ISLAK KÖPEK

Islak Köpek was a free-improvisation ensemble based in Istanbul, Turkey. It was active between 2005 - 2013 and managed to place Free Improvisation on the Turkish experimental music chart. It played in the Akbank Jazz Festival twice (2006 and 2012) and released two physical and one digital album in 2006, 2009 and 2011. The band got together for two concerts in Istanbul and Berlin to celebrate their 10th anniversary.

Şevket Akıncı:  electric and acoustic guitars, effects
Korhan Erel:  computer, controllers, electronics
Giray Gürkal:  electric guitar, effects  
Robert Reigle:  tenor saxophone  
Volkan Terzioğlu:  tenor saxophone

Albums (each with an earlier configuration of the group)
Istanbul Improv Sessions-May 4th. 2011. Mark Lotz & Islak Köpek. Amsterdam: Evil Rabbit Records, ERR-016. Liner notes by Kevin Whitehead.  www.evilrabbitrecords.eu 
One Year Later, Two Years Ago. 2009. Istanbul: Re:konstrukt, RE-19-20. www.rekonstrukt.com
Islak Köpek. 2008. Istanbul: A.K. Müzik, AK-802. Liner notes by Halil Turhanlı. www.akmuzik.com.tr

History
Islak Köpek’s original lineup of Korhan Erel, Şevket Akıncı, Volkan Terzioğlu, and Volkan Ergen (percussion) gave their first performance in May 2005.  Following a series of performances at Galataperform (www.galataperform.com) and Jazz Cafe, Dirk Stromberg (electric guitar) and Robert Reigle (tenor saxophone) joined the band in January 2006.  Volkan Ergen left in the summer of 2006 to pursue other musical interests.  The five-piece band played at the Transit Improvisation Days with Le Quan Ninh and dancer Kirstie Simpson in June 2006, followed by a sold-out concert at the Akbank Jazz Festival in September 2006.  Dirk Stromberg left the band in 2007 to teach in Vietnam.  The remaining four members continued playing and recording, sometimes with guest musicians such as Richard Nunns, Christian Asplund, and Olivier Germain-Noureux.  Notable performances include participation in the Body-Process festival A.M.B.E.R. (http://www.a-m-b-e-r.net/) and the second Transit Festival.  Gökcen Dilek Acay (violin) joined the band in 2008 and remained until the end of March 2009.  Cellist and composer Kevin Davis joined Islak Köpek in February 2009 until his return to the US in July 2010.  Cellist Gülşah Erol and guitarist Giray Gürkal joined the band in January 2011.  Cellist Gülşah Erol played in Islak Köpek from the beginning of 2011 until the early months of 2014.

Islak Köpek continues to perform with local and international musicians, dancers, and visual artists in venues such as Gitar Cafe (www.gitarcafe.com), Babylon, and Borusan Music House.  Since May 2006, its members have produced a program about free improvisation and free jazz, called “The Other Jazz,” which is broadcast on Açık Radyo (www.acikradyo.com.tr) every Sunday from 17:00—18:00.  Their guests in the studio have included Christian Asplund, Richard Nunns, Chris Cutler, Jürg Solothurnmann, Senol Küçükyildirim, and Hoca Nasreddin.

The band members participate in many side projects. They have produced solo albums and performed in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Poland, Romania, Russia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States.

These are the compilations of my works of different genres.


Tolga Tüzün (Ph.D.) is an electro-acoustic music composer and a performer.

He started taking classical piano lessons at the age of eleven. After receiving his BA in Political Sciences, he studied composition with Pieter Snapper and Marc Wingate and advanced orchestration with Ilhan Usmanbas and Hasan Ucarsu at the Istanbul Technical University, Center for Advanced Music Studies.

His compositions have been performed in various cities throughout US and Europe.  During his studies for a Ph.D. in Music Composition at CUNY Graduate Center, he studied composition with David Olan and Tristan Murail in New York, and with Philippe Leroux in Paris .

