Master drummer Can Kozlu, special guest at Bova's 'freehouse', February 23 (photo Berk Özler/IKSV Istanbul Jazz Festival)
Bova Jazz Club, at the Taksim end of İstiklal Caddesi, regularly hosts Turkey’s finest jazz musicians and is especially strong on modern and improvised jazz (writes John Shakespeare Dyson). 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.
Sunday, February 1
Monday, February 2
Tuesday, February 3
Cenk Erdoğan Trio – Live album recording with audience
Guitarist, composer and arranger Cenk Erdoğan, who plays the fretless guitar, has developed a technique influenced by traditional Turkish stringed instruments such as the bağlama and the tanbur. Born in Istanbul in 1979, he is a graduate of Bilgi University (Istanbul), where he studied guitar technique and self-expression with Kamil Özler, Neşet Ruacan and Şevket Akıncı and received tuition in composition and musical arrangement from Aydın Esen, Ali Perret, Can Kozlu, Kamil Özler and Lawrence ‘Butch’ Morris. His playing style and his compositions, which combine jazz harmonies with traditional Turkish melodies, have attracted international attention: in 2004 he was invited to demonstrate his skills at the Berklee College of Music and the Queens College of Music. In 2009, he won a prize for his music for the film Issız Adam. He also writes music for television series. Recordings include İle (2008), Kavis (2011), Kara Kutu (2014), Fermata (2018) and Lahza II (2019).
Monday, February 9
Jam session with Cem Aksel
Cem Aksel, born in Ankara in 1963, began his professional career as a drummer while still a lycée student, subsequent to his family’s move to Istanbul. Having graduated from Istanbul University as a French teacher in 1983, he worked with the multi-talented jazz musician Emin Fındıkoğlu, a musical arranger, composer, pianist and conductor who is one of Turkey’s most respected pedagogues, as well as with the singer, lyricist, composer, arranger, bass guitarist, producer and conductor Onno Tunç (1948-1996), whose interests included soul and pop as well as jazz. Other musicians with whom Cem Aksel has worked include leading figures in the world of Turkish jazz, pop and alternative music. During the past 30 years, he has played the drums with a wide range of Turkish and foreign ensembles – from trios to big bands – on over 150 albums. Since 1989, he has been teaching drumming in music schools and workshops, and currently divides his time between Ankara and Istanbul.
Wednesday February 18
Çağrı Sertel ‘Duolimbo’ feat. Nedim Ruacan
Çağrı Sertel’s style is modern, and not a little abrasive, but those who appreciate a little edge to their music will find his compositions exhilarating. A pianist and composer, he learnt his art from Tuna Ötenel and Ali Perret, two of Turkey’s most distinguished jazz pianists and pedagogues After listening to him and his group for the first time, I wrote of 'a feeling of relief that Turkey is still capable of producing musicians of this calibre'. Apart from his pianism and inventiveness as a composer, both outstanding, I was struck by his impeccable taste: he knows exactly when to change timbre and register, when to pull the stops out, and when to draw in his horns, both in the sense of withdrawing from prominence in the ensemble and of bringing in his saxophonist at the right moment.
Thursday February 19
Tamer Temel 3
Saxophonist and composer Tamer Temel's style is modern, and in my opinion musically very satisfying. Born in Istanbul in 1975, he began playing jazz while reading Economics at Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir. Awarded a scholarship during the 2005 European Jazz Festival, he attended the Siena Master Class summer course in Italy, receiving further tuition from the distinguished saxophonist Mark Turner. His first album, Barcelona, in 2010 was followed in 2013 by Bir Kedi Kara (‘A Cat Black’). His most recent album, Serbest Düşüş (‘Free Fall’), was released in 2016. Other musicians to appear on his albums include guitarists Dave Allen and Eylül Biçer, bassists Masa Kamaguchi and Volkan Topakoğlu, double-bass player Matt Hall, drummers Marc Miralta, Cem Aksel and Volkan Öktem, pianist Serkan Özyılmaz and vibraphonist Kenny Wollesen. Temel currently performs with a number of leading Turkish musicians, as well as with ‘Flapper Swing’, a group that keeps alive the musical atmosphere of the roaring 1920s. He teaches jazz at Bahçeşehir University (Istanbul).
Monday February 23
‘Free House’: İmre Demirer & Meriç Demirkol & Ali Perret with special guest Can Kozlu
Imre Demirer is a trumpet-player of such outstanding originality that the remark made by singer Randy Esen 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.” In my blog on a previous concert at the Bova Jazz Club, I said that ‘İmer, whose playing is invariably tasteful, was nothing less than magnificent.’ Having recently heard him play in a gig celebrating the songs of Ayten Alpman (who was in fact his mother-in-law), I can vouch for the fact that İmer Demirer’s soaring creativity is undiminished.
Saxophonist Meriç Demirkol is an experienced musician who is also a gifted improviser. In my blog on a concert featuring both him and trumpeter İmer Demirer at the Bova Jazz Club, I said the following: ‘As the trumpet-saxophone dialogue progressed it was Meriç, rather than İmer, who let rip, and in doing so contributed a great deal towards the success of the evening in terms of musical satisfaction. It is precisely this lack of restraint that can give improvised music, at its best, a ‘straight-from-the-heart’ quality that is extremely difficult to replicate in a scripted performance.’
Pianist, educator and arranger Ali Perret was responsible for training up a large number of the fine young Turkish jazz pianists we hear today while he was teaching in the Jazz Department of Bilgi University (Istanbul) – a department that he helped found. An expert both at laying down mainstream jazz and at providing musically appropriate accompaniment to free improvisations, he has a versatile aesthetic that is all his own. Mr Perret, a highly original voice in Turkish jazz, always has something interesting to say – as I heard in the ‘Clash of the Titans’ concert last year, when he conducted one of the two orchestras in a series of his own arrangements.
One of Turkey’s most experienced drummers, Can Kozlu trained in Grenoble, Paris and the Berklee School of Music in Boston, USA. In 1996, he founded the Jazz Performance department at Bilgi University (Istanbul) together with Ali Perret. Many of Turkey’s finest drummers are former students. He has worked with Erkan Oğur, Nükhet Ruacan, Neşet Ruacan, Arto Tunçboyacıyan, Onno Tunç, Emin Fındıkoğlu, Ali Perret, Şenova Ülker and, over a long period, Aydın Esen, as well as with Turkey’s most famous pop stars, including Sezen Aksu and Nilüfer.
Wednesday February 25
Sarp Maden 5
Maden is one of Turkey’s finest jazz guitarists and composers, with a style all of his own that combines outlandish chords, atonal sweetness, sudden swoops and agonised gut wrenching (his name translates as ‘precipitous metal’). In one concert I attended, he was accompanying the Israeli saxophonist Gilad Atzmon at the Touché Club in the Zorlu Center. In my review, 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.’ On another occasion he gathered together the members of his ertswhile group ‘Quartet Muartet’ – pianist Genco Arı, bassist Alp Ersönmez and drummer Volkan Öktem – at a concert that I described as ‘inspirational’.
Friday February 27
Eggmann Trio (20:30), İmer Demirer Quartet (22:30)
The ‘Eggman Quartet’ is the brainchild of guitarist Egemen Tosunbaş, 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, their first single (produced by Volkan Öktem), appeared in 2023. İmer Demirer, meanwhile, 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.”
Master drummer Can Kozlu, special guest at Bova's 'freehouse', February 23 (photo Berk Özler/IKSV Istanbul Jazz Festival)
