness was called for she sent her voice hurtling across the hall like a howitzer shell, but when the mood changed to one of intimacy or wounded anguish, she dropped down to a highly charged, almost tearful, hush.
A little illogicality never goes amiss in a jazz concert, and in the sixth song, entitled Four, she demonstrated her ability to scat-sing, or vocalise, integrating long stretches of nonsense words into a song. Ella Fitzgerald wrote a book about it. Sibel really ought to produce her own, with examples of the ‘Doo-doo-dah’ and ‘Bi-bi-boo-bop’ variety. I’d buy it. This item was marked by another session of guitar-playing from the conductor, and the first full-length drum solo. (The audience really liked that – for some reason, drum solos always draw enthusiastic applause.) The next number was sung in French; I don’t actually know what its title was, but among the words I recognised were Sous la pluie de novembre – ‘Under the November Rain’. Here, the double-bass player gave us an appropriately smoky, subdued and overcast solo in bossa-nova rhythm.
In the final number, What a Little Moonlight Can Do, Sibel unleashed a powerball of sound that nearly burst the Theatre Hall’s doors wide open. It was accompanied by a great deal of that grittiness that these days is described as ‘edge’. Her encore, I was delighted to see, was a slow one with lots and lots of ‘let’s torture our tonsils’ throatiness. It takes a great deal of musical maturity to do an encore that is not of the high-energy, roistering variety, but all the musicians on the stage that night undoubtedly had that quality in abundance.
I left the premises thinking to myself that there are few places in the world where one can hear a jazz concert of this quality, and my heartfelt congratulations go not only to Sibel Köse, who was magnificent, but also to each and every one of the musicians who accompanied her with such consummate skill and professionalism. Long may they blow, bow or bash their instruments!
