Brenda Berin Quintet at Bova, May 22
Image: Bizimcaz.com
The Bova Jazz Club, towards the Taksim end of İstiklal Caddesi, regularly hosts some of Turkey’s finest jazz musicians. They organise events every day of the month, and are especially strong on modern and improvised jazz. The performance space is small, to say the least, and advance booking is advised (sitting on a crowded staircase isn’t particularly comfortable). The staff are friendly and helpful, even in the face of unreasonable requests. Here are eight events not to miss.
FRIDAY, MAY 8
21:30 Çağıl Kaya
23:00 Jam Session hosted by Tolga Bedir
Vocalist Çağıl Kaya, born in Ankara, gave a large number of concerts with the TRT İzmir Chorus during her student years at Dokuz Eylül University, where she read Musicology. Subsequently, she carried out postgraduate studies in the Music Department of Istanbul University; it was during this time that she launched her professional career, performing pop, rock and funk numbers at various jazz festivals and founding ‘Logos’, her first group, in İzmir. Her first album, entitled Bir Parça Ay Biraz Kuş (‘A Bit of Moon and Some Bird’), appeared in 2014. Three years later, she produced Şimdilik Her Şey Yolunda (‘For the Moment, Everything’s Going OK’), her second album. A performer of considerable theatrical gifts (she believes in using her whole body while singing), Çağıl Kaya has a unique style of vocal improvisation.
Tolga Bedir, born in 1979, began his musical education at the age of 8, when he started learning the violin at the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University State Conservatoire in Istanbul. He then became an actor, playing lead roles with the Atatürk Cultural Centre’s Opera and Ballet company. Following this, he returned to music, taking lessons from violinist Özcan Ulucan and (from 1999) playing the piano with the İmer Demirer Quartet and the Ece Göksu Quartet. In 2005 he went to the USA to study classical music and jazz at the Berklee College of Music; there, he was taught composition by the jazz pianist, composer and arranger Ray Santisi, meanwhile learning to play the drums. In tandem with his academic education in music, for many years he worked with Özcan Ulucan and the world-famous jazz pianist Aydın Esen, later taking part in this latter’s concerts as a drummer. Having graduated from the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University State Conservatoire as a violinist, composer and conductor, he accompanied a large number of jazz and pop soloists both in Turkey and abroad as a pianist, drummer and bass guitarist, at the same time conducting orchestras in arrangements of pop music that he had created. So far, Tolga Bedir has produced three singles and four full albums. Since 2012 he has been running his own studio, where he works on projects with various singers and musicians as a composer and arranger.
SATURDAY, MAY 9
20:30 Defne Yiğit Quartet
22:30 Ece Göksu ‘Sings the Beatles’
My humble apologies to Defne Yiğit: I can’t find any information about her.
Ece Göksu is one of Turkey’s up-and-coming jazz vocalists. A native of Ankara, she sang in the Ankara State Opera and Ballet Children’s Chorus. After training as a pianist at the Hacettepe University State Conservatoire, in 2002 she moved to Istanbul, where she received further instruction in piano playing at the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts 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, which allowed her to receive lessons in jazz vocal at William Paterson University in New Jersey; there, she was taught by Nancy Marano, Cecil Bridgewater, Mulgrew Miller and others, meanwhile taking private lessons from Roberta Gambarini and Jay Clayton.
Ms Göksu, who currently resides partly in New York and partly in Istanbul, has sung at 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. ‘Live in Assos’, meanwhile, appeared on March 1 last year. Her repertoire includes bossa nova numbers and songs by Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Billy Joel and other prominent musicians.
SATURDAY, MAY 16
20:30 Saba Beşirli Quintet
22:30 İpek Göztepe Quartet
My humble apologies to Saba Beşirli: I can’t find any information about her.
İpek Göztepe, who began her musical education at the Piano Department of the Istanbul University State Conservatoire, subsequently sang Turkish classical and Western music in various choirs. Her interest in jazz and soul dates from 2013, when she began appearing at local venues as a lead singer. In 2017 she won the 13th Nardis Young Jazz Vocalists Competition and the İKSV’s ‘Young Jazz’ Competition, which entitled her to attend the Pulawy Jazz Workshop in Poland. Then, in 2024, she completed a course in jazz vocal at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria. Her teachers in Turkey have included Güç Başar Gülle (for jazz theory) and Randy Esen (the wife of Aydın Esen) for jazz singing. She is currently continuing her education at the Yıldız University Communication Design Department.
