ISTANBUL - Turkish pianist Fazil Say will give a piano recital at Istanbul`s Cemil Resit Rey (CRR) Concert Hall on Sunday.
Say will play pieces from Ravel, Prokofief, Beethoven, Bach and his compositions.
Born in 1970 in Ankara, Turkey, Fazil Say studied piano and composition at the Ankara State Conservatory. At the age of seventeen he was awarded a scholarship that enabled him to study for five years with David Levine at the Robert Schumann Institute in Dusseldorf. From 1992 to 1995 he continued his studies at the Berlin Conservatory. In 1994 he was the winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions, which gave a rapid start to his international career.
Fazil Say is a regular guest with the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the Baltimore Symphony, the St Petersburg Philharmonic , the BBC Philharmonic, the Orchestre National de France and other leading orchestras across the globe. He has appeared at the Lucerne Festival, the Ruhr Piano Festival, the Rheingau Music Festival , the Verbier Festival, the Montpellier Festival, the Beethoven Festival Bonn, and in all the world`s leading concert halls, including the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Vienna Musikverein, Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Carnegie Hall and Avery Fisher Hall in New York, and many others. In the 2003/04 season he made debuts at the Salzburg Festival, Lincoln Center Festival in New York, Harrod`s Piano Series in London and the World Piano Series in Tokyo . His chamber music partners include Yuri Bashmet and Shlomo Mintz. In 2004 he made a major tour of Europe and the USA with Maxim Vengerov, appearing at such venues as Carnegie Hall, the Vienna Musikverein, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Barbican Centre in London, and the Salzburg Festival. He will tour Europe and Asia with Akiko Suwanai in 2006.
Fazil Say is just as much a composer as he is a pianist. He wrote the work Black Hymns at the age of sixteen. In 1991 he premiered his Concerto for Piano and Violin with the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, and in 1996 his second piano concerto Silk Road was given its first performance in Boston. His oratorio Nazim, based on poems by the famous Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet and commissioned by the Turkish Ministry of Culture, was premiered in Ankara in 2001. He has composed highly virtuosic adaptations for piano and orchestra of such works as Mozart`s Rondo alla turca and Paganini Jazz.
-OTHER CONCERTS AT CRR-
On the other hand, mezzo soprano Ezgi Saydam will take stage in the same concert hall on Saturday, Heinrich Schiff will give a cello recital on Friday, and Orchestra di Roma e del Lazio will give a concert at CRR on April 2nd.
-OTHER CONCERTS IN ISTANBUL-
Cellist Monika Leskovar will give a concert at the Ataturk Culture Center (AKM) on Friday and Saturday, whereas William Cardoso El Pluma Band will take stage in Ghetto on Saturday.
John Scofield&Horns will perform a concert at Is Sanat Cultural Center on April 3rd, and Wallace Roney Quintet will be at the Istanbul Jazz Center on April 3rd.
(BRC-MS)