Precision, response and a shared breath.

I have never understood the stage as a place where one merely performs a piece from beginning to end.

For me, it is where preparation is exposed. Technique, attention and character are tested at the same time, often within a few minutes. I use the comparison deliberately: performing can feel almost devotional. There is preparation before it, complete concentration during it, and a quiet reckoning afterwards.

Playing lead violin with the Koç University Orchestra taught me that the first-violin role is not simply a more audible part. You may be carrying the principal melody, but you are also responsible for hearing the architecture around it. You follow the larger direction while managing your own entrances, articulation and timing. Leadership in an orchestra is not always a matter of producing more sound. Very often, it means listening with greater responsibility.

Working in bands developed a different part of my musicianship. With Bilinç Akışı, the violin moved beyond a strictly classical function. I worked with improvised melodic material, long crescendos and atmospheric layers. Post-rock taught me that intensity does not have to arrive immediately. It can be constructed patiently—through repetition, restraint and the careful accumulation of sound.

I also founded TenTene and performed as its violinist. Building the group and later playing a memorable concert in Kadıköy showed me how closely performance depends on trust established before the stage. A band does not become coherent under the lights. By that point, the work has either been done or it has not.

Each musical language has sharpened a different faculty in me. Classical music gave me technical exactness. Jazz and fusion strengthened my harmonic curiosity, my responsiveness and my understanding that placement and accent can matter as much as pitch. Post-rock taught me patience, texture and atmosphere. Moving between these worlds has not made my musical identity less defined. It has made it more adaptable without making it anonymous.

One of the performances I remember most clearly was the Koç Orchestra’s May 2025 year-end concert. By then, several pieces in the programme—particularly First Be a Woman—had become more than repertoire. They had become associated with my role in the orchestra, which meant I felt a very personal obligation to play them well.

I had already worked on the octaves, transitions and difficult passages extensively. Then I became preoccupied with an extremely violinistic detail: the nails of my left hand.

What should have been a routine task became a three-hour operation. To anyone outside the instrument, this may sound excessive. To a violinist preparing for a demanding concert, it can seem almost rational.

When I walked on stage that evening, the room gradually disappeared. I was aware of the part, the contact of the fingers and the movement of the bow. The piece that had demanded the most from me in practice became the point at which I felt most concentrated. That is what performance means to me: preparation becoming so complete that, for a few minutes, it no longer looks like preparation.

I am open to serious concert and event work, orchestral and band projects, studio recording, guest-violin appearances, jazz-fusion and experimental music, post-rock, and music created for film or visual work. I can develop violin parts for existing compositions, propose string approaches and arrangements, or create material through improvisation in collaboration with composers and producers.

I am also interested in podcasts, interviews, media work, educational collaborations and interdisciplinary projects with artists and cultural institutions.

As ARSLAN CLASSICS — Academy of Music & Arts develops, I am equally open to hearing from educators and professional musicians who may wish to teach, lead workshops or build projects within the academy. The institution is intended to grow beyond the work of a single performer, without losing the standards on which it was founded.

When considering a project, I pay close attention to the seriousness of the people involved, the musical quality of the work, rehearsal discipline, institutional reliability, technical conditions, venue and budget. I do not accept unprepared, last-minute or unrehearsed performances. I am not interested in playback work, decorative appearances in which the violin is treated as a prop, or vague offers of “visibility” presented in place of professional conditions.

I am primarily available for projects in Istanbul, including concerts and studio sessions. Serious proposals from elsewhere in Türkiye or abroad are also welcome, provided that travel, rehearsal, production and financial conditions are discussed clearly.

A meaningful collaboration is not simply the act of adding violin to someone else’s project.

It is the shared acceptance of responsibility for the music.