Born in 1956, Ayşe Gencer had been under treatment for some time. After winning a competition at the Turkish radio at 20 she began in the late 70s to sing jazz, encouraged by drummer Erol Pekcan, then one of the leading personalities in Turkish jazz. Her first gigs were at the club that for some time was situated in the Galata Tower and then at Jazz Now in Bodrum accompanied by pianist Tuna Ötenel, bassist Nezih Yeşilnil and drummer Cankut Özgül.

She married trumpet player İmer Demirer in 1988 and released her first album, “But Beautiful”, as late as 2011. Ayşe Gencer sang one of her favorite standards, “Everything Happens To Me”, on the 2007 album “Old School Jazz Standards” by bassist İlkin Deniz, and his father’s song, Istanbul, in bassist Ozan Musluoğlu’s 2018 album “My Best Friends are Vocalists” with her husband İmer Demirer on trumpet.

Ayşe Gencer. Born January 11, 1956. Died December 30, 2022

The post RIP Ayşe Gencer first appeared on UK Jazz News.

In 1978,Turkey was in the midst of factional violence and the right-wing coup of 1980 was looming. Music was dominated by commercial arabesk or institutionalized folk and classical, so publishing such and album was due to the vision of Nino Varon, musician and producer issued from a Jewish family and close friend of drummer Erol Pekcan, inspired by albums by Komeda in Poland and Iturralde in Spain.

According to drummer and scholar Canan Aykent, author of “Ankara’s Jazz Adventure (1940-1980)” the seminal recording was published in Turkey on the heels of the release in the same year by Sonet in Sweden of Okay Temiz and Don Cherry 1969 live recording at the Turkish American Association and of Nükhet Ruacan’s debut album based on standards songs interpretation. But Jazz Semai is composed entirely of original tunes by Ötenel, except for one folksong, hence its importance.

The music stands the test of time astonishingly well – in fact is sounds fresh and poignant: Tuna Ötenel shines in his amazing versatility and his rendition of ‘Ali’yi gördüm Ali’yi’, a tune by 16th century Turkish Sufi and poet Kul Himmet which inspired generations of Turkish musicians.

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The spacious, tree-lined streets of the affluent neighbourhood of Suadiye, facing the Prince’s Island on the city’s Asian side (one of Istanbul’s contradictions is that the European side is more Oriental than the Asian side) are filled with cafés and shops. The air is clean and one can walk for miles along the seafront hearing only the waves and the gulls. In an elegant art gallery there, the festival organised a talk – Voices that Time Forgot – where jazz lover Hakan Rauf Tüfekçi, pianist Selen Gülün and guitarist Önder Focan discussed the various happenings that brought fame and then oblivion to a generation of international musicians – as well as similar things that took place on the Turkish jazz scene. The amount of information was huge, which maybe prevented a more in-depth discussion.

At Zorlu, Ravi Coltrane presented his “Cosmic Music” – an exploration of the works by John and Alice Coltrane with Gadi Lehavi on keyboards, Rashaan Carter on bass and Elé Howell on drums. The concert was neatly divided in two: first a series of John’s pieces including After the Rain and Giant Steps; then some much lesser known compositions by Alice such as Affinity from Transfiguration. Reinterpreted by the brilliant musicians in a totally contemporary way, the pieces revealed new dimensions of expression and emotion in front of the enthusiastic crowd.

After the Coltrane concert I ran through the Saturday night throng of Taksim (on Friday and Saturday the metro runs 24 hours a day) where at BOVA I was finally able to catch Kadinlar Matinesi (The Matinée of Women), a project initiated by pianist, composer and singer Selen Gülün – who was back in Istanbul after wandering around the USA, Italy and Japan – with the aim of showcasing the work of female songwriters from different musical genres. With her, Ezgi Daloğlu on saxophone and flute, Kamucan Yalçın on clarinet, Ceyda Köybaşıoğlu on electric bass and Monika Bulanda on drums. They all sing, and this a key aspect of the project – making their voices heard. The effort was amply repaid.

