Erdal Erzincan

Erdal Erzincan — Biography

Erdal Erzincan (born 1971 in Erzurum) is a Turkish folk musician, composer and educator celebrated for his virtuosity on the bağlama (saz). Introduced to the instrument as a child while absorbing the folklore of his home region, he moved to Istanbul in 1981, began studying at the Arif Sağ Music Course in 1985, and in 1989 entered the Istanbul Technical University State Conservatory for Turkish Music, where he researched the pickless "şelpe" playing technique and wrote his thesis on notating finger-tapping technique.

Following his 1994 debut solo album Töre, he released a long string of further solo records, among them Garip, Anadolu, Al Mendil, Kervan, Karasu and İki Telin İzinden, alongside the collaborative Türküler Sevdamız album series made with Tolga Sağ, İsmail Özden, Yılmaz Çelik and Muharrem Temiz. In 1996 he performed with Arif Sağ and Erol Parlak alongside the Cologne Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 2004 he appeared at Vienna's Wiener Konzerthaus with the Ambassade Symphony Orchestra; that same year he recorded the instrumental album "The Wind" with Iranian kemenche player Keyhan Kelhur.

Erzincan married fellow musician and educator Mercan Erzincan in 2000 and the couple have one child. For more than two decades he has trained students at his own music course, leads the 25-member Erdal Erzincan Bağlama Orkestrası in concert, and published the two-volume "Bağlama Metodu" with Arif Sağ in 2009 and his own composition collection "Bağlama İçin Besteler" in 2019. He has remained active on stage into 2026, touring cities such as Çorum with Mercan Erzincan and Dertli Divani and running the Gezici Bağlama Atölyesi workshop program to discover young bağlama talent.