Upcoming release: A Spring full of Birds – 20th Century Composers of Istanbul

Description

A Spring full of Birds – 20th Century Composers of Istanbul primarily presents the Turkish oud as a solo instrument. With its versatile renderings of masterpieces composed by Refik Fersan, Haydar Bey, Cinuçen Tanrıkorur, Sadı Işılay and Yurdal Tokcan, it is Tristan Driessens‘ love letter to Istanbul – his second homeland during his seven years of training under oud master Necati Çelik.

Several suites of peşrevs, semais and catchy dances are intertwined with short improvised interludes which serve as a common thread throughout the album. These taksims highlight the makam and contain the typical flavors one expects when listening to the Turkish oud. With their plaintive minimalism, they somehow read like nostalgic miniatures where the Belgian oud player reflects on his Istanbul years, providing a welcome counterbalance in an otherwise exuberant album.

With his long-term friend Levent Yıldırım accompanying him on every rhythmical track, Tristan Driessens teams up with one of the present day’s most virtuosic percussionists. Globally considered the foremost pioneer of the dohola (Egyptian bass darbouka), Levent Yıldırım rightly does not only appear as a side man on this album. He showcases his technically dazzling signature style with multi-layered solos which appear on groovy tracks like Pembe kız, Trabzoni bar and Sultaniyegah Sirto. In A Spring full of Birds, melody and rhythm enhance each other at all times, conveying to the listening experience a great effect of surprise.

As the “sultan of instruments” and its rhythmic counterpart, the oud and percussion are an emblematic pair bridging melodic improvisation with structured rhythmic cycles for over a millennium. Together, Tristan Driessens and Levent Yıldırım succeed in paying tribute to this essential backbone of Middle Eastern music. A Spring full of Birds is an bright album which has a both classical and popular feel and which I believe might easily become a standout reference in its kind. (A. Doğan, Izmir, 29th of October 2025. Booklet article excerpt.)