İpek Göztepe performs on the Festival Centre's SUDA stage with her quartet on July 23
Ever since 2004, a music festival has been organised in Gümüşlük, a town near Bodrum on Turkey’s Aegean coast, the brainchild of a group of musicians led by two pianists – Eren Levendoğlu and Gülsin Onay. A small-scale piano event has now grown into an international festival that includes both classical music and jazz. So far, a total of 1022 performers from 36 countries have taken part. In addition, there are master classes, and help of various kinds is provided for students of music.
This year’s Festival kicked off with a truly unorthodox opening concert on the SUDA stage (On Water), at the Festival Centre, on July 16. It concludes with a recital in TAŞTA (the Antik Taş Ocağı) by the virtuoso Gülsin Onay, who is featured in the new Cornucopia, No 68.
VENUES; SUDA, TAŞTA, KUMDA. Prices: 580TL (student), 880TL (adult) from Biletix or Bietinial (see links below)
COMING UP…
Tuesday, July 22
Pianist Adem Gülşen was born in İzmir, and graduated from Kocaeli University as a classical pianist, subsequently taking private lessons in jazz piano from the late Elvan Aracı (a trombone-player of note) and in piano harmony and improvisation from the genius jazz pianist and composer Aydın Esen. Since 2011 he has worked with a huge number of Turkish jazz musicians, and has played on 12 albums and seven singles.
SUDA (Festival Centre), 20:30 Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial
Wednesday, July 23
İpek Göztepe began her musical education in 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.
SUDA (Festival Centre), 20:30 Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial
Friday July 25
ÜÇ (Three): Volkan Öktem, Çağrı Sertel, Alp Ersönmez
Drummer Volkan Öktem and bass guitarist Alp Ersönmez are both highly experienced jazz musicians who were once part of Sarp Maden’s group, Quartet Muartet and who are (in my view) exceptionally talented in the realm of musical subtlety. Volkan regularly accompanies Turkey’s leading jazz, pop and rock singers, while Alp is also a gifted composer who studied in the Music Department of Bilgi University, Istanbul. Pianist and composer Çağrı Sertel, meanwhile, learnt his art from Tuna Ötenel and Ali Perret, two of the country’s finest jazz pedagogues. After a concert by Çağrı and his group in June 2018, I wrote the following: ‘Listening to Çağrı Sertel for the first time gave me, primarily, a feeling of relief – that Turkey is still capable of producing musicians of this calibre. His most outstanding feature – apart from the technical aspects of his pianism and his inventiveness as a composer, both of which are outstanding – is his impeccable taste.’
SUDA (Festival Centre), 20:30 Tickets from [Biletix] (https://www.biletix.com/performance/4NV16/001/TURKIYE/tr) or from Biletinial
Sunday July 27
The ‘MÁV Cellists’ ensemble, founded five years ago, is made up of cellists from the MÁV Symphony Orchestra, based in Hungary. The orchestra was founded during the last days of World War II by László Varga, the then president and CEO of Hungarian State Railways. Believing that people needed to recover emotionally from the traumatic effects of the war, he organised concert tours around Hungary in which the musicians travelled in specially-designed railway carriages – two sleeping cars for the musicians themselves and a separate carriage for their instruments. The MÁV Cellists ensemble’s repertoire includes music in many styles ranging from baroque to tango, jazz and film music. This spring they released their first album, Dreaming. The photo of the group that I have seen shows six cellists plus a trumpet-player and a percussionist (we will see who turns up). In Gümüşlük, they are accompanied by Özcan Ulucan, a Turkish violinist, and two of his students – Lara Akatay and Nihat Mert Samanlıoğlu.
