Nardis Jazz Club is tucked away in an old Genoese building in a side street close to the Galata Tower. It opened its doors in October 2002 and is Istanbul’s oldest venue of its kind. The ground-floor seating area and balcony have a maximum seating capacity of 120. Meals are served. The club was named after a composition by Miles Davis and is owned by the jazz musician Önder Focan and his wife Zuhal, publisher and editor of the city’s Jazz magazine.
Jazz concerts are held every night of the week except Sunday. Seating is determined according to the order in which members of the audience arrive, starting at 20:30. Reservations are kept until 21.15 (i.e., 15 minutes before the music starts). Tables for two are limited. All other tables are shared.
Important note: Bookings are now carried out exclusively via email or by telephone: +90 (212) 244 63 27
Wednesday June 04
Bilge Günaydın Quartet
Bilge Günaydın is a pianist, composer and arranger who completed a master’s degree in jazz composition at William Paterson University in New Jersey in 2023. Her style incorporates elements of modern, classical and Turkish music as well as jazz. She has worked with such famous names as Bill Charlap, Pete McGuinness, Cecil Bridgewater, Steve Nelson and Ed Neumeister, and is a member of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop and ISJAC, the International Society of Jazz Arrangers and Composers. She currently works with both these organisations in big band and orchestral music. Her compositions have been played by the BMI Jazz Orchestra, One More Once Big Band and the Twin Cities Jazz Composers Orchestra.
Her first album, Daydreams, released in 2020, earned high praise from the ‘All About Jazz’ platform. ‘Sketches of Green’, her second album, appeared in 2022. At the concert on June 4, she is accompanied by Kaan Karadavut (trumpet), Mikhail Pashkov (double bass) and Ekin Cengizkan (drums).
Thursday June 12
Flapper Swing
Flapper Swing is a group that keeps alive the musical atmosphere of the roaring 1920s – ‘the times when jazz was still fun’. It has five members: Nevin Hetmanek on vocals, Erhan Erbelger and Tomas Hetmanek on guitars, Volkan Topakoğlu on double bass and Batu Şallıel on saxophone. (I believe Tomas Hetmanek hails from the Czech Republic.) Their style, which shows the influence of Django Reinhardt and Sidney Bechet, may be described as ‘Manouche’, this being a variety of gypsy jazz. (The Manouche, of whom Django Reinhardt was one, are a Romani subgroup who have lived in France and Switzerland since at least the 18th century.) Flapper Swing appear on stage in 1920s costume, but the audience is at liberty to dress as they will. I have fond memories of the times when they played in the street – at the Tünel end of İstiklal Caddesi. I always admired their blend of musical professionalism and good humour.
Friday June 13
Jazz
Şenova Ülker Quintet
Trumpet-player Şenova Ülker trained in classical trumpet at the Ankara State Conservatoire and at the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University State Conservatoire (in Istanbul). Since 1979, he has been fulfilling the role of 1st trumpet in the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra. For fifteen years, he taught his chosen instrument at the Istanbul University and Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University State Conservatoires. His career in jazz began in 1977, while he was still a student: it was at this time that he played with the ‘Jazz Juniors’ group and took lessons in jazz theory from the multi-talented jazz musician and musical arranger Emin Fındıkoğlu, one of Turkey’s most respected pedagogues.
Şenova Ülker has played with famous musicians such as Billy Hart, Buster Williams, Joe Henderson, Arto Tunçboyacıyan, Roy Hargrove, Sammy Figueroa, John Scofield, Bendik Hofseth, Dianne Reeves and Randy Brecker. Since 2013, he has been teaching jazz trumpet at Bahçeşehir University, Istanbul. He participates in a large number of festivals both in Turkey and abroad, and his Vikipedi entry lists no less than 28 albums in which he has taken part.
Saturday June 14
Dilek Sert Erdoğan Band
Dilek Sert Erdoğan, acclaimed as Turkey’s most powerful soul singer, has a voice described as ‘black satin’. Born in 1976, she graduated in English Language and Literature from Istanbul University. During her student years, she worked as a radio newsreader and prepared radio programmes. Moments, her first album (on which all the songs were written by the lady herself), was also the first original soul album in English to appear in Turkey. Released in 2013, it soon became the best-selling jazz album in the country. Her style is a mixture of jazz, soul, funk, blues and improvisation. On this occasion, she will be accompanied by Uraz Kıvaner (piano), Sıtkı Sırtanadolu (guitar), Baran Say (double bass) and Erhan Seçkin (drums).
Friday June 20
Meltem Ege Band
Singer Meltem Ege, born in New York, began her musical career as a pianist. After relocating to Turkey with her family in 1991, she studied the piano at Bilkent University, Ankara. It was during her student years that she began singing jazz, as well as rock, funk and R&B. Having taken part in the ‘Dom Chemika’ summer school in Poland in 2006, in 2007 she was awarded first prize at the 12th ‘Lady Summertime’ Jazz Vocal Competition in Hämeenlinna, Finland. The following year, she came first in the ‘Jazz Voices’ competition in Lithuania.
In 2007, Meltem Ege began studying Jazz Vocal Performance at the Berklee College of Music in Boston; during this time, she worked together with Rhiannon Giddens, Joey Blake, Bob Stoloff, Lisa Thorson and Steven Santoro. In addition, she was awarded the title ‘Peer Advisor’ and represented Berklee as Student Ambassador in Canada. After graduating in 2010, she carried out postgraduate studies in performance and composition at the California Institute of Arts in Los Angeles, eventually obtaining a doctorate, and it is at this institution that she has been working since 2018.
She will be accompanied on June 20 by Önder Focan (guitar), Bulut Gülen (trombone), Barış Öztürk (double bass) and Mert Can Bilgin (drums).
Saturday June 28
Sibel Köse Quintet
The inimitable Sibel Köse, dubbed ‘the Queen of European Jazz’, is a vocalist of outstanding talent. She began singing jazz while studying Architecture at the Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ), Ankara; during this time, she performed with the legendary Turkish jazz pianist, saxophonist and composer Tuna Ötenel. She says she learned a lot from him, though he never gave her formal lessons. The second influence on her artistic development was Janusz Szprot, a Polish musician who came to Ankara in the 1990s to head up the Jazz Department of Bilkent University. He invited her to attend a summer school for jazz vocalists in his native country, and she received tuition there from Deborah Brown and Rachel Gould, two singers from the USA. A third major influencer was the French trumpet-player, composer and arranger Jean-Loup Longnon; she has recently made recordings with his big band at the Studios Ferber in Paris.
Last time I saw Sibel perform at Nardis, I said the following in my blog: ‘Over the three-and-a-bit years since I last had the privilege of hearing her, nothing of her energy has been lost: if anything, her singing is more powerful than ever. She hits the high notes with tremendous force and faultless intonation; she improvises creatively with nonsense words even more frequently than before, fashioning them into meaningful episodes within the song as a whole; and her emotional range remains unrivalled within my experience of jazz singers. All this is mixed in with both a searing sincerity and a wry sense of humour. How could anyone fail to enjoy and appreciate her artistry?’
[Event website] (https://www.nardisjazz.com/etkinlik/sibel-kose-band/)
Issue 67, December 2024
Beauty in the Wilderness
