Mehmet Ali Sanlikol, Director
Serap Kantarci Sanlikol, Coordinator
Robert Labaree, Program Advisor

A series of monthly concerts celebrating a wide range of Turkish music through several centuries. Ottoman classical music, songs from the Turkish countryside, Sufi devotional music and Turkish pop music interact with one another and with other world traditions to provide a contemporary view of tradition itself

CONCERT 1: Songs of “The City”: Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul	fliers	pictures
with special guest Omar Faruk Tekbilek

The city of Istanbul has been the capital of two great empires—for its first ten centuries Greek Byzantine, and beginning in 1453, for the next five centuries Ottoman Turkish. With the end of the Ottoman empire in 1923 the city lost its status as a capital, though it remains the centerpiece of a modern Turkish republic. Memories of its past—often different, frequently overlapping, sometimes conflicting—persist in the minds and in the music of its inhabitants, most of them with ties to different regions, cultures and histories of the Middle East and the Balkans.

The many layers of communal memory in this concert proceed through Greek-Orthodox music, secular Greek music, Crusader songs of the 12th century, music of the Ottoman janissary bands, Ottoman court music, Sufi ceremonial music, Turkish folk music, Sephardic Jewish songs, urban music of the Armenians, Balkan Romani (Gypsy) and Turks, and ends with modern urban popular music full of longing and protest. On their own, each piece may communicate celebration, devotion or military might, but taken together the melancholy is unmistakable.

CONCERT 2: Language of the Birds (Kus Dili): Bird Songs, Pieces and Improvisations from Turkey and Europe	fliers	pictures

This concert explores the universal fascination with birds and birdsong shared by poets and musicians in both Europe and the Middle East. The concert’s Turkish title “Kuş Dili” is also an equivalent of Mantık ut-Tayr, the title of the famous 13th century Persian Sufi classic by Faruddin al Attar, known in the West as “The Conference of the Birds”.

The warbling, cooing and crying of birds as idealized song, as symbol of the divine, as amorous complaint and as the voice of nature are evoked in different ways by aristocratic Frenchmen, Italians and Ottomans and by Greek, Kurdish and Turkish villagers. Birds carry the message of religious devotion, both Christian and Muslim, and of worldly celebration and grief. On stage, the Dünya Ensemble and its guests interact with natural birdsong, conversing with each other across centuries and traditions through improvisation and a range of compositions by composers like Jean-Philippe Rameau, Dimitri Cantemir and Sultan Selim III in the 18th c., and by Olivier Messiaen, Aşık Veysel and Haci Arif Bey in the 20th.

CONCERT 3: March 12, 1208 in Rumi’s Anatolia A musical glimpse into the life and times of a great Sufi poet	fliers	pictures

Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi is one of the most influential figures of Muslim mysticism (Sufism). This concert explores the rich mix of creeds and cultures of 13th century Anatolia where Rumi spent most of his life through a wide range of repertoires: Turkish sufi music (Bektasi and Mevlevi), Byzantine (Greek-Orthodox) music, Jewish poetry with Turkish melodies, Turkish secular music, and music of the “Frenk”—European Crusaders and traders passing through the region.

The second part of the concert will follow the distinct Turkish tradition of chanting part of the Mevlid-i Serif on important occasions. A masterpiece of Turkish literature, written in 1409, the Mevlid is a long poem commemorating the birth of the Prophet Mohammed.