new saz from Istanbul!

8th-11th January 2018
Istanbul

About time! My first trip to Turkey, and a new saz after abusing my old one for nearly twenty years.

Rosy and Leon (Evil Usses) had planned a trip and asked me to join them for the first few days. So I was able to stay with their friends Naomi and Ösgür in an Ottoman house in the Old City, get shown around, and check out various saz makers' workshops (I'd done some research online). This was the first place we checked. I was tempted by one particular saz, but...

...I eventually found Yusuf Toroman's workshop, up a narrow flight of stairs off a back street full of shops stuffed exclusively with car parts. This was seen on the way up (sounds like a plea to a Saruman-level sorceror!):

Mr. Toroman's instruments sound like they were made in heaven. He proudly showed me his workshop (Ösgür translated and noted the pictures of famous Turkish players proudly clutching new instruments made there). No haggling, just fair prices for good work, that's his style. I was instantly in love with my new acquisition. (Don't be fooled by the audio quality on this little clip from Rosy's phone:)

Later that day I was taken to a sprawling, night-time, gypsy flea market where I found myself drawn to a reproduction icon painting. I bought it, just for a souvenir of the occasion, and casually commented to my friends that "I'd like it to be St. Cecilia" — patroness of musicians — but that I'd probably never know which saint it was (and there were certainly no clues of a musical nature).

On returning to the UK (having been inexplicably given a first class seat, my precious new saz thus being handled with kid gloves by the flight attendants), I tried GoogleImage matching it, and yes, it is she, from an early 14th century altarpiece in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence! How could it be otherwise?

Hail, Bright Cecilia!