Ece Göksu sings the Beatles at Bova, January 9
Tickets from the Instagram account. (bovasahne.com is permanently under construction).
Bova Jazz Club is at the Taksim end of İstiklal Caddesi. It regularly hosts some of Turkey’s finest jazz musicians and is especially strong on modern and improvised jazz. However, the performance space on the first floor is small, to say the least, and advance booking is definitely advised (sitting on a crowded staircase isn’t particularly comfortable). I have found the staff to be friendly and helpful, even in the face of unreasonable requests.
Time: 21:30 (doors open 21:00).
Sunday January 04
Genco Arı Birthday Concert
Genco Arı is a musician of outstanding quality who in addition to being an ace jazz pianist is now a successful arranger. A former member of guitarist Sarp Maden’s group ‘Quartet Muartet’, he now performs in public only rarely. It goes without saying that his performances are not to be missed. The last time I heard him play was at a ‘Quartet Muartet’ revival concert in Beykoz in 2021. In my blog on that event, I wrote the following: ‘One warm evening in September, four of Turkey’s most talented jazzmen – people who had not played together for over ten years – had a musical reunion that I was privileged to attend. … During the first number, as Sarp was entertaining us with smoky Scorpionic chords, a bearded figure entered the stage carrying what I at first took to be an accordion, but which turned out to be a kind of portable keyboard. This was the reclusive Genco Arı, a pianist and arranger of international quality whose public appearances are, regrettably, as rare as tarantellas at a trash metal concert. … The concert was inspirational: Genco’s sinful sense of rhythm and musical appropriateness (but most of all, his perfect phrasing) left me, as always, open-mouthed.’
Monday, January 5
Rodnaya feat. Ercüment Orkut
Ercüment Orkut is a pianist, composer and arranger who is definitely worth listening to. Born in İstanbul in 1984, he received many years of training in piano, composition and conducting at the Mimar Sinan University State Conservatoire before graduating in 2005. In addition, he has in the past taken lessons in jazz piano from Aydın Esen (in 2004), as well as from Dan Zemelman and Peter Horvath (in San Francisco in 2007). At the Nomme Jazz Festival in Tallinn, Estonia in 2009, he represented Turkey as a pianist, and was placed second by the jury and first by popular acclaim. In addition, he has played at major events such as the İstanbul and Akbank Jazz Festivals, and has undertaken projects with many of Turkey’s leading jazz musicians. His first solo album, ‘Low Profile’, was released by Kalan Müzik in 2015; his second album, ‘Persona’, has recently been released by Lin Records. Whether or not this ensemble has any connection with the Moscow-based Nastya Rodnaya Jazz Quartet remains to be seen.
Friday, January 9
Ece Göksu Sings The Beatles
Ece Göksu is one of Turkey’s up-and-coming jazz vocalists. A native of Ankara, she once sang in the Ankara State Opera and Ballet Children’s Chorus. After receiving training as a pianist at the Hacettepe University State Conservatoire, in 2002 she moved to İstanbul, where she took further piano lessons at the Mimar Sinan University State Conservatoire. It was while at university in Ankara that she began to take an interest in jazz, and formed her first group. In 2007 she won a Fulbright Scholarship to receive instruction as a jazz vocalist at William Paterson University in New Jersey, where she was taught by Nancy Marano, Cecil Bridgewater, Mulgrew Miller and others, meanwhile taking private lessons from Roberta Gambarini and Jay Clayton.
Göksu, who currently resides partly in New York and partly in İstanbul, has taken part in festivals in the United States, Budapest and Dubai as well as in Turkey. In 2014 ‘Slow, Hot Wind’, an album of jazz classics featuring her along with Neşet Ruacan and Volkan Hürsever, was released. Her album ‘Live in Assos’, meanwhile, appeared in March 2024.
