Karsu

Karsu — Biography

Jazz, blues, pop and Turkish melodies blend in the jazz-pop sound of Karsu, a Turkish-Dutch singer, pianist and composer. She sings in Dutch, English and Turkish, and reached a wide audience through her appearances at New York's Carnegie Hall and on Dutch television. In 2026 the Netherlands named her an "Ambassador of Freedom" for its Liberation Day commemorations and made her a knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau for the cultural bridge she has built between the two countries.

She began with the piano: her parents first rented one, and when they saw how much she loved playing, bought it with money they had saved. She drew attention playing at her family's restaurant in Amsterdam, then moved on to stages from the Concertgebouw and the North Sea Jazz Festival to Carnegie Hall. A scholarship from the American Embassy took her to the University of Rhode Island, where she studied voice. From 2011 she concentrated on work in Turkey, releasing her first studio album Confession (2012) and Colors (2015). In 2018 she played more than 40 venues with the Karsu Plays Atlantic Records project, and later released the albums Karsu (2019) and Tabula Rasa (2025).

She won an Edison Award in 2016 for Colors and built a music school for refugees in Athens. Her story is told in Mercedes Stalenhoef's documentary Karsu: I Hide A Secret. She was one of five finalists in the Dutch national selection for the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest, where Joost Klein was chosen. Her family comes from Hatay, and she lost relatives in the 2023 earthquake.