TAŞTA, 21:15 Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial
Thursday July 31
Katya Apekisheva (piano)
Katya Apekisheva, born in Moscow, attended the Gnessin School of Music (an institution for musically gifted children), subsequently studying at the Rubin Music Academy in Jerusalem and the Royal College of Music in London. A prizewinner at the Leeds International Piano Competition, she has in the past played with distinguished orchestras in the UK, Russia and Israel. Described as ‘a profoundly gifted artist’ by Gramophone magazine, her discography includes solo and chamber works by Mussorgsky, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Dvořák and Rachmaninov. She and her duo partner Charles Owen are co-Artistic Directors of the London Piano Festival, which began in 2016.
TAŞTA, 21:15 Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial Prices: 580TL (student), 880TL (adult)
Monday August 04
Jean-Philippe Collard (piano)
The French pianist Jean-Philippe Collard, born into a musical family in 1948, is considered to be a major exponent of the French school of pianism. Having won First Prize at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 16, he has also received the Gabriel Fauré and Albert Roussel Awards, and has won First Prize in the Marguerite Long-Jacques Thibaud Competition and the Cziffra International Competition. A prolific recording artist, he has recorded over 30 albums; these have included the complete solo piano music and chamber music with piano of Fauré as well as works by other composers such as Rachmaninov, Brahms, Ravel, Chausson, Saint-Saëns, Mozart, Chopin and Liszt. In January 2003 he was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur.
TAŞTA, 21:15 Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial Prices: 580TL (student), 880TL (adult)
Sunday August 10
Piano on Sand 1
This concert features performances by the students who have attended the ‘GFA 1st Piano Masterclass’, given by Jean-Philippe Collard, Katya Apekisheva and Gülsin Onay between August 01 and August 10.
KUMDA, 20:30 Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial Prices: 240TL (student), 440TL (adult)
Tuesday August 12 – Friday August 22
August 12 is the date of the opening of an exhibition, scheduled to run until August 22, of the work of ‘Tez’ entitled ‘Parallel Universe’. Tez, a British sculptor of Welsh origin, was born in Nicosia, Cyprus in 1954. From 1975 to 1980 he lived in Paris, where he earned his living restoring antique furniture, meanwhile learning wood-carving and creating sculptured walking sticks. Following this, he received instruction in the art of sculpture at the Croydon College Faculty of Art and Design in London, graduating in 1985. His first exhibition, entitled ‘Art in Ruins’, was held in the crypt of St George’s Church, London. Subsequently, he worked with punk pioneers Andrew Czezowski and Susan Carrington at The Fridge, a centre for electronic music and alternative culture in Brixton, London, and took a leading role in campaigns to restore 19th-century buildings and prevent them from being demolished. Moving to Turkey in 2013, he set up a workshop in Bodrum, where he created sculptures out of waste materials and discarded objects. Tez passed away on December 31, 2024.
Armonia Bodrum Evleri Şapeli (Armonia Bodrum Houses Chapel)
Friday August 15
István Székely (piano)
Székely, celebrated for his outstanding technical mastery and his ‘poetic touch at the keyboard’, has been said to ‘take you by the hand to the inner meaning of the works he interprets’, and to have ‘a unique talent for shaping musical structures in the most natural way, understanding and projecting the composer’s intentions with empathy and clarity’. He learned his art at the Brussels Royal Conservatory, the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem, the Kodály Institute of Kecskemét (Hungary), the Conservatory of Subotica (Serbia) and the Music School of Sombor (Serbia). István Székely is currently Professor at the Centro Superior Katarina Gurska in Madrid and at the Franz Liszt Center for Special Talents in La Nucia, Spain.
TAŞTA, 21:15 Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial Prices: 580TL (student), 880TL (adult)
Tuesday August 19
Deli Bakkal
Deli Bakkal (‘Mad Grocer’) are a large group of Turkish musicians who might be described as a ‘big band’ consisting of players of the trumpet, saxophone, trombone, keyboards, guitar, bass guitar, percussion and drums as well as a vocalist. Their unique style, combining jazz, funk and fusion, has been described as ‘Afro-beat’, ‘Ethno-jazz’ and ‘Anatolian funk’. Following three singles – ‘Salı Pazarı’, ‘Tellal’ and ‘Cebelitarık’ – in 2022 they released their first vocal number, entitled ‘Kime Kime Bu?’. They perform modern and not-so-modern numbers, some of which are by Fela Kuti, Barış Manço, the Budos Band and Mulatu Astatke.
