Activities in Sofia, Veliko Tarnovo, Utrecht, Wuppertal and Cologne

Posted on November 21, 2025 by Korhan Erel

It’s been quite a while since I posted here. Got lost in existential issues and other stuff.

The concerts in Bulgaria are already over, with a lovely aftertaste. The Goethe-Institut Bulgaria invited me for three concerts and an artist talk in Sofia and Veliko Tarnovo. The Sofia events were part of Sofia Experimental 2025, curated by Vladimir Vlaev. The first concert, on November 5, was at the Goethe headquarters with Vlad’s ImproWise Ensemble and opened the whole festival. I also gave a short artist talk before that one.

On November 8, I played a solo set at Bobbina Culture Center in Sofia. On November 9, I performed another solo at the beautiful TAM in Veliko Tarnovo. It’s a wonderful venue full of warmth and good energy.

Here are two Instagram reels from my concerts in Sofia and Veliko Tarnovo

https://www.instagram.com/p/DQtRuJ5Df9c/ (Sofia)
https://www.instagram.com/p/DQ2Naq1DS1g/?img_index=2 (Veliko Tarnovo)
https://www.instagram.com/p/DQ7AIDAiMbI/

Next, I’ll be at Creative Coding Utrecht on November 22 with artist Sunjoo Lee. Together we’ll present our new audiovisual collaboration Sonified Garden built from our recordings and videos of her Electric Garden. Visit her website for more information on the wonderful Electric Garden. 

The next day, November 23, marks the start of a two-concert mini tour with Ephemeral Fragments. Florian Walter (tubax), Emily Wittbrodt (cello), and I on electronics will play at Solips in Wuppertal, then at Loft Köln on November 24.

Finally, the premiere of my piece Constraint Release for Trio Generator will truly be the final musical happening of 2025 for me. It will take place on December 1 at Acker Stadt Palast. I was very excited (and totally stressed) to compose for the amazing Natalia Pschenitschnikova, Frauke Aulbert, and Anna Clementi!

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New Duo: Neslihan Schmidt and Korhan Erel

Posted on June 9, 2025 by Korhan Erel

Pianist Neslihan Schmidt and electronics player Korhan Erel are a newly formed duo. They have set out to develop a repertoire of structured improvisations on prepared piano and electronics. They will play their debut concert at Galiläakirche in Berlin on 10th June, 2025, where they will play structured improvisations and loosely organized music. Doors open at 19:30 and music starts at 20:00.

Neslihan Schmidt is a Berlin-based pianist, educator, composer, and improviser of contemporary music. She was born and raised in Istanbul. She completed her studies as a concert pianist at the State Conservatory of Mimar Sinan University and at the Hochschule für Musik Saar, where she received a scholarship from the University of Saarbrücken due to her exceptional achievements.
Since 1999, concerts and performances in Germany and Turkey.

Neslihan Schmidt regularly accompanies projects with Sasha Waltz & Guests, and she became an integral part of the pedagogical concept of the Kinder- und JugendTanzCompany SW&G. Additionally, she composes for dance projects and for prepared piano. Her artistic work is characterized by her interest in improvisation as solo prepared piano and cooperation with various sound artists.

The second act of this evening will be Only With You, a synthesizer duo with Eliad Wagner (modular synthesizer) and Korhan Erel (Hydrasynth). Eliad and Korhan have been playing since 2021 and will soon release their debut album. Watch the video of their concert at Otherland Bookstore in Berlin in 2023.

Korhan Erel and Eliad Wagner perform at Berlin’s Otherland Bookshore in 2023

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Ephemeral Fragments in June

Posted on May 25, 2025 by Korhan Erel

The improvising trio Ephemeral Fragments was initiated by Florian Walter in 2019 at a concert in Essen. Since then, the trio consisting of Florian on tubax, Emily Wittbrodt on cello and me on electronics, has rehearsed, recorded, played concerts and released their debut album mit gefühl (with feeling). Following a Goethe Institut funded short tour in Finland, Estonia and Denmark in 2024, they were awarded the Ensemble Grant by the State of North Rhine Westphalia for 2025-2027. During this period, they will rehearse and seek feedback from outside ears. They will also explore other musical directions and play concerts in and outside Germany. Their first two activities will be two periods of rehearsals and concerts in Cologne, Bochum and Berlin. Their first concert will be at Voliere Projektraum in Bochum-Wattenscheid on June 3. Their second concert will be on June 4 in Cologne in the Bruitkasten series by IMPAKT Köln at Gemeinde, Cologne. The Berlin phase has one concert at the wonderful Richten25 on June 30.

