Fazil Say Jazz
Kelsi Corsi
Fazıl Say was born in Ankara on 14 January 1970. He began playing the piano at the age of four and commenced piano studies when he was eleven. A workshop with David Levine and Aribert Reimann in Ankara provided the decisive impulse to begin composing. It was also the same outstanding musicians who succeeded in securing a place for the young up-and-coming talent at the Robert-Schumann-Hochschule in Dsseldorf. Fazıl Say subsequently continued his studies at the Berlin Conservatory of Music from1992 to 1995. He composed his work Black Hymns at the age of sixteen. His career was given further impetus through the award of the first prize at the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in New York; since then Fazıl Say has given over 100 concerts each year. Large-scale compositions followed such as the 2nd Piano Concerto Silk Road which Say premiered in Boston in 1996 and performed more than a dozen times during the concert season 2003/2004. He was Artist in Residence at Radio France in both 2003 and 2005. He was invited to be Artist in Residence by the Music Festival in Bremen in 2005, by the Konzerthaus Dortmund in 2007, and by the Dresdner Philharmonie in the 2018/2019 season. Fazıl Say founded a world jazz quintet in 2000 with whom he has performed in numerous jazz festivals including Montreux and Istanbul.
Black Earth was inspired by Kara Toprak , a popular song in Turkey. The composer of the song, Aşık Veysel (1891-1973), was one of the last great Turkish balladeers and the final link in a thousand-year tradition.
Veysel went blind during childhood following an attack of smallpox. He subsequently began to learn to play the Saz, a Turkish lute, and to study poetry, initially for his own amusement. He made acquaintance with a variety of folk poets, and, after 1928, also travelled from village to village with his songs. Through the years, he became a cultural symbol of the Turkish Republic.
Fazıl Say imitates the sound of the Saz through his selection of a muted effect in the Introduction and Epilogue of Black Earth - a meditation on the themes of a ballad. in contrast, folklore, Romantic piano style and jazz are entwined in the central sections to form a large-scale outburst. Fazıl Say performs this works in both concerts of classical music and a jazz festivals: particularly in the folkloristic sections, he employs the improvisatory freedom which is inherent to both folk music and jazz.
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Born in Ankara, where he studied piano and composition, Fazil Say completed his training in Germany. His knowledge of Turkish poetry, his curiosity and his musical choices, split between East and West, led him to practice jazz as both performer and composer.
Fazil Say: I started making music at a very early age with toy instruments. I composed and played what I heard on records and on the radio. At the age of five, I started studying with my first piano teacher, Mithat Fenmen, who studied in France and was a pupil of Alfred Cortot. Mithat Fenmen was a pianist, piano teacher and music writer of great value, who contributed significantly to the development of polyphonic music in Turkey. He used to make me improvise during piano lessons. He also encouraged me to become a composer.
NJ: The hospitality of the people, their kindness, the honor they put into welcoming strangers. When the revolution began in Syria in 2011, the courage of the Syrian people gripped me, and I have boundless admiration for their courage, dignity and resilience in spite of everything.
Whether he is performing as a Mozart soloist or interpreting his own compositions, a concert with Fazıl Say will always go straight to the heart. In the 2022/23 season you will have the opportunity to experience him as a Focus Artist (Fokus-Knstler).
Fazıl Say is one of the most sought-after classical pianists of our time. There is scarcely a renowned concert hall in Europe in which he has not yet performed. The multi-award-winning musician interprets works ranging from Bach to Gershwin as well as his own compositions with an incomparable stage presence. However, his own heart does not belong solely to classical music. As a composer, he combines classical ideas with jazz and Turkish folk songs.
Fazıl Say uses his influence to raise awareness of injustices in his homeland. In 2012, his tweets criticising Islam resulted in a court case in Turkey. He was ultimately acquitted in 2015. Say also records current social events in musical form, as in the first three of his works entitled Gezi Park 1 to 3.
This season, Fazıl Say can be experienced as a composer of piano and chamber music. Written for a small formation of piano and voice, his music merges traditional elements with contemporary expression. In İlk Şarkılar he combines traditional movement models with sounds derived from folk and post-romantic music. He sets poems taken from Turkish literature to music, thus establishing a new relationship between the sister arts of poetry and music. His piano piece entitled Black Earth is an adaptation of Anatolian folk songs. Be it with his own compositions or his thrilling interpretations, Fazıl Say presents himself as an exceptional artist whose concerts are always guaranteed to be multi-faceted and exciting.
'Composed music wants to emerge as an improvisation, and composing is already improvisation in itself,' Fazil Say explained in an interview. The Turkish master pianist is completely in his element with any kind of music-making. The former child prodigy, son of a novelist, describes himself as a storyteller in music. Interpreting Beethoven's strom-like 'Tempest', bringing Scarlatti's age-old purity to life, or playing his own music inspired by jazz, Stravinsky or Turkish folk music, "there is always a story fantasised by me that echoes in the background.
Fazıl Say (born in Ankara in 1970) has been captivating audiences and critics' hearts for over 25 years. Concerts with this artist are said to be 'different'. Open, direct, and exciting; he speaks directly to the heart. In his characteristic, accessible, and captivating style, Say has composed over 100 successful works. Alongside Busoni's monumental version of Bach's famous Chaconne for violin, and favorite repertoire from Beethoven and Scarlatti, tonight he will present - la carte - a selection from them. "Say was all exuberance, using hands, arms, and head to indicate entries and his whole body to stimulate outbursts," an enthusiastic reviewer from The New York Times wrote.
The final movement of the Sonata in A major KV 331 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the Rondo Alla Turca, is one of the most famous piano pieces of all time. Once only familiar to musical experts, later a universal piece for all piano pupils, its opening melody is now even omnipresent as an alienated sinus tone-like mobile phone ring tone.Faz?l Say's arrangement, originally created as an effective encore, follows on from this popularity. After the first eight bars have been presented in original form, typical elements of jazz superimposed on the still recognisable classical foundations can be discovered, such as syncopation of the top notes and ornamentation through chromatic blue notes, embedded in the at times frenzied chains of semiquavers. In the spirit of the work's improvisatory character, Say likes to perfom his Alla Turca Jazz in different combinations, for example accompanied by jazz singers of with orchestra.
It may appear strange that Faz?l Say, who was born in Turkey and - when not on tour - is still resident in that country, does not bring back Mozart's interpretation of genuine Turkish music closer to its own roots, particularly as many of his compositions such as Black Earth or the Violin Sonata are characterised by a subtle amalgamation of the Classical-Romantic tradition, Turkish folk music and elements of jazz. In a further Mozart arrangement, the ballet music Patara premiered in Vienna in 2006, composed on the basis of the Rococo-like theme from the first movement of the same A-major Sonata (wich enjoys almost as great popularity as the Alla Turca theme), Say utilised the connection which was absent in Alla Turca, albeit in the opposite direction. In the ballet music, the piano symbolises Western culture and the Ney flute Oriental culture, communcated atmosperically by austere percussion instrumentation and soprano vocalisation.
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