İlhan Erşahin’s Istanbul Sessions

There are at least two types of musicians: some follow a specific path that leads deep inward. Others are drawn to side roads and constantly strike out in new directions. İlhan Erşahin, born in Stockholm in 1965 to a Turkish father and a Swedish mother, definitely belongs to the second category. The saxophonist started with rock and reggae, then moved on to jazz, relocated to New York, played in numerous bands, and opened himself up to hip-hop, dub, trip-hop, and other genres to realize his hybrid ideas with Wax Poetic; he composed film scores and founded the club Nublu in the East Village in 2002, which also gave rise to a record label. His exciting project Istanbul Sessions launched in Turkey in 2008. “The sound we aimed for from the start was something like a rock-dance vibe. We wanted to play instrumental music for an audience that dances to it.” Just how captivatingly they achieve this has been evident here on several occasions. Now the quartet returns with the highly acclaimed album “Mahalle.”