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From Saz to Jazz, a Guide to Istanbul’s Live Music Scene

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We’ve spent a lot of time during our two weeks in Istanbul simply ambling around the backstreets of Beyoğlu, exploring our neighbourhood. We get a kick out of taking in the atmosphere and seeing how people live their lives, and if we stumble across a venue playing music we like, that’s a bonus. And there are an abundance of those. Istanbul’s live music scene is one of the best around.

Beyoğlu is where it’s at. The area is Istanbul’s entertainment, shopping, arts, and cultural centre, and its main thoroughfare, Iskiklal Cadessi, and the hundreds of narrow pedestrian streets and lanes that lead off it are lined with shops, arcades, markets, restaurants, cafés, bars, pubs, clubs, music venues, cinemas, theatres, and galleries. There’s no other city like it in the world.

Like most Mediterranean cities, Istanbul (which is actually on the Marmara Sea) is a city where people work to live rather than live to work, and after watching the locals for a few days and seeing the joy they get out of life, you realise how sensible their priorities are.

Once the sun sets, that’s when the area really comes alive. The backgammon boards are packed away, Turkish coffees are replaced with beers, the tables outside the bars and pubs fill with friends, and the narghile guy gets real busy.

Not long after, on every lane, bands begin to play somewhere. It could be a traditional three-piece roaming between restaurant tables, a rock group whose rhythms turn the pavement into a dance floor, a smooth jazz quartet that has heads bobbing and feet tapping in time to the tempo, or a folk band that has its nostalgic audience singing along as they wipe away melancholic tears.

A single building in Beyoğlu might boast half a dozen nightspots – in the basement, at street level, on every floor, and especially on the rooftop – to eat, drink, listen, sing, and dance to music.

There is such a mindboggling choice that it can be overwhelming the first time (or three) that you explore the area. It was only after wandering through every night for a week that we finally felt like we had a grip on the different vibes of each street of Istanbul’s live music scene.

Istanbul is a 24-hour city, and while many cities around the world also lay claim to that title, few actually are. In Beyoğlu, there are people around doing something somewhere on the streets of the city every hour of the day. There isn’t a dead corner anywhere.

But it’s that time between sunset and sunrise, when this part of the city moves to a rhythmic beat, when the streets throb with locals of all ages listening, singing or dancing to some form of music, that there’s a palpable energy to this part of Istanbul that is simply irresistible – and makes it hard not to join in.

Istanbul’s Live Music Scene Areas To Explore

Asmalımescit.

The dozens of pedestrianised lanes in this tiny quarter, named after its narrow ‘main street’, Asmalımescit Cadessi, must have the highest concentration of restaurants, cafés, bars, pubs, clubs, and music venues, anywhere. Popular spots include Babylon , Nublu Istanbul , Ghetto, Jolly Joker , and Nu Pera . We also like the stylish bar, Ugly (Sofyali Sokak 20).

NEVIZADE SOKAK

Lined with meyhanes (traditional taverns), bars and pubs, this skinny lane (and surrounding lanes) is the place to come if you want to hear some traditional music while you eat. Some bands roam between different restaurants, while some restaurants have their own bands that move between tables.

OUR FAVOURITE MUSIC VENUES

We love this basement venue, hidden behind velvet curtains, with round wooden tables and chairs, wooden floorboards, and a small bar. This is where we first saw the brilliant Turkish trumpet-player, İmer Demirer , perform with his quartet, including the extraordinary pianist Serkan Özyılmaz (this guy is fascinating to watch). There’s a cover charge, but the night we went it included two drinks each, making it far better value than Nardis, and if someone of the calibre of Demirer is playing, it’s an absolute bargain. Tomtom Mh, Acara Sokak 5, off Istiklal Cadessi

NUBLU ISTANBUL

With a funky vibe – think: kaleidoscopic lighting and experimental films projected on the walls – this low-key spot is a fun venue for seeing jazz. Popular with local hipsters, it’s owned by the Istanbul-born saxophonist Ilhan Ersahin (who also owns Nublu in New York), and is actually part of Babylon (yes, that’s where the thumping music is coming from). Shows here are often free and drinks are cheap. Jurnal Sokak 4, Asmalimescit

NARDIS JAZZ CLUB

We liked the space, with a similar feel to Alt, and it has reputation as one of Istanbul’s best jazz venues. But like anywhere, the atmosphere varies depending on whose performing and the night we went a very mediocre American trumpet-player was boring the audience with over-played jazz standards. Cover charge and drink prices are steep, so you need to be familiar with the performers you’re heading to see to warrant the expense. We also liked the packed bar next door which had a local jazz band, a fun vibe, and was free. Kuledibi Sok 14, Galata

The space itself is tiny, with barely enough room to hold the bar and band, but locals fill the dozens of tiny round tables and stools on the pedestrianised lane outside, and, most of the time they’re on their feet singing and dancing anyway. This place is packed most nights of the week and the level of energy really depends on whose performing. Try to see the Black Sea folk-rocker Aydoğan Topal whose music – a unique blend of folk music from Turkey’s Laz people , which is in itself highly original – is highly contagious. Nights when Aydoğan’s performing (two-three times a week) can be crazy. Solakzade Sokak, off Istiklal Cad, near start of Nevizade Sokak

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3 thoughts on “From Saz to Jazz, a Guide to Istanbul’s Live Music Scene”

excellent place to visit. that sorta vibe is just my thing.. sigh.. i wish i had saved up even more this year.. noooooo! where has the year gone LOL! great post guys;)

Thanks Ciki! It is an amazing place to visit. If that’s the vibe you like just from this post, you are absolutely going to love it, it’s really a unique city. Next year! :)

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• A Music Lovers Guide To...

A Music Lover's Guide to Istanbul

From international artists to local talent, Istanbul hosts plenty of amazing live music events, whether it’s a big festival or a small concert. Check out some of the best activities and venues for music lovers travelling to Istanbul.

Süreyya operası.

Located on the Asian side of Istanbul in the Kadıköy neighbourhood, the Süreyya Opera House was established in 1927 and is one of the city’s most important venues for classical music and ballet. With its beautiful historic foyer and European-style facade, the opera house really harks back to another, more elegant time. Book tickets for a classical music concert or a ballet for an exceptional evening in Istanbul.

Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra

Established in 1993 as the Borusan Chamber Orchestra by the industrial conglomerate Borusan, the aim of bringing polyphonic music to a wider Turkish audience was successfully achieved. By 1999, the BİFO became a symphonic orchestra and today, it has become a true city orchestra with performances often held on both sides of Istanbul.

IKSV Music Festival

Speaking of IKSV, the foundation hosts one of the country’s most important classical music festivals every year between May and June. In its 45th year, the IKSV Music Festival has hosted major names such as the New York Philharmonic, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and the Orchestre de Paris, to name a few.

Nardis Jazz Club

Known as one of the city’s best jazz clubs, Nardis has been around for years serving up night after night of exceptional local and international talent on stage. Dimly lit with a bar in the back and a few simple wooden tables and chairs, it’s all about the music in this cool club hidden on a side street by the Galata Tower.

IKSV Jazz Festival

IKSV also hosts the city’s other major music festival, this time focusing on the beautiful genre of jazz. Organized every year in July since 1994, the IKSV Jazz Festival has not only hosted some of the major names in the jazz scene but it also encourages collaborations between local and international talents.

The young and cool concert venue of IKSV (Istanbul Culture and Art Foundation), Salon always hosts some of the best local and international acts that lean more on the indie side. If you’re a fan of alternative groups that don’t perform in huge stadium-sized concert venues, then Salon is your top destination to see great live bands at.

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Babylon Bomonti

Certainly one of Istanbul’s most important concert venues, Babylon is somewhat of a legend. Even though it moved away from its iconic venue in the heart of Beyoğlu to Bomonti Ada, the stage continues to host some of the country’s most important bands and events celebrating Turkey’s music history.

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Tango for Aristotle on the Istanbul Music Festival “Music Route”

“Music Route” is a popular fixture at the Istanbul Music Festival. There are two elements, the music and the route, and one is not more important than the other. For a discerning (and nosy) crowd of locals, the day affords the chance to explore churches and other buildings closed to view for the rest of the year, like the annual Open House weekend in London.

This year, the Route criss-crossed and climbed the narrow streets of Balat, tucked away on the western side of the Golden Horn. There are no Starbucks here. Like much of Istanbul, it’s a piece of living archaeology. In its pastel-painted houses and countless places of worship, the city’s Jewish and Orthodox communities have made their home at points in history. Unseasonal showers only sharpened the scents of fresh garlic, cheese pastries and overripe strawberries from market stalls. A pickled walnut had made a bid for freedom and was borne away on a guttering stream.

While Mass was being chanted at the Ecumenical Patriarchate cathedral, the damp raggle-taggle train of musical pilgrims made its way to the nearby St Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church for a cello-and-guitar recital by a photogenic young Italian duo. A Latin-themed programme showed off the languorous cantabile of cellist Erica Piccotti. Her tango technique was probably more refined and Classical than Piazzolla had in mind when writing Adios Non í no , but it served to harmonise the cognitive dissonance between the music’s erotic charge and the noble countenances of the icons gazing down upon us.

The youthful duo are an established pair, and they play off one another with complete assurance. Even while the melodic spotlight fell on Piccotti through a sequence of Albéniz, de Falla and Granados transcriptions, guitarist GIan Marco Ciampa would step forward now and then with a deftly timed pay-off, before launching into Piazzolla’s Escualo like a dancer taking his partner by surprise for the final number.

Half an hour later, we were down by the shore of the Bosphorus inside the “Iron Church” dedicated to St Stephen, so called because it was cast in prefabricated parts and shipped down the Danube from Austria to provide a spiritual home to Istanbul’s Bulgarian Orthodox community at the end of the 19th century. The gilded interior belies expectations of austerity within. Indeed there could hardly have been a more fitting venue, aesthetically or acoustically, for the harpist Güneş Hızlılar.

Like Ciampa and Piccotti, Hızlılar is young but a fully formed artist who radiates charisma. Her recital sprang any number of surprises, not least for being played out of the printed sequence; she explained the new order in Turkish, but it was all Greek to me. The French accent of Caplet’s Divertissement was unmistakable all the same; so to the manneristic flourishes of Scarlatti’s Sonata K209, and the Tristan chord opening Liszt’s transcription of Le Rossignol (retranscribed for harp by Henriette Renié). In Hızlılar’s hands, the romantic melancholy of Alabyev’s original song was counterbalanced by intimations of the mechanised nightingale from Stravinsky’s Chinese opera.

I could have listened to her all day, but a stiff climb up through Balat took us to the gates of the Fener Greek Orthodox School, perched on a magnificent vantage point over the Bosphorus. With its dark red brick, drab cream walls, tarmac playground and general air of functional severity, the school would not look out of place in any English city, at least until you step into its assembly hall. Set into the ceiling, portraits of Herodotus, Demosthenes, Aristotle and those others who built what we still call civilisation. Around us on murals, turning points in Western history: Pericles and Alexander addressing their troops, Saint Paul his disciples. Up on the dais, more icons of Church Fathers: another extraordinary harmonisation of trans-historical ideas, no less than the Bach-to-tango programme of the Spectrum Saxophone Quartet. 

This German-Turkish quartet barely drew breath in a high-energy, 45-minute set that kicked off with the quick movements of Bach’s Italian Concerto and kept up the pace with the pumping bass of Thierry Escaich’s Tango Virtuoso . Unfamiliar with the saxophone quartet repertory, I was most taken with Ciudades , a triptych by the Dutch composer Guillermo Lago (aka Willem van Merwijk, b.1960). The suite takes us from a street market in Addis Ababa to a lonely night in Sarajevo, and finally a Moorish dance in an imaginary, modern-medieval Cordoba. The Spectrum Quartet kept it tight as a drum, and built the disparate episodes of Gerald Preinfalk’s Twintango to a final pitch of intensity hardly becoming an Orthodox school hall. But that’s the fun of Music Route.

Peter's press trip was funded by the Istanbul Music Festival.

Peter Quantrill is a regular contributor to Gramophone, The Strad and other journals. Recent programme notes have been published by the Salzburg and Edinburgh festivals, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Royal Ballet. He also writes about music and musicians for many record labels including Eloquence, Delphian, Signum, Danacord and Brilliant Classics. Once unplugged from his hi-fi, he can generally be found in a London concert hall or at the cricket, and he tweets (sporadically) @PeterQuantrill.

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