SUDA (Festival Centre), 20:30
Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial
Thursday August 21
Congyu Wang (piano)
Congyu Wang, born in Singapore, began playing the piano at the age of 3. Having won a scholarship to the prestigious École normale de musique de Paris, he received tuition there from Jean-Marc Luisada and Odile Catelin-Delangle. He then continued his training with Gabriel Tacchino (the only pupil of Francis Poulenc) at the Schola Cantorum in Paris. Known for the difficulty of the pieces he plays, he has so far given over 1200 recitals in 22 countries; his repertoire includes 30 piano concertos plus all the works by Chopin and Poulenc for solo piano. ‘Charme’, his first album, consisted of the piano music of Poulenc; then, in 2018, he released an album entitled ‘Reflets’ in honour of the centenary of the death of Claude Debussy. Congyu Wang, a Steinway Artist, is the founder of the Piano Island Festival, the Piano Concerto Festival and the International Chopin Competition in South Africa.
TAŞTA, 21:15
Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial
Friday August 22
Piano on Sand 2
This concert features performances by the students who have attended the ‘GFA 2nd Piano Masterclass’, given by István Székely, Congyu Wang and Gülsin Onay between August 11 and August 22.
Kumda (‘On Sand’ – Festival Centre), 20:30
Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial Prices: 240TL (student), 440TL (adult)
Sunday August 24
Today sees the opening of an exhibition by Mehmet Tekin entitled ‘Junk Poetica’. The exhibition will be on show until Wednesday September 03. Mehmet Tekin, born in Istanbul in 1979, decided on a career as an artist while still at primary school. Having received his lycée and university education in the United States, he returned to Turkey in 1999. He is the son of the novelist Latife Tekin, and he created illustrations for her most recent books. Other illustrations by him may be seen in various magazines, as well as in the ‘BirGün’ newspaper.
Tuesday September 02
Rebekka Hartmann & Atakan Sarı (violins)
Violinist Rebekka Hartmann, born in Munich in 1981, received her first lessons from Helge Thelen, a teacher of the Suzuki method, subsequently studying with Prof. Andreas Reiner in Munich and with Prof. Alice Schoenfeld in Los Angeles. After attending masterclasses with a number of famous violinists such as Rainer Kussmaul, she continued to develop her skills with Josef Kröner. She has given solo recitals in Switzerland, Great Britain, Austria and the United States as well as in Asia, and regularly performs with a number of German orchestras. In 2015, together with her duo partner Margarita Oganesjan, she released a CD of music by Armenian and Turkish composers entitled ‘Views from Ararat’.
The pianist and composer Atakan Sarı studied under Can Çoker at the Çukurova University State Conservatoire, subsequently becoming a pupil of the American pianist Martin Berkofsky and receiving his university education at the Manhattan School of Music. Having been to Moscow to record a concerto for two pianos and orchestra (dedicated to Berkofsky) by the American composer Alan Hovhanness, he was invited to perform it first in Moscow, then at the Aram Khachaturyan Concert Hall in Yerevan – thus becoming the first-ever Turkish musician to perform there. He currently resides in Cyprus, where he teaches at the Eastern Mediterranean University while continuing to give recitals.
TAŞTA, 21:15
Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial Prices: 580TL (student), 880TL (adult)
Wednesday September 03
The Escarteen Sisters
The Escarteen Sisters are a viola-and-cello duo of Flemish / Spanish origin who sing while they play. Drawing their inspiration from folk music, they supplement it with African rhythms and jazz harmonies. Escarteen Sisters, their first album (2018), was followed in 2024 by Caure Sistingut. In 2023, they received prizes for Best Arrangement and Best Interpretation at the Andrea Parodi Prize competition. Last year, they performed at festivals in Spain and Holland.