Saturday January 10
Eggmann Trio (20:30)
İmer Demirer Quartet (23:00)The ‘Eggmann Trio’ is the brainchild of guitarist Egemen Tosunbaş, who is also the creator of the majority of the compositions and arrangements they play; many of these are in the hard-bop and post-bop genres. ‘Crowded Windows’, the first single by the ‘Eggmann Quartet’, appeared in 2023.
Demirer is a trumpet-player of such outstanding creativity and originality that the remark made by singer Randy Esen (during an interview conducted by Tolga Bedir) while describing how she had chosen him to play on her latest album is entirely justified: “İmer …” she said, “Man, I mean, what can I say … he was the only choice.”
Thursday January 15
Bora Çeliker Quartet
Guitarist Bora Çeliker, who is also a singer, is not just a highly experienced performer of mainstream jazz and blues but also a gifted improviser. At university in Ankara, he founded blues groups by the name of ‘The Crawling Snakes’, ‘The Jukes’ and ‘The King Bees’. Having played mainly blues up to that time, in 1999 he launched out into jazz, playing in a group that was headed by Janusz Szprot, a Polish musician who had come to Ankara to head up the Jazz Department of Bilkent University. Two years later, in 2001, he started playing in the Alan Ginter Quartet with the legendary Turkish pianist, saxophonist and composer Tuna Ötenel, and that same year began a two-year stint as presenter of the ‘Blues Machine’ programme on 92.3 Radio Kozmos in İstanbul. In 2005, he performed with the guitarist Sarp Maden as the opening act at a Jethro Tull concert in İstanbul’s Harbiye Open-Air Theatre.
Bora Çeliker, who pursued postgraduate studies in Performance at Bilgi University, has played with a number of leading Turkish jazz musicians including Nilüfer Verdi, Neşet Ruacan, Cem Aksel, Erdal Akyol, Burak Bedikyan, Kağan Yıldız, Ferit Odman, İmer Demirer and Selim Selçuk, as well as with former Bilgi University jazz teacher Ricky Ford.
Thursday, January 22
Sarp Maden 5
Sarp Maden is one of Turkey’s finest jazz guitarists and composers, with his own unique style that combines outlandish chords, atonal sweetness and sudden swoops with a good deal of agonised gut wrenching thrown in (his name translates as ‘precipitous metal’). I first reviewed him in June 2018, when he played with pianist Çağrı Sertel at the İKSV building in Şişhane as part of the İKSV Jazz Festival. The next concert involving him that I attended was in January of the following year, when he joined forces with the Israeli saxophonist Gilad Atzmon at the Touché Club in the Zorlu Center. In my review of that concert, I wrote: ‘Even when Sarp is playing a slow, floating melody in a high register, his liquid, light-filled tone always has a wistful edge to it – a tortured timbre if ever there was one. And, of course, the atonal arpeggio outbursts are ineffably Scorpionic in their asperity (guess what sign he is?) – hunks of screaming metal hurtle towards you like out-of-control motorbikes cartwheeling through the air as they spin off the race track; indeed, you almost have to duck.’
The third occasion was in September 2021, when he gathered together the members of his ertswhile group ‘Quartet Muartet’ – pianist Genco Arı, bassist Alp Ersönmez and drummer Volkan Öktem – at a concert in a former shoe factory in Beykoz that I described as ‘inspirational’.
Monday January 26
Jam Session with Eylül Biçer
Eylül Biçer, a native of İstanbul, was introduced to the electric guitar while at Kabataş High School. Having received his first degree from the Department of Music and Performing Arts at Yıldız Technical University (İstanbul), he then carried out postgraduate studies in Sound Technology at the Bahçeşehir University Institute of Science (İstanbul). From 2018 to 2023 he attended the İstanbul University State Conservatoire, where he completed a doctorate thesis entitled ‘Harmonization on Jazz Guitar: A Study on a Method for Developing Harmonic Possibilities in Solo and Duo Performances’. Eylül Biçer, who is also a producer and arranger, regularly plays with some of Turkey’s finest jazz musicians.
Ece Göksu sings the Beatles at Bova, January 9