Ephemeral Fragments are (from left to right) Florian Walter, Korhan Erel and Emily Wittbrodt (photo by Niclas Weber)

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FitFot, a family business for ambient music and more since 2023

Posted on May 6, 2025 by Korhan Erel
Curator and musician Tuçe Erel and musician and sound artist Korhan Erel looking at each other lovingly after their debut concert as the musical duo FitFot

My partner Tuçe Erel and I have started our musical family business FitFot in 2023 and played two concerts in that year and then at the wonderful, bizarre club night KOOKOO, a lovechild of Mieko Suzuki and Arno Raffeiner in 2024. Since then we have been busy developing material and have also plans to expand into discoursive lecture sound performances on ecology and other relevant issues. Enjoy our first online outing on our Bandcamp page below. If you’d like to book us, please drop me a message at contact@korhanerel.com

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“Wovon lebst du?” – an interview with me by Arvore Foundation (in German)

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Korhan Erel

I have been extremely lucky to be an Arvore Foundation recipient since September 2022. Arvore is based in Basel and has been granting living cost supplements to musicians in Switzerland and Germany for almost a decade now. This grant has enabled me to focus on my own ideas and on projects with other musicians I hold dear, but the initial months following their decision to give it to me have been confusing. This was of course a very privileged confusion, as it was caused by a sudden onset of financial relief for the coming four years.

In this video, you can watch, in (broken) German, a tongue-in-cheek interview with me by the lovely Maria Ursprung of Arvore, where I make stupid jokes, word-games, a lot of ironical statements and reflections on my own musical adventure in the past two decades.

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Upcoming Concerts in Berlin: Klangbildung 24, Bonding Sounds, Richten25 and Super Silent

Posted on October 1, 2024 by Korhan Erel

On October 4, I’ll play a concert with the amazing musicians that are Shabnam Parvaresh on clarinets/effects and Sofia Labropoulou on kanun at exploratorium’s Klangbildung 24 Festival that is also a celebration of the venue’s 20th anniversary. Check out the full program at this link! There are workshops, book launches and an exhibition besides concerts.

https://exploratorium-berlin.de/en/events/overarching-events/festival-klangbildung24/

On October 10, I’ll play two concerts in the Bonding Sounds concert series. The series is organized and curated by Zeynep Ayşe Hatipoğlu and Merve Salgar. The Bonding Sounds Concert Series brings together sixteen improvisers from Berlin’s music scene and international Turkish musicians. The concerts, spanning two weekends on October 10, 11, 17, and 18, will take place at two Berlin venues. The concerts are free of charge.

The first concert on October 10 will be at the Alte Feuerwache in Berlin with the classical kemenche player extraordinaire Canfeza Gündüz. This will be followed by the duo of Ufuk Elik (bağlama) and Zeynep Ayşe Hatipoğlu (cello). A third concert with all of us will end the evening. Check out the rest of the program at the link below. I’ll be there on all evenings to enjoy music performed by wonderful, mostly first-time duos.

Bonding Sounds on Digital in Berlin

On October 26, Only With You, my synth duo with Eliad Wagner will play a set at Richten25. The second set will be Eric Bauer. 

And finally, on November 1, I will play my new solo piece Spam Victim – Poems at the exciting solo concert series Super Silent for new, experimental and improvised music organized by the XJAZZ! Festival. Spam Victim – Poems is based on the contents of a series of spam emails I received over the course of 2024. My first Spam Victim album, Spam me Senseless, is available for download on my Bandcamp site:

https://korhanerel.bandcamp.com/album/spam-me-senseless-2

The second act of the evening at Emmauskirche in Kreuzberg will be the drummer extraordinaire Philo Tsoungui! I’m really looking forward to hearing Philo’s set. Philo happens to be the drummer of the amazing rock band Mars Volta, by the way. Check out the full program of the series that’ll span three days:

https://www.xjazz.net/p/SUPER-SILENT-1-5n5qBpq0S93sGLBGSvP76U

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Solo, duo and group concerts in Berlin

Posted on June 25, 2024 by Korhan Erel

On Wednesday, June 26, I’ll be playing an improvised concert with Jessica Ackerley (guitar), Eli Wallace (piano), Camila Nebbia (sax) and Cansu Tanrıkulu (voice, effects) at Sowieso. This is going to be a fun evening of first encounters for me. The only musician I’ve played with before is Cansu – in many settings as well as in our duo Pep Talk

On Saturday, June 29, I’ll be playing a structured improvisation on synthesizers at the SUBTOPIA event at Stapeltor in Duisburg. I’ll be sharing the bill with Güner Künier, Clara Levy, A2ICE & BO3 as well as Ilija Matusko (reading) and sun_ma___ & finsterNiz and ANDRAS_2020 on the decks. Here’s a newspaper feature about this one-day festival. The article is in German but who needs to know other languages nowadays when we have AI to help us out! There is a photo of me with hair in it!

The concert in Duisburg had to be postponed due to local difficulties with the European Football Championship and a very large anti-AfD demonstration that will take place in Duisburg on the day of the concert. I will announce the new date soon.

FitFot performing at Novilla, Berlin in September 2023. Photo by Asarela Orchidia Dewi

On Friday, July 5th, Fitfot, the ambient family business with the love of my life Tuçe Erel, will play at the 15th Anniversary of KOOKOO at OHM! This one is special, because it is our second concert ever and at what an event! KOOKOO, organized and curated by Mieko Suzuki and Arno Raffeiner, has been more or less the only club night we’ve been going to for the past 2 years, and we’re thrilled to be playing there on their anniversary night! Other acts and DJs of the night are: DJ DIE SOON & Rully Shabara, Maya Wada, Mieko Suzuki, Rabih Beaini, Tot Onyx, Ara

Link for more info: https://de.ra.co/events/1949768

On Wednesday, July 17th, I’ll play solo at the Experimentik series curated by Seiji Morimoto. It will be wonderful to revisit this series after many years and also to share the bill with the wonderful Antje Vowinkel as well as Lorenzo Abbatoir, whose music I’m looking very much forward to experiencing.

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Upcoming Concerts in Berlin: Mutables and Only With You Performances

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Korhan Erel

After playing two concerts on May 3rd at Istanbul’s wonderful concert venue Borusan Music House with Pep Talk and Böseblick, I stayed mostly under the radar, only going up for rehearsals and fun stuff with friends. Before my partner Tuçe Erel and I leave for Basel for a 2-week residency in Basel, Switzerland, I will play two shows in Berlin. The first one with a new project, the latter with an existing favorite of mine.

The new project has the working title “Mutables” and is the brainchild of myself, butoh dancer Min Yoon and analog live visualist Nicolas Wiese. With Mutables we have set out to tell the tale of the post-human “Mutables”, who have the unique gift of perceiving and manipulating Hierarchitons, the particles that form hierarchical relationships between humans, post-humans and non-humans. The project is in its infancy and this performance with Min and Nicolas will be mostly improvised, but based on material we have already rehearsed. We will perform at Untergrün at Lichtblick Kino on May 24th at 20:00 with the kind invitation by bassist Fyodor Stepanov.

My duo, Only With You, with synth wizard and overall cool person Eliad Wagner is going to play at Panda Platforma/Panda Theater in Berlin on May 29th. Eliad is also going to play with another duo partner, the amazing Andrea Parkins. The concert will end with an improvised trio performance. Only With You is no stranger to Panda, having played their first concert in 2024 at the Trouble in the East Records Festival on Feb 1st. Starts at 20:00

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Pep Talk and Böseblick at Istanbul Borusan Music House

Posted on April 8, 2024 by Korhan Erel

I will be bringing two bands of mine to Istanbul in May. Pep Talk, our experimental pop improvisation duo with extraordinary singer-composer Ayşe Cansu Tanrıkulu, and the electronic