with the Trio Cahit Kutrafalı (bass guitar), Tolga Erzurumlu (piano) and Ezgi Akgürgen (vocal)

By Heidi Trautmann

House of the rising Jazz, they call the place, THE GOSPEL in the Osmanpaşa corner Güner Türkmen street, where we met some other jazz musicians again, young people I have been following for some years now. I had first heard the two instrumentalists life at the CADI KOZANI in the Arabahmet area, then at the BEDESTEN during the yearly Jazz Festival – by the way I do hope that this lovely event will continue also this summer 2016 in Nicosia.

They also play in different formations with other musicians. It is interesting to read about their lives and you realize how hard you have to work your life if  you want to get somewhere, when you have a dream.

I am not a musician myself but you must not necessarily be one in order to love and enjoy music and I have heard enough music around the world in order to know when I hear good music, you feel it when the musician is deeply involved and becomes one with his instrument.

Both Cahit Kutrafalı and Tolga Erzurumlu have brought out a new album and they are very good, included are some own compositions. You can get them at The Gospel and even on ebay as I saw on the internet.

Who are these young musicians?  About Cahit Kutrafalı you can read about on his own website.  His new CD brought out recently is ‘AS IT IS’

http://www.cahitkutrafali.com/

I have not found a website of Tolga Erzurumlu but some information concerning his career; his new CD is ‘FINGERPRINTS’. Very good recording.

I read: .....The Home for Co-operation in Nicosia never seems to slow down when it comes to the events they host and this week is no different with the Home Café getting ready to host the Toga Erzurumlu Trio on Thursday.

The trio, pianist and composer Tolga Erzurumlu, and two musician brothers Cahit Kutrafalı on bass guitar and Fuat Kutrafalı on drums, will perform tracks from their latest album, ‘Fingerprints’, which was released this month.

Erzurumlu was influenced by his father to pursue music from a very young age. He completed his undergraduate degree at the Eastern Mediterranean University and studied jazz in Paris for one year in 2007.

In 2011, he joined the Akbank Jazz Festival and won an award for the best improvisation and he performed at Nardis Jazz Club. In 2014, he played at the Istanbul Jazz Festival as Tolga Erzurumlu Quartet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukNy-wBTMdE

And finally the vocalist Ezgi Akgürgen....My God, she is so young and petite when we see her on The Gospel stage. She has a trained jazz voice and is – as I hear – a student of Suleyman Osman who has come to give her some encouragement during the concert, he himself is a jazz musician and whom we have heard just two weeks ago at the same place. She had started early to study music encouraged by her father; her first instrument was the piano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MquUtnGkoFg

There are many more young musicians in the genres modern jazz, blues, rock and pop around town, they announce their concerts on facebook and what I can catch I place on my own website.

I must add that jazz was the music of our young days in the artists’ quarter of Munich ‘Schwabing’ with its small pubs and jazz groups, or later on our travels in New Orleans, Chicago and New York, and not to forget famous Burghausen with its jazz festivals and famous musicians whose names are implanted in the street of fame in the historical city.

It’s good to be young again and feel the rhythms and for that reason I can really not understand why most of the young guests listening have their smart or I phones in front of their noses.  The revival of jazz, let’s take part!