Murat Aydemir

Murat Aydemir was born in Hanover, Germany in 1971. Aydemir studied at the Istanbul Technical University National Turkish Music Conservatory, beginning in 1982. He graduated from the Instrument Education Department of the Conservatory as an exceptionally outstanding student, and was accepted to the Master's programme of the conservatory without further examination.

He started to study his instrument, the tanbur, with the well known tanbur player and composer Necip Gülses, and completed his Master's Degree with that same teacher. In 1988, when he was only 16 years old, he was invited to perform with the Turkish Cultural Ministry's Istanbul National Turkish Music Ensemble, directed by tanbur master Necdet Yasar. He performed with this group for one year, during which time he had the opportunity to work with some very well known Turkish Musicians.

From 1989 to the present, he has been performing as a tanbur player with the Istanbul National Classical Turkish Music Ensemble and has performed many concerts with different groups both nationally and internationally. As an outstanding guest musician, he worked in Turkish Radio Television, Istanbul Radio Division as a tanbur player. He also had the opportunity to work with many masters of Classical Turkish Music, the likes of Alâeddin Yavasça, Bekir Sidki Sezgin, Erol Deran, Ihsan Özgen and Necdet Yasar.

Together with Derya Türkan, Aydemir has worked for the last seven years on numerous different projects in addition to his work with Turkish Radio Television. This album represents the first result of this period of hard work and dedication. —Courtesy Calabash