Taner Akyol - Baglama
Antonis Anissegos - Piano
Sebastian Flaig - Percussion

The Taner Akyol Trio came together for a studio recording in Berlin in 2003. The unusual combination of baglama, piano, and percussion developed into an experimental field between oriental passion and intellectual sound research.

Commercial music is the dominant musical form of our time. Folk music is either forgotten or rearranged, degenerating (...) A new spirit is emerging from folk song—the true spirit of the people. Here, there is culture, aspiration, and knowledge... With intense effort, Taner Akyol is moving from musical craftsmanship into the world of art. Without a doubt, he is the most outstanding baglama virtuoso of recent years. Essentially, he is a composer who gives folk music a new face, a new expression, and it is as impressive as it is immediately apparent that there are no commercial intentions underlying this. (Fazil Say, pianist)

Derya Yildirim
Derya Yıldırım is a singer and multi-instrumentalist born in Hamburg and now living in Berlin. She has established herself firmly in the contemporary Anatolian music scene, primarily through her virtuoso baglama playing and powerful voice. Raised in a musical family, she learned various instruments at an early age and later studied baglama at music academies in Hamburg and Berlin.

Yıldırım reinterprets traditional Anatolian folk songs and poetry, combining them with modern influences, and thus injects her own history of migration and identity into the music. Her solo performances are characterized by a deep emotionality and the conviction that folk music is a vibrant, constantly changing expression of social experiences.

Derya Yıldırım will join the trio as a guest musician in the second part of the concert.