SUDA, 20:30
Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial
Thursday September 4
Ruda Krua
A cross-cultural trio founded in Rotterdam in 2023, whose style has been described as ‘woodwind punk’. The ensemble is made up of players of the bass clarinet, saxophone and drums. The ‘Motel Mozaïque’ website describes their sound as ‘highly infectious, torrential music that traverses the realms of punk, afrobeat, spiritual jazz, electronic dance and psychedelic rock’. The Ruda Krua trio are said to ‘mix wild improvisation with original compositions, using effects to shape their unique sound.’
SUDA, 20:30
Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial Prices: 580TL (student), 880TL (adult)
Friday, September 5
Eşref Yıldırım – Dissolution Performance
A performance by Eşref Yıldırım entitled ‘Dissolution’. Born in 1970 and a graduate of the Painting Department of Mimar Sinan University, Yıldırım lives and works in Istanbul. Using recycled materials, he maintains a strong connection with painting. Recent exhibitions of his work, which focusses on the themes of media representation, power dynamics and social taboos, have taken place in Germany as well as Turkey. In addition, he has taken part in residencies and international group shows entitled ‘House of Wisdom’ (Nottingham, UK, 2018), ‘The Spirit of the Poet’ (Solingen, Germany, 2019) and ‘Our Nature’ (Istanbul, 2020).
Armonia Bodrum Evleri Şapeli (‘Armonia Bodrum Houses Chapel’)
Saturday September 6
Violin on Sand
This concert features performances by the students who have attended the ‘GFA Violin Masterclass’, given by Rebekka Hartmann between September 01 and September 06.
KUMDA, 20:30
Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial Prices: 240TL (student), 440TL (adult)
Tuesday September 09
Gülsin Onay (piano)
The virtuoso pianist Gülsin Onay was one of the founders of the Gümüşlük Music Festival, and is also one of the teachers who conduct the piano masterclasses. Still highly active despite her age, she continues to give recitals all over Turkey and in many places abroad. The daughter of the pianist Gülen Erim and the violinist Joachim Reusch, she was given her first piano lessons by her mother. Later, she was taught piano by Mithat Fenmen (1916-82) and composition by Ahmed Adnan Saygun (1907-91) in Ankara for two years before leaving for Paris with her family at the age of 12 to take up a state scholarship as a harika çocuk (‘wonder child’). There, her teachers were the famous pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and pianists Monique Haas, Pierre Sancan and Pierre Fiquet. After graduating from the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 16, she launched into a highly successful career on the international stage. Known especially for her renditions of the works of Romantic composers (in 2007, she was awarded a State Medal for her Chopin interpretations), she also has the ability to cast a spell over her audiences, drawing them into the music as if bewitched.
TAŞTA, 21:15
Tickets from Biletix or from Biletinial
MASTERCLASSES
August 1–10
GFA 1st Piano Masterclass
An important component of the Gümüşlük Music Festival is the holding of masterclasses under the auspices of the ‘Gümüşlük Festival Academy’. Since 2006, masterclasses have been held for students of the violin, piano, cello, flute, harp, guitar, singing, conducting and composition. https://www.gumuslukfestival.org/tr/gfa-akademi/
The teachers for this particular masterclass, which focusses on the piano, will be Katya Apekisheva, Jean-Philippe Collard and Gülsin Onay. These three will also be giving recitals on July 31, August 4 and September 9 respectively.
August 11–22
GFA 2nd Piano Masterclass
For this, the second of the two masterclasses to be held during this year’s Gümüşlük Music Festival, the teachers will be István Székely, Congyu Wang and Gülsin Onay – who will be giving recitals on August 15, August 21 and September 09 respectively.
September 1– 6
GFA Violin Masterclass
The teacher for this year’s violin masterclass will be Rebekka Hartmann, who will be giving a recital with Atakan Sarı on September 2.
İpek Göztepe performs on the Festival Centre's SUDA stage with her quartet on July 23