During the İKSV Jazz Festival in July 2023, I heard İpek Göztepe perform with her quintet at the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall, and was very favourably impressed, especially when she let rip with some urgent, powerful singing.
MONDAY, MAY 18
21:30 (doors open 21:00)
Sarp Maden
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’.
FRIDAY, MAY 22
20:30 Daddy Issues
22:30 Brenda Berin Quintet ‘Sumthin Bout Stevie’
My humble apologies to Daddy Issues: I can’t find any information about them.
Vocalist Brenda Berin, trained in the USA, is known for having founded the ‘Authentic Anatolian Project’ together with some of Turkey’s finest jazz musicians, with whom she produced an archive album. In 2013 she released an album entitled Sakın Ağlama (‘Please Don’t Cry’) together with world-famous drummer Dave Weckl; it featured contributions from Grammy Award-winning composer, producer, audio engineer and pedagogue George Whitty. Her single Midnite, released by Simplastique Records, was selected for inclusion in Ibiza Chillout Session Vol. 7. She has taken part in projects with many famous musicians in Turkey and elsewhere, among these being Erik Truffaz, Talvin Singh and Jean-Pierre Smadj; meanwhile, she has made a large number of recordings for films, TV series and jingles in he. Her repertoire is a mixture of soul, jazz, R&B and funk.
SATURDAY, MAY 23
20:30 Alara Tütüncü Quartet
22:30 İmer Demirer Quartet
Alara Tütüncü’s musical education began in 2005, when she entered the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University State Conservatoire, receiving training as a harpist. She then began to take an interest in jazz, and took part in workshops with foreign jazz harpists. Although the harp has only minimal exposure in the world of jazz, Alara takes inspiration from the spiritual world of Alice Coltrane (1937-2007, a jazz musician who in addition to playing the piano and the harp was also a composer, bandleader and Hindu spiritual leader) and the technical excellence of the jazz harpist, singer and composer Dorothy Ashby (1932-1986).
İmer Demirer is a first-class 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 heard İmer Demirer play more recently in a gig celebrating the songs of Ayten Alpman (who was in fact his mother-in-law), I can vouch for the fact that his soaring creativity is undiminished.
MONDAY, MAY 25
21:30 (doors open 21:00)
Jam Session hosted by Randy Esen
Randy Esen, the wife of jazz pianist and composer Aydın Esen and the mother of musicians Cenk and Aykan, is a highly experienced jazz singer. For many years, she has also served as a pedagogue; her pupils include many fine young singers on the Turkish jazz scene, one of these being Elif Çağlar. After attending a concert by Randy two years ago, I praised her for the elegance of her gestures and her ability to ‘dance up and down the various vocal registers with ease, swooping effortlessly from high to low with zero loss of tone.’ What made the strongest impression, however, was her stage presence: I said that ‘her unerring sense of drama allows her to move from light and breathy sweetness to full-throated passion, then back again to a muted and wistful world-weariness that holds the audience in thrall, willing captives to the spell she throws in her ‘wounded and broken’ moments.’ And speaking of ‘wounded and broken’ moments, Randy Esen has a background in psychology; one of her strengths, in my opinion, is that she never shrinks from addressing the negative sides of life – as she does in her 2023 album Not Alone, produced by her pianist-and-composer younger son Cenk with some help from her elder son Aykan and occasional contributions from her sinfully gifted husband Aydın.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 27
21:30 (doors open 21:00)
Tamer Temel 4
Saxophonist and composer Tamer Temel, born in Istanbul in 1975, began playing jazz while reading Economics at Dokuz Eylül University in Izmir. Having been 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. He released his first album, Barcelona, in 2010, and this was followed in 2013 by Bir Kedi Kara (‘A Cat Black’). Serbest Düşüş (‘Free Fall’), his most recent album, was released at the end of 2016. Other musicians who have appeared 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. Tamer Temel performs with a number of leadingTurkish musicians, as well as with ‘Flapper Swing’, a group that keeps alive the musical atmosphere of the roaring 1920s. He currently teaches jazz at Bahçeşehir University (Istanbul). His style is modern, and in my opinion musically very satisfying.
Brenda Berin Quintet at Bova, May 22
Image: Bizimcaz.com
Nardis Jazz Club highlights
Zorlu Center highlights
