Christos Barbas Ney Quartet

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Christos Barbas is a multi-instrumentalist and composer and one of the most multifaceted and creative musicians coming from Greece. From an early age, he studied the recorder, baroque music, harmony, counterpoint and later completed his studies of Western music in 2002. Since 2003, he has focused on the study of the ney, Sufi, classical Ottoman music and plays several instruments from different cultures, such as kaval, piano, bansuri and irish whistles etc. He composes in a variety of styles, including music for contemporary dance, theatre, cinema and modal music. He has taught at the University of Popular Music and Traditional Arts (Greece) and in Macedonia (Thessaloniki). He teaches at Labyrinth in Crete and in other cultural centers and is the Artistic Director of Labyrinth Catalunya.

Mevlüt Akgüngör (1979) is a passionate musician since his childhood. He received his first musical instruction from his father at a young age in traditional and religious singing. He started his musical career with saz (the Turkish long neck lute) but soon his interest shifted to ney (the reed flute), which is the central instrument in both classical Turkish and Sufi music. He has received several trainings on ney playing and attended various workshops at De Centrale (Ghent), Labyrinth Musical Workshop (Barcelona) and Makam Bosnia (Sarajevo) some of which were given by acclaimed ney players such as Ömer Erdoğdular, Derya Türkan, Christos Barbas and Kudsi Ergüner.

His music style is mainly inspired by the contemporary ney masters Niyazi Sayın, Sadreddin Özçimi and Ömer Erdoğdular. The masters of classical Turkish music such as Tanburi Cemil Bey, Necdet Yaşar, Ihsan Özgen, Bekir Sıdkı Sezgin and Kani Karaca are also a source for his musical inspirations.

He currently plays ney in Turkish Music Ensemble led by Belgian ud player Tristan Driessens. He also plays in group Makam Duo which he co-founded. He has performed at several events both in Belgium and abroad such as Concierto de Tres Culturas (la Catedral de Almudena, Madrid), Cultuurmarkt (Antwerp), Fête de la Musique (Brussels), Foro Encuentro Interreligioso (Madrid), Life Iftar (GC De Kriekelaar, Brussels), Interreligious Concert (Sint-Janbaptistkerk, Molenbeek), Rumi Night (Sint-Pietersabdij, Ghent), Sazz N Jazz (Brussels), Muziekpublique.

Since early 2021, he has been taking part in the performance of the hybrid version of Terry Riley’s In C which is led by Peter Vermeersch and Thomas Noëll.