He has given lectures on music theory and electro-acoustic music at international conferences.  Between 2003-2005 he taught harmony and composition at Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music.  Tolga Tüzün participated in the composition and computer music course at IRCAM during 2005-2006.

Along with his compositional output, he also performs within experimental, jazz and electronic scenes, solo or with other artists. His collaborations include Oğuz Büyükberber, Korhan Erel, Nora Krahl, Ned Mc Gowan, Bob Ostertag, Frank Gratkowski, Nicolas Crosse, Sam Briton, Anıl Eraslan to name a few.  

Tolga Tüzün is a full professor at Istanbul Bilgi University where he teaches composition and electronic music since 2007.

The artistic scope of renowned saxophonist, composer, painter, and poet Oliver Lake’s half-century-long career is unparalleled. An extensive resume of his collaborations includes work with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Flux String Quartet, Bjork, Lou Reed, A Tribe Called Quest, Mos Def, Me’shell Ndegeocello, Anthony Braxton, James Blood Ulmer, William Parker, Vijay Iyer, Reggie Workman, Andrew Cyrille and a veritable who’s who of the jazz vanguard. Oliver’s efforts extend far beyond the music, with his creation of the non-profit Passin’ Thru organization, becoming a mainstay at Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum, publishing two books of poetry and frequently producing visual artwork for exhibitions across the country.

Lake’s breadth of disciplines can be traced back to his formative years with the Black Artists Group, the innovative St. Louis collective of musicians, poets, dancers and painters he helped architect over 35 years ago. As a co-founder of the internationally acclaimed World Saxophone Quartet (with fellow luminaries David Murray, Julius Hemphill and Hamiet Bluiett), Oliver firmly established himself in the “Loft” jazz scene of the 1970’s in New York City, and has since produced a body of work that is both expansive and versatile enough to avoid falling solely into the trappings of the “avant-garde” and “free” labels. The fact that his work can stand on compositional merit alone, all while he has etched a place for himself as one of the elite saxophone players and improvisers of recent times, is a testament to Oliver Lake’s stature as an artist.

Lake’s output as an exacting and unequivocally original composer has long been celebrated, highlighted by commissions awarded from the Library of Congress, the Rockefeller Foundation ASCAP, the International Association for Jazz Education, Composers Forum and the McKim Foundation. He has been the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and was also presented with the Mellon Jazz Living Legacy Award at the Kennedy Center in 2006.

In 2014, Oliver was honored with what is arguably the greatest recognition of his artistry and vision to date, becoming one of only nineteen grantees appointed for the prestigious Doris Duke Artist Award, a multi-year grant awarded to American artists in the fields of jazz, theater and dance. 

A trailblazer through and through, Oliver Lake continues to produce in the vociferous, uncompromising way he only knows how to, currently immersed in the work of such adventurous ensembles as the Oliver Lake Organ Quartet, Oliver Lake Big Band and Trio 3.

For more informations, visit oliverlake.net & facebook.com/oliverlakejazz


https://soundcloud.com/konjoband
www.sertsessizler.com
http://konjoband.wordpress.com/

Since the 60s, Solothurnmann has been active in Switzerland and Europe as a musician, producer, organizer, teacher, journalist and music editor of the Swiss national radio SRF2 Kultur. He works with several national and international jazz and improvisational groups and in particular likes projects with representatives from other cultures and art media. 
He co-founded and led several professional organizations, self-help initiatives and in particular the musicians-owned CD label “Unit Records” (1984). www.unitrecords.com  He was also a committee member of the International Jazz Federation. His publications and CDs have appeared in Switzerland and various other countries. 
More recently he worked with the trio Potage du Jour (with Franziska Baumann, voc, live-electronics, and Christoph Baumann, piano), the quartet Next (with Beat Unternährer, tb, Silvan Jeger, b, Dieter Ulrich), the modern classical pianist Katharina Weber, the Esa Pietilä Trio, Konstruk Istanbul, the quartet In Transit (with Michael J. Stevens, piano, Daniel Studer, bass, and Dieter Ulrich, drums), September Winds (a wind quintet with Evan Parker), the trio Raw & Cooked (with Michel Wintsch and Christian Wolfarth) etc.

