SAADET TURKOZ



SAADET TURKOZ

I was born in Istanbul in 1961 and I am currently living in Zurich.
Due to the political pressure of the Chinese government upon the Turk people in East Turkestan (Uyghur Autonomous Region), my parents fled to Istanbul, where they settled as Kazakh refugees.
They transmitted us the rich oral and musical traditions of the highlands of Central Asia. With the tales of their far away country and their journey to Turkey, the elderly people of the kasach community influenced my imagination as musician until nowadys.

As a child, living in Istanbul near the Marmara Sea, I wanted to be a hodscha, a coran teacher. I was fascinated by the arabic language and the melodious texts of the coran which gave me the first opportunity to deliberately improvise without paying attention to sense and correctness.

I was 20 years old, when I left Istanbul to join my sister in Switzerland. There I experienced an exciting new world of music: free jazz, improvisation and a refreshing openness towards experimentation which parallelled my unbiased approach of the musical traditions of my origins.

In my improvisations as well as performances of Kazakh and Turkish songs I am looking to transform memory. I seek to evoke pictures and atmosphere by means of voice and music which transcend cultural boundaries. Memory is everywhere and every time the same - not changeable - but the expression is different: Individual perception develops a universal impression of the cultural life.

In addition to my frequent solo concerts, I regularly perform in duos, trios or bigger formations with free improvising jazz musicians - such as Martin Schuetz, Elliot Sharp, Werner Luedi, Eyvind Kang, Voice Crack- Nobert Moeslang&Andy Guhl, Peter Kowald, Gianni Gebbia, Michael Zerang, Carl Ruediger, Urs Leimgruber, Ikue Mori, the Koch-Schuetz-Studer Trio, Nils Wogram, Pascal Schaer, Mark Dresser, Miya Masaoka, Fred Frith, Xu Feng Shia, the Black Sea Trio, Mich Gerber, Yagi Michiyo, Carl Stone, Fritz Hauser, Peggy Lee, Alex Cline, Larry Ochs, Jaques Widmer, Satoshi Takeishi, Graham Haynes, Co Streiff, Okkyung Lee, Gunter Muller, Eric M, Makigami Koichi, etc.

www.saadet.ch


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