BIOGRAPHY
Originally from central Turkey, Volkan began playing the oud as a teenager under his father's guidance, performing throughout high school and college. Since moving to the US in 2002, he has collaborated with various Turkish music ensembles in Washington DC, Chicago, and Boston. Volkan has been exploring classical, folk, and ceremonial forms of Ottoman-Turkish music, as well as the healing aspects of the makam system. In addition to the oud, he plays ney, tanbur, kanun, and kemençe, regularly performing in and around Boston. Noteworthy venues include Harvard University, MIT, Club Passim, The Burren Pub, and Belmont Public Library. Apart from his solo pursuits, he is the founder of the Boston Meshk Ensemble, a Turkish music chorus studying classical music from Turkey. Volkan, in collaboration with Theresa Thompson, has developed projects such as "Crossroads of Sound," where diverse background musicians perform music from Turkey, the Balkans, and the Middle East. He also co-curated the "Makam Healing Project," a winner of the 2019 Passim Iguana Music Fund.
I was born and raised in Kayseri, a midsize town in central Turkey, in a very musical family atmosphere. My journey in music started in this atmosphere with an old oud (plucked lute) played beautifully by my father during my childhood years. Sounds from the oud combined with my father’s voice, singing traditional Turkish classical pieces, shaped my musical brain at early ages. The rest of my brain developed in a different way, with lots of exposure to math and science and eventually made me into an electrical engineer.
As a fresh graduate from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey Electrical Engineering department, I moved to Washington, D.C. in 2002 to design and develop antennas for wireless communication systems.
I knew that music and electromagnetics could be the only combination that would satisfy my interests. These two phenomena are apparently intertwined in a sense that they are both utilized to convey a message, to connect two or more people and create a medium where an exchange of feelings takes place. They both use wave frequencies such that only a capable transmitter and receiver pair can encrypt. In the context of music, a properly tuned instrument or an alluring human voice does the work whereas in electromagnetics it is the antennas. I was lucky to get myself involved with both.
​
After I moved to Boston in 2004, I had my first encounter with the sociological and cultural aspects of music. My road crossed with the Cambridge Musiki Cemiyeti, a music study group directed by Feridun Özgören, devoted to learning and preserving the traditions of Turkish music. A large portion of our rehearsals and studies was in sohbet (conversation) form around the interpretation of music by masters of the traditional Turkish music instruments. Being a part of this enriching group, I decided not to limit myself to one instrument and I started to look for different sounds that would resonate with me. I got my first ney (reed flute) to begin with and practiced long hours by myself looking for that magical sound. Then I explored the deep and dignified sound of the tanbur (long necked fretted string instrument) and finally challenged myself with the delicacy of the kemençe (pear shaped bowed instrument).
The next stop in my journey was a Boston based Turkish music study group called Orkestra Marhaba, directed by Fred Stubbs. Marhaba provided a wonderful environment for me and for other members to express ourselves in a musical language through classical pieces of Turkish music and lots of improvisations (taksim).
My journey in music continues with the addition of new projects such as Crossroads of Sound and Boston Meshk Ensemble with the goal of bringing community in and around Boston together around an unfamiliar genre of music. I have also started to make my own recordings in my home based studio in Belmont, MA where I live with my wife AyÅŸe and two boys, Selim and Emre.