ODE Ox Barber
With Ox Barber, renowned clarinetist Oğuz Büyükberber reveals a hidden side of his musical personality. Focusing on his passion for electronica, Ox Barber is a glitchy, avant-garde, atmospheric, playground involving lots and lots of cables.
Layers of entangled thoughts and emotions with a nice spicy dressing of aged trauma, served with carefully engraved steamed child-play will take you away from the boredom of your daily problems by challenging you with “Why would anyone do this?” question.
Struggle to find clarity within confusion may sound confusing, and this is probably what this project sounds like.
Be prepared!
IF
Can Kozlu Drums and Percussion, Oğuz BüyükberberClarinet and Bass Clarinet Tolga Tüzün Piano and synthesizers
With their avant-grade programming, Akbank Jazz Festival has been instrumental for a generation of musicians in Turkey.
For their 30th anniversary, they curated a double disc LP for which Oğuz Büyükberber was commissioned to compose and record an original. The following Year, Can Kozlu and Tolga Tüzün were the easy answer for Büyükberber when he was invited to perform live with his favorite line up for the 31st edition.
This event was the first major festival after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and it was inevitably very powerful, both for the musicians and the public. Decades long collaboration of Büyükberber, Tüzün and Kozlu made up for a smooth yet energetic program. Which is all about a push and pull between the overlapping and individual influences each of these virtuoso players have. Broken bebop to jazzified electro maqam, and off to instant contemporary composition…
İki Abajur
Tolga Tüzün Piano, Oğuz Büyükberber bass clarinet
Buyukberber and Tuzun celebrate musical brotherhood with their first duo album for which they rehearsed over 30 years!
Turkish Poet Edip Cansever’s poem “İçerikler” (Contents) inspired the parallel-improvisation concept Büyükberber and Tüzün have developed together and worked rigorously on.
Contemplating on both the comfort and limitation of years of accumulated references, this bass clarinet and piano duo is much more than the sum of its parts.
Oğuz and Tolga met in the beginning of their twenties. They not only played all kinds of gigs varying from TV shows to free jazz sessions, most importantly, they practiced and studied together. Both being composer and improvizer, Tolga with a heavier weight on composition and Oğuz on improvisation, they kept learning from each other even though they don’t live in the same country for more than twenty years.
Recorded at İstanbul Bilgi University music studios by —-, “İki abajur” illustrates the relaxed-alert state of two accomplished artists, each with a strong opinion, experiencing and expressing in a shared time and space. On their own, while observing the other. It’s about focus, challenge, temptation, confrontation and confirma
