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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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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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Rising to the occasion

By John Shakespeare Dyson | January 17, 2026


On November 28 I attended a concert at the Atatürk Cultural Centre in which the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Sascha Goetzel (photograph by Özge Balkan). This event, one of the DenizBank Concerts, started off with an announcement that the first item on the programme – Debussy’s Prélude...
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Posted in Music & Performing Arts, - Classical Music, - Musical Shares

Steetwise

The photographs of Timurtaş Onan

By Cornucopia Connoisseur | January 10, 2026


In its latest issue, Cornucopia published a highly personal portrait of Beyoğlu, the defiantly bohemian district of European Istanbul, with a moving tribute to its spirited history by Maureen Freely. As she writes, 'Beyoğlu, as we now call it, has always been a place apart'. Well, there is now a...
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She almost blew the doors off

The TRT Big Band and the magnificent Sibel Köse

By John Shakespeare Dyson | January 2, 2026


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...
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The soft power of a textile show

An Indian extravaganza in Istanbul marked an emotional milestone in curator Serra Oruç's lifelong passion for textiles

By Serra Oruç | December 13, 2025


In late November an exhibition I curated opened at Metrohan (the old Gare de Pera, on İstiklal Caddesi), bringing together collectors, enthusiasts, experts and designers to celebrate India’s rich textile heritage. Why, for the first time, was Istanbul hosting this Woven Legacies Exhibition? Largely because Turkey and India, both of...
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After a dream

By John Shakespeare Dyson | November 30, 2025

On Wednesday November 19 I visited a relatively new concert venue, attracted by the promise of a performance of some chansons (French art songs, otherwise known as mélodies) by Fauré, Debussy and Ravel. The event took place in a former Roman Catholic church in Yeldeğirmeni, the quarter in the Kadıköy district...
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The stuff Eroicas are made of

The quality and professionalism of another new youth orchestra leaves even our crotchety critic on a Beethoven high

By John Shakespeare Dyson | November 16, 2025

November may be a time of mounting winter darkness and incoming seasonal depression, but it has sprung at least one welcome surprise – the first public performance of the season by the ADK Istanbul Youth Orchestra, an outfit of whose existence I was previously unaware. Their concert at the Süreyya...
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Golden horns

Conductor Cem Mansur has created an annual wonder: the Turkish National Youth Philharmonic Orchestra

By John Shakespeare Dyson | October 6, 2025


The Turkish National Youth Philharmonic Orchestra held its annual Istanbul concert at the Atatürk Cultural Centre in Taksim Square on August 28. I now look forward to these events with keen anticipation as the standard of playing is always extremely high, thus promising good things for the future of Western...
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Martin Parr 1953-2025

By Monica Fritz | October 1, 2025

Sadly, on December 6th we lost the great British photographer Martin Parr. If anyone's photos spoke for themselves they were his. Martin Parr was known to most for his colour work and his subtle wit though his older black and white work was also very strong. He was one of...
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Reservations about reservations

By Andrew Finkel | September 22, 2025


Andrew Finkel Photo by Monica Fritz     Buried somewhere in my subconscious is a reader's letter that appeared in The Times magazine, the glossy Saturday supplement of the early 1990s, when I was working as the paper's Istanbul correspondent. It was prompted by a Jonathan Meades restaurant review that...
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Chucho Valdés

By John Shakespeare Dyson | September 17, 2025

Where are the songs of summer? Aye, where are they now? Well, they are stored in our memories, where they will hopefully allow us to fondly replay them in our minds as a respite from winter gloom. For me, one of the most memorable of this summer’s musical experiences was...
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