Talk: Rumi & Music of the Whirling Dervishes

Kudsi Erguner is one of the foremost ney (Turkish reed-flute) masters of our times. He is also considered as an authority of traditional Sufi music. Erguner has, in a series of internationally acclaimed projects, introduced Ottoman and Sufi music to the world. He lives and works in Paris as a musician, composer, musicologist, teacher and author.

Erguner was born into a musical family with Sufi tradition stretching back four generations. He is the only Turkish musician of his generation to have been taught the ney in the classic aural tradition by his father, Ulvi Erguner, who was the last great master of that instrument, and the former director of Radio İstanbul. In his parents’ house, young Erguner was fortunate enough to meet many established musicians from the older generation that held the key to Sufi tradition. Hundreds of years of musical culture that strive towards freedom and ecstasy are embodied in Erguner’s music and playing.

He has performed and collaborated with a wide range of internationally celebrated artists such as Robert Wilson, Peter Brook, Markus Stockhausen, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Jordi Savall amongst others. Erguner is also renowned for his collaboration with Peter Gabriel for the soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ.