About

Tolga Salman (b. 1969, Ankara)

He completed his classical Western music education in Turkey and Germany. Influenced by leading composers and arrangers of modern tango music such as Astor Piazzolla, Dino Saluzzi and Orhan Avşar, he began to focus intensively on the bandoneon as a self-taught musician in 2002. In the years that followed, he had the opportunity to meet bandoneon masters such as Dino Saluzzi and Hector Ulises Passarella, and, following their advice, built up a wide repertoire on this diatonic instrument.

In addition to the Salman Duo, which he formed with his brother, the cellist Koray Salman, he has performed with the Hector Ulises Passarella Typical Orchestra (Italy), Orkestra Akademik Başkent, Cellistanbul, TangoNeva, Ensemble Nodus, the Tolga Salman–Rustam Rahmedov Duo, the Kağan Korad–Tolga Salman Duo, the Tolga Salman–Emre Tamer Duo (Duo Intervallo) and the Caminata Quartet. Antalya, Istanbul, Adana, Izmir, Bursa and Shumen (Bulgaria) He has given numerous concerts as a solo bandoneonist with the State Symphony Orchestras, the Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, the Ankara State Choir, the Presidential Symphony Orchestra, the Olten Philharmonic Orchestra and the Istanbul CRR Jazz Orchestra. He has also performed ‘nuevo tango’ concerts with pianist Fazıl Say, featuring a repertoire of works by Astor Piazzolla.

The conductors he has worked with include Hector Ulises Passarella, Antonio Pirolli, Ender Sakpınar, Andrew Greenwood, Alessandro Cedrone, Hakan Şensoy, Stefano Mazzoleni, Cemi’i Can Deliorman, Patrycja Pieczara, Nail Yavuzoğlu, Rustam Rahmedov, Rengim Gökmen, Vachtang Matchavariani and Tulio Gagliardo Varas.

He has been regularly invited as a solo concert artist to the Krefeld Bandoneon Festival, organised biennially by the Cultural Office of the City of Krefeld, Germany, since 1996. Other major festivals at which he has performed as a soloist include the Istanbul International Tango Festival, the Lisbon International Choir Festival (Portugal), the Miami International Guitar Festival (USA), the Drogheda International Folk Music Festival (Ireland) and the International Ankara and Istanbul Classical Music Festivals. He performed the Turkish premieres, as a soloist, of Mauricio Kagel’s *Tango Alemán* – a parody of Carlos Gardel – and Martin Palmeri’s *Misa a Buenos Aires*.

Tolga Salman performs concerts both in Turkey and abroad with the bandoneon signed ‘AA’ signed by Alfred Arnold (1932), which was previously owned by bandoneonist Orhan Avşar and presented to him by architect Abdullah Ebussuutoğlu following a solo bandoneon recital he gave in Istanbul, and which was restored by the German expert Carsten Heveling.