Taner Akyol

Taner Akyol — Biography

Taner Akyol is a Berlin-based musician who brings the bağlama together with the world of contemporary Western composition. His works set Anatolian folk melodies for chamber ensemble and orchestra, and he is known for the children's opera Ali Baba und die 40 Räuber and for pieces written for bağlama and chamber orchestra. He continues to work as a composer and bağlama teacher.

He began on the bağlama in Bursa and was playing in the folk music choir of Uludağ University by his last year of middle school. After studying violin at the Bursa Anatolian Fine Arts High School he went to Germany and passed the composition entrance exam of the Hanns Eisler School of Music for 1997-1998. During his five years of study he collected prizes: best soloist at the Musica Vitale competition in 1998 and the Hanns Eisler composition prize in 1999. After graduating he continued as a master student at the Berlin University of the Arts. In the second phase he founded his own ensembles: the multicultural Cornocopia orchestra in 2000 and the jazz-oriented Taner Akyol Trio in 2003, and the albums Traveller/Yolcu and Birds of Passage/Göçmen Kuşlar came out in this vein. Since 2004 he has run the TA Musikatelier in Kreuzberg.

In later years his compositions were recorded in the voice of Maria Farantouri on Maria Farantouri Sings Taner Akyol (2011), and his children's opera premiered at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2012. He teaches bağlama at the Berlin University of the Arts and the Mannheim Pop Academy. He calls his music Anatolian rather than "Turkish folk music", pointing to the multicultural makeup of Anatolia.