They expressed a whole gamut of sounds and emotions, moving easily from romantic to vitriolic, tender ballad to collective improvisation, which was fed back to them by the enthusiasm of the women in the audience. Feeling the power they unleash on stage makes one realise how much the male dominated world of jazz has lost over the years. I wonder how long it will take for the best European festivals to wake up to this band. 

For the final concert, the Oded Tzur Quartet with the leader on saxophone, Nitai Hershkovits on piano, Petros Klampanis on bass and Otis Brown III on drums played music that was an exercise in restraint. Quiet, concentrated music, mostly modal based, with the leader’s tenor saxophone cooing like a duduk (an old Armenian woodwind instrument), with a sound made of varying pitches and colours more than conventional harmony. Interesting how Indian classical music was a reference for both Israeli bands (although Tzur actually lives in NYC) that played at the festival. Excitement was provided by the open form and daring solos of the pianist, in an intensely physical relationship with the instrument, and the concert closed the festival programme with yet again another success.

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The 32nd edition of the Akbank Jazz Festival saved some of its more famous names for the second week, with acts such as the Aymée Nuviola/Gonzalo Rubalcaba duo and Abdullah Ibrahim. One of the festival’s main aims has always been to bring international bands to the local Istanbul audience, while at the same time introducing lesser known, more adventurous projects. 

One such act was the trio of Israeli guitarist Ofer Mizrahi, cellist Mayu Shviro and double bassist David Michaeli. Playing a modified guitar that can sound like a sitar, singing and playing the trumpet, Mizrahi is a multi-talented, unique personality (although his singing style can be an acquired taste). He also goes quite heavy on sharing his moral principles that, whilst admirable, would be better expressed in the music than tediously explained in small sermons. His musicianship and the quality of the trio is above reproach though, the way he alternates different tuning systems is fascinating and he also played some pieces inspired by Turkish folksongs. He was however misplaced at the Babylon, on Yom Kippur of all days, where the beer-toting customers were looking forward to a groovy evening. Sparsely populated at the start, the room was quite empty at the end, with only dedicated followers still enthusiastically clapping.

The recently renovated Ataturk Cultural Center in Taksim Square was sold out for piano legend Abdullah Ibrahim’s solo concert. An hour-long meditation on music, with a strong gospel feel, mesmerised an audience made up of many young members as well as established musicians of the Turkish jazz community. 

The following concert took place uptown at the Zorlu Center – a huge complex with restaurants, cinemas, shops and concert halls: the smaller hall featured Nuviola/Rubalcaba, while in the larger a Turkish rap festival was taking place with a programme including the celebrated Ceza. It might seem incongruous to organise a jazz concert there but in fact the concert hall has top quality equipment, excellent sight lines, is easy reachable with the metro and offers a bit of a sanctuary from the bustle of the city outside. 

The Nuviola/Rubalcaba combination gave the expected scintillating show, with many songs from their two live albums, a spectacular combination of musicianship, humour, inventive power and imagination, reinventing Cuban boleros or channeling Tatum, Monk and even Cecil Taylor. Rapturous applause.

Across the hall in the club Touché, and unconnected to the festival, a quartet of Turkish musicians led by pianist and singer Uraz Kivaner played their Chet Baker Tribute to a full house. With Engin Recepoğulları on tenor, Ozan Musluoğlu on bass and the very in demand Ferit Odman (again) on drums, the quartet went through songs associated with Chet Baker without imitating the original style. This club must be added to the list of those making up the thriving Istanbul jazz scene.

The post Dispatches from Istanbul / 2022 Akbank Jazz Festival (2) first appeared on UK Jazz News.

The festival is organized by Pozitif, the concert agency founded in the late 90s by three young and inexperienced music lovers who fostered substantial changes in the music life of the town with the festival and with their club, Babylon. Now the club has a spacious venue in a fashionable area of the city – the ancient beer factory in Şişli – and left its historical location in the narrow alleys of Beyoğlu.

One of the three founders, Mehmet Uluğ, sadly passed away prematurely nine years ago, and the festival has paid homage to him with a series of memorial concerts, the first one being an historical concert with David Murray’s band, subsequently issued on CD.

This year the concert was by drummer Volkan Öktem’s quintet, a decidedly fusionist band inspired by Tutu-style Miles Davis and followers, based on the spectacular, crisp and ferocious drumming of the leader, the arrangements of talented electric bass player Serhat Şensesli, and the improvisations of trumpeter Barış Doğukan Yazıcı. Ercüment Orkut on keyboards and synthesizer opened free-form sideral spaces with his meditative solos, offering a welcome counterpoint to the grooving band. While the concert was well received by the young, SRO crowd, and Öktem offered warm memories of Mehmet, I felt that the night for many of the attendees had a tenuous connection with the person whose memory was being recalled.

In the afternoon, another sold out concert took place in the cozy auditorium in the cultural center of Akbank, in the crowded pedestrian thorougfare of Beyoğlu, Istiklal Caddesi. The HÜM Trio from Norway offered a program of well-structured compositions by Serbian-born pianist Bojan Marjanovic tightly played with Bjørnar Kaldefoss Tveite on bass and Magnus Sefaniassen Eide on drums. The piano trio format post-Bill Evans continues to attract jazz musicians, maybe for the perfect symmetry of the flexible line-up and the number of possible permutations, and this specific band contrasted a frequent use of rhythmic ostinatos with the freewheeling improvisations of drummer…Dynamic range was exploited to maximum expressive effect in a decidedly impressive set. The festival program, including concerts by Ravi Coltrane and Abdullah Ibrahim among others, continues until October 10.

At the jazz club BOVA a non-festival gig took place the previous day with top Turkish jazz musicians: Jef Giansily, French keyboardist who now lives here, guitarist Sarp Maden, electric bassist Alper Yılmaz, and in-demand drummer Ferit Odman. While historical jazz club Nardis, near the Galata Tower, continues its excellent programming, BOVA is one of the hippest places for music in the area. It reminds me of Jazz Gallery in New York with its peaceful listening space upstairs while in the street cars are blaring and bars are blasting. Mostly based on Giansily’s well articulated pieces, supported by the perfectly synchronized bass-drum section and illuminated by the lyric, plangent solos by Maden, the set was a success with the student and international crowd that filled the venue.

Istanbul has plenty to offer to record buyers despite the lamented loss of historical Lale Plak store in Tunel. A few steps down the from Tunel, on Galip Dede Caddesi rare vinyls are offered at Mr. Frog while in the nearby Cihangir area for new issues you can go to Opus3A, ECM and Sony distributors for Turkey. There I got a copy of a very cool monthly magazine, LOFT (only available on paper) and a conversation about the Turkish market with knowledgeable co-owner Kerim Selçuk, while young customers were visiting the shop. While on the virtual side another jazz website, easier to access from abroad, opened in Istanbul: Dark Blue Notes (LINK TO WEBSITE).

The post Dispatches from Istanbul / 2022 Akbank Jazz Festival (1) first appeared on UK Jazz News.

After a few years of activity the festival acquired a “theme”: competing arrangements had to be related to a specific subject or musician. This in turn focused on living musicians and composers who could be invited in person to the festival to play as guest soloist in their own pieces revisited by emerging arrangers: a musically stimulating situation. So Kenny Wheeler, Steve Swallow, Dave Douglas and Maurizio Giammarco among others have been guests at the festival.

This year the featured musician was British saxophonist and composer John Surman (he was in fact invited a couple of years ago but the pandemic and back trouble delayed his appearance). After a week of concerts, seminars and events that included the always popular street band parade and open air music held on a Sunday afternoon, the final two days of the festival were focused on original compositions (Friday 26 August) and arrangements of Surman pieces (Saturday 27 August) with a repeat performance in another stunning Tuscan location, the fortress of Serravalle near Pistoia, on Sunday 28 August.

Despite flight delays and a long trip from Oslo where he resides, Surman seemed in excellent form: slim, energetic and apparently enjoying his time in Barga, musically and otherwise. Back trouble has led him to abandon the weighty baritone sax, but his bass clarinet and soprano saxophone are more than sufficient to cover a vast range of tonal and timbral expression.

After the first evening dedicated to original compositions, with Marco Battigelli emerging as a winner with “A Counting Out Song”, the main event of the competition came with the performance of Surman’s pieces by the big band. The work of the arrangers was facilitated by the festival making a set of scores available, which had been selected in discussion with Surman himself, although this list was neither exclusive nor binding.

The competition was won by Leonardo Pruneti, a Tuscan musician (and former winner of the original composition category), with his version of “Pitanga Pitomba” (from Surman’s ECM album Invisible Thread with Brazilian pianist Nelson Ayres), but all the entries from Italy, Canada and Germany made interesting musical points. The orchestra shone in the two final arrangements by Surman himself of two of his own pieces, the ballad “Tomorrow’s Yesterday” and “Scare ‘em Up”, based on an English folk song meant to scare birds off the seeded fields. Surman was visibly happy with the performances, clapping at the solos and defining the orchestra as “one of the best big bands I’ve played with” – quite a compliment, considering the career Surman has had.

The concerts were held in the garden of Moorings Hotel, one of the many splendid villas that adorn the newer part of the city. It’s called Moorings because the first owner, a certain Signor Castelvecchi from Barga, established a restaurant at the moorings in the Scottish city of Largs on the Clyde – still active – after working for many years selling ice-cream and then as a restaurateur. He was extremely successful and when he retired returned to his ancestral home where he built this splendid mansion. Taking place just before the Jazz Festival was one of the main social events in the Barga calendar: the Fish and Chips festival. Many immigrants from this area moved to the UK and USA at the beginning of the twentieth century, and they claim to have invented the British national dish. Just after, in September, will be the turn of the Scottish week, with bagpipe players and whisky tastings.

Francesco Martinelli was a member of the competition jury

The post Barga Jazz Festival and Competition 2022 first appeared on UK Jazz News.

But there is a musical simile: for Önder, the “eggplant is something like the bass in music: it doesn’t have much of a taste on its own, we can’t eat it by itself, but it enhances the meaning of other contributions, gives them body and bottom”. So the album opens with the bass riff on “Karnıyarik”.

Gastronomy is no stranger to jazz – beginning with Armstrong’s titles – but conceiving a whole record as a tribute to a vegetable is certainly original. Focan pulls it off, however, with his habitual sense of bonhomie and relaxed fun, ably assisted by a chosen band with some of the best young jazz musicians in Istanbul: Enver Muhamedi on double bass, Burak Cihangirli on drums and Uraz Kıvaner on keyboards complete the rhythm section while veteran Şenova Ülker on trumpet and flugelhorn, Anıl Şallıel on tenor saxophone, Burak Dursun on trombone are the featured soloists.

Önder quite surprisingly introduces on bouzouki “Musakka” (Moussaka), a tribute to a dish that exists in both Turkey and Greece, with variations on the theme of ground beef and eggplant.

These cultures share also the 9/4 Zeybek dance, and the makam Nikriz (link): so, says Focan, “I wrote a 9/4 zeybek. and used bouzouki … We start playing the 9/4 melody with a double time feeling from the second chorus. When it comes to double time, it’s like 18/4, with 3 4/4s, one 6/4, or 4 4/4s and one 2/4, and solos sound like swing in 4/4”. So much for Time Out! Şallıel’s vocal tenor saxophone shines here.

The rest of the album is equally tasty: a joyous, fun celebration of music, friendship and conversation that best exemplifies the spirit of Mediterranean jazz. As they say in Istanbul, Afiyet olsun!

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