Hasan Cihat Örter

Hasan Cihat Örter — Biography

Hasan Cihat Örter is a guitarist, composer and arranger who carries the modal world of Turkish music onto the guitar. He is best known for the gliding sound of his fretless guitar and for his arrangements of Anatolian melodies; he also devised instruments of his own, joining the cümbüş, oud and bağlama with the guitar to make what he calls the utar and the bağtar. He still performs, and was hosted in Ordu in 2024.

He began in music in Istanbul alongside an uncle who was the rebetiko performer Buzukî Erol Örter. In 1971 he became a pupil of Emin Ongan at the Üsküdar Musiki Cemiyeti, graduating in 1974, and learned the bağlama from Şemsi Yastıman. From the 1980s he did studio work with orchestras and wrote music for commercials, documentaries and the theatre; from 1990 to 1998 he played in the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality City Orchestra, and he made the programmes Müzik ve Biz on TRT 2 and Geceyi Örten Müzik on Samanyolu TV. Classical Guitar Recital "Anatolian Folk Music" and Kadın'ın Senfonileri were his first steps on record, and the Re-Formation series on Sony Music took Ottoman court music abroad in modern arrangements.

After 2000 his output grew: Kabe ve Hicret Senfonisi, Sadabad, a set of pieces for the tanbur, dozens of albums on Mem Müzik and the Innovation series. He also studied at the Berklee College of Music and the Royal Conservatory of Liège. He was made an honorary citizen of Ordu and received an honorary doctorate from Fırat University in 2010. His books include Hayatım, Gitarım ve Müziğim.