Ankara Music Festival to take stage for 35th year
ANKARA
The Ankara Music Festival, organized by the Sevda-Cenap and (SCA) Music Foundation, will turn 35 this year on April 4, with a concert by the Presidential Symphonic Orchestra (CSO) under the baton of Rengim Gökmen at the CSO Hall.
Turkey’s internationally-acclaimed pianist İdil Biret will accompany the concert with her piano.
The 35th festival will open with the symphonic poetry “Leyla and Mecnun” to celebrate the 100th birthday of Azerbaijani composer Kara Karayev and continue with Biret, performing Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto.
The longest-running festival in the Turkish capital, the 35th Ankara Music Festival, will host nearly 400 artists from Turkey, Spain, Hungary, the United States, Georgia, the Czech Republic, Italy and Romania to present selected works from the fields of music, dance and jazz.
On April 6, the festival will bring together Turkish audiences for the first time with Compania Flamenca El Carpeta.
Founded by the two grandsons of the legendary Spanish Flamenco dancer Antonio Montoya Flores Farrucu, the Compania Flamenca El Carpeta will perform on stage with flamenco dancer and choreographer Antonio Canales, who has previously been a guest in the Ankara Music Festival. The concert will take place at MEB Şura Hall.
On April 10, Lukas Vondracek Piano Recital will be organized at the CSO Hall. Vondracek is a Czech pianist who was the winner of the 2009 Jury Special Prize in the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, the 2010 Hilton Head International Piano Competition and the 2016 Queen Elisabeth Piano Competition.
The Franz Lizst Chamber Orchestra will take the stage on April 11 at MEB Şura Hall. The orchestra, which has given concerts in more than 50 countries for 55 years, will be accompanied by young Turkish violinist Alican Sümer.
The Georgian State Ballet Sukhishvili, which has reached 50 million viewers in the world so far with 9,200 performances, will take the stage on April 13 at MEB Şura Hall. The ballet company will be on the stage for the first time in the Turkish capital.
A concert by the David Hazeltine Jazz Trio will be on April 14 at the MEB Şura Hall. Hazeltine is considered to be one of jazz’s premier pianists as well as composer-arrangers. With the mantra to “swing as much as humanly possible,” David’s style is infused with influences by Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Buddy Montgomery, Barry Harris and Cedar Walton, while still retaining his own fiercely individual voice. The trio will be on stage for the first time in Ankara.
On April 16, the Bosphorus Trio will perform works by Turkish composers as well as classical ones at CSO Hall.
The Culture and Tourism Ministry State Polyphonic Choir will be on stage at the CSO Hall on April 17 to present a capella works on Turkish poetry composed for choirs by Turkish and foreign composers.
The music composed for poetry by master Turkish poets, such as Nazım Hikmet, Yahya Kemal, Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Yunus Emre, Ahmet Hamdi Taşpınar, will be performed by the choir.
The Turkish Saygun Quartet will present a special program for the festival titled “Once upon a time in Ankara Saygun & Bartok & Shostakovich” on April 18 at CSO Hall.
The Cyprus Chestnut Trio will greet the Ankara audience for the first time on April 21 at MEB Şura Hall. Claimed to be the best jazz pianist of our time by Time Magazine, Cyprus Chestnut has been performing on jazz stages since the 1980s.
The Italian Spellbound Contemporary Ballet, established in 1994 by choreographer Mauro Astolfi, will take the stage on April 25 at MEB Şura Hall.
The closing concert of the festival, organized to commemorate the late president of the SCA Music Foundation, Mehmet Başman, will be presented by the Sibiu Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Romanian conductor Constantin Grigore and Gabriel Croitoru as the soloist on April 26 at MEB Şura Hall.
As part of the festival, there will also be three exhibitions at MEB Şura Hall, Bilkent Concert Hall and AND Sanat.
Ticket prices for the concerts range between 20 and 125 Turkish Liras.