Marco Eneidi
        Musician / Composer / Alto Saxophonist
        
main musical mentors: 
    Cecil Taylor and Bill Dixon

        Bachelor of Arts - music
        Master of Arts - composition

        Artistic Director :
  Botticelli Records - since 1986
The Neu New York/Vienna Institute of Improvised Music - since 2005
        www.nenuvi.org

Aruán Ortiz, “the latest Cuban wunderkind to arrive in the United States” (BET Jazz), hit the ground running when he came on the American jazz scene in 2003.

A former classically trained violist and pianist, this Santiago de Cuba native’s sound is as marked by the influence of the contemporary classical composers such as Schoenberg, Ravel, and Copland as by traditional Afro Cuban sounds and jazz greats Bud Powell, Art Tatum, and Thelonious Monk.

Aruán’s jazz career took off in Europe after being recipient of various awards including Best Jazz Interpretation, Festival de Jazz in Vic, Spain (2000) and Semifinalist, Jas Hennessy Piano Solo Competition, Montreux, Switzerland (2001). He soon became a first‐call pianist in Barcelona and Paris. Since arriving in the US, he has played steadily with Wallace Roney, Antoine Roney, Terri Lyne Carrington, Greg Osby, and Cindy Blackman. He has also played or recorded with Esperanza Spalding, Gary Thomas, Wayne Krantz, Rasheed Ali, Stefon Harris, Horacio “El Negro” Hernández, Giovanni Hidalgo, George Garzone, Jane Bunnett, and Jerry Bergonzi among other great jazz artists.

Aruán considers himself “a curious person who loves music”, and portrays his music as an architectural structure of sounds, incorporating contemporary classical music, Afro‐Cuban rhythms and improvisation as primary material in his compositions. This is evident in his recordings Impresión Tropical, Universal 1996; Aruán Ortiz Trio Vol. 1, Ayva/Pimienta/ Universal, 2004; and Alameda, Fresh Sound New Talent, 2009, which received 4 stars in Jazzwise magazine (U.K.) which named it one of the top ten jazz CDs of the year.

Aruán’s ability to subtly incorporate world music elements into avant‐garde jazz makes his sense of creativity unique and recognizable in different styles. This musical vision led him to be featured on dozens of albums such as the Flamenco influenced recording ‘Evocación’ by Raynald Colom (Ad Lib Arts/Harmonia Mundi 2009), Esperanza Spalding’s “Junjo,” (Ayva Música, 2005), Arturo Stable’s “Notes on Canvas” (Origen Records, 2005), Wallace Roney’s “If Only for One Night” (High Note, 2010), The Afro-Horn Project by Francisco Mora Catlett (AACE, 2012), Steve Turre’s “Woody’s Delight” (High Note, 2012), among many others.

He was invited by flutist Mark Weinstein to produce, arrange and perform on the CD “El Cumbanchero” (Jazzheads 2010), inspired by the traditional music of Cuba for string quintet, flute, piano and percussion. This album was nominated as one of the best albums of 2011 by numerous music publications, and Aruán won Latin Jazz Corner’s “Arranger of the Year 2011” for his contribution on this album.

The music of his upcoming CD Santiarican Blues Suite (Sunnyside Records, 2012), was commissioned by the Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre for the 25th anniversary of the company 2010. The choreography Pagan or Not by Jose Mateo based in the music of this Suite, was selected one of the best ballet performances in New England in 2011. 

Aruán Ortiz is a critically acclaimed and recognized performer, composer, producer and educator, not only on the New York City scene, but around the globe as well.


Jürg Solothurnmann is following