Faculty Recital: Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol + DÜNYA

At this special concert, Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol & the DÜNYA Ensemble will be celebrating their 20th year. The repertoire will include classical Ottoman/Turkish music along with original jazz and concert music compositions by Sanlıkol. 

Program note

 It was exactly 20 years ago during the November of 2003 when we performed our first concert entitled “Greek & Turkish Holy Days/Sacred Music Celebration” at Harvard University’s Paine Hall. Even though that program featured traditional music, the birth of DÜNYA (the Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Greek word for “world”) was in part due to my own frustrations with the challenges of the jazz and concert music scenes in and around especially New England. Trying to book concert dates at clubs and concert halls was (and still is) nearly impossible. As a result, my wife Serap and I thought that rather than going to clubs and concert halls, we could reach out to Turkish student organizations as well as local colleges/universities through a non-profit organization in order to produce our own concert series. In order to achieve this goal, DÜNYA was co-founded by myself, my wife, Serap Kantarcı Sanlıkol, and my former professor (at NEC) and colleague Robert Labaree.

Since I was focusing on traditional Turkish and related musics in my own studies during 2003, our concert series in its early years primarily featured a diverse array of traditional Turkish and related musics with fewer jazz or contemporary music presentations. However, even when DÜNYA presented traditional music, we were always interested in creating lively programs that included unique perspectives on or unusual combinations of such repertoires. In fact, our very first concert was quite unusual due to the participating Greek Orthodox cantors as well as Turkish singers performing both the Byzantine and the Turkish Sufi music sections of that program together. That premier event was a sold out concert with Governor Michael Dukakis, a Greek-American with roots in Turkey, in attendance. Since then we have produced hundreds of concerts in the greater Boston area, toured internationally, released 14 albums, 3 singles, 1 concert film, 1 documentary film and 1 full-length film of an opera. Over the past 20 years we always tried to maintain a pluralist and an inclusive vision as a result of which the DÜNYA collective included many musicians specializing in Ottoman music, early European music, Middle Eastern Christian and Jewish music, ethnomusicology, jazz, contemporary composition and popular music. I can never thank Robert Labaree and Cem Mutlu enough for the crucial roles they played at countless DÜNYA productions. And I cannot be happier to include Beth Bahia Cohen, who has been with me on this journey since the very beginning, at tonight’s concert.

I must admit that it was not easy to come up with a way to reflect on 20 years of programming. In the end, in tonight’s program I decided to feature the kind of stylistic diversity that has been a staple of DÜNYA concerts with a focus on my own compositions and titles referring back to older programs or specific pieces. In fact, even in the opening set, which places emphasis on classical Ottoman/Turkish music, both the opening peşrev (prelude) and the closing ilüzyon (lit. illusion) are my own compositions. The two şarkı (classical songs) come from Euterpe (1830), a collection which included classical Ottoman/Turkish vocal music written in Byzantine neumes.  The Euterpe versions of these pieces are different from the way they survived in the oral tradition and our interpretation is strictly based on my transcriptions from Euterpe on which I have recently published a book. While the majority of this first set follows the conventions and norms of classical Ottoman/Turkish music strictly, the Rast İlüzyon is an unusual piece with a made-up name: there is no form named as ilüzyon in classical Ottoman/Turkish music. Since I composed the repeating section of this piece simultaneously in two different meters, 8/8 and 9/8, you can take that repeating melody and draw barlines according to 8/8 or 9/8 and it will still work musically whichever way you choose to play. As a result, I thought that the game I played here was like a musical illusion, hence the name.

The title of the second set comes from a poem by Yunus Emre, a 13th century Turkish mystic, which was also the name of our first CD released in 2005. However, I chose this title mainly because this set ended up becoming comprised entirely of my sacred music compositions influenced by Sufism (Islamic mysticism) the majority of which combine principles of Renaissance polyphony with the microtonal subtleties of the Ottoman makam (mode). While a Rast Naat by Buhurizade Mustafa Itri (1640-1712), traditionally sung by a single chanter, often precedes the rituals of the so-called whirling dervishes, my Rast Naat, opening this set, does not have a melodic connection to that piece and it is entirely polyphonic. The following piece, Şehadet, combines the Hüseyni and Uşşak makams in a similar polyphonic setting as well – both pieces are receiving their world premieres tonight. And, while Ben bir acep ile geldim adds percussion instruments and modulates through a dozen makams, the set closes with a recent composition, entitled كن (Kûn), written for violin and piano based on how the creation took place according to a particular Sufi interpretation – this piece will receive its US premiere tonight.

The third set starts out with works influenced by Renaissance polyphony as well. However, the microtonal subtleties of makam are no longer the center of focus anymore. Instead, the first piece in the Buselik Suite introduces harmonic accompaniment inspired by jazz which is the style that dominates the rest of this set. While the very strict canon in the first movement is followed by the kind of polyphonic writing reminiscent of a canzon from the early baroque in the second movement, the composition starts incorporating improvisation shortly after the bass and drums are introduced in order to set up a cathartic moment involving the entire band. The piece I chose to name this set after, My Blues, was written back in 1995 which may be my earliest composition I still like to perform. On the other hand, the final piece in this set got its world premiere with an orchestral version in Bursa, Turkey about a year ago. That entire composition takes the two main characters of the Turkish Shadow play, Karagöz, and places them on Agatha Christie’s Orient Express – this was, somehow, the only way I could imagine creating a plot that would allow me to combine jazz, classical Turkish music and Western classical music within a new composition!... This particular tune is based on the characters of Count and Countess Andrenyi from the Orient Express but they are now Mısırlızade Necati Bey ve Leman Hanım (similar to the Çelebi and Zenne found in the shadow play).

A DÜNYA tradition since our very first recording has been to connect the ‘classical’ with the ‘popular’ through improvisation. We have done this in many programs often moving from a classical Ottoman/Turkish vocal piece to vocal improvisation through which we transition to a recent Turkish pop song. This was our way of connecting and contrasting two different people commenting on a similar theme (such as love) from different centuries... Tonight we will have another piece from Euterpe, attributed to Indian musicians, speaking of mighty rulers and their thrones start our final set. Following our DÜNYA formula, we will then move from this classical vocal piece to a number of improvisations by several different instruments and voices. We will eventually get to the Turkish arrangement of a French pop song from the 70s which remains incredibly famous in Turkey. The Turkish lyrics of this pop song referring to the many ways of this world, our dünya, is perhaps the most fitting way to end this concert.                                                                 
– Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol

This is an in-person event with a private stream available to the NEC community here: https://necmusic.edu/live.