With his extraordinary pianistic talents, the Turkish pianist and composer Fazıl Say has been touching audiences and critics alike for more than 25 years in a way that has become rare in the increasingly materialistic and elaborately organized classical music world. Concerts with this artist are more direct, more open, more exciting; they go straight to the heart.
Fazil Say studied piano and composition at the state Conservatory of his home town Ankara, the Robert Schumann Institute in Düsseldorf and the Berlin Conservatory. He is frequently invited by leading orchestras throughout the world and has performed in the world’s most prestigious concert halls.
Equally at home as a composer, he has written commissioned works for the WDR, the Salzburger Festspiele, the Konzerthaus Dortmund and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, to name but a few.
In March 2010 his five-year residency at the Konzerthaus Dortmund ended with a four-day Festival which saw the World Première of his First Symphony, “Istanbul Symphony”. Previous residencies include the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Chatelet in Paris, the Baden-Baden Festival, the Meran Festival and the Konzerthaus Berlin. His latest residency with the Hessischer Rundfunk in Frankfurt ended in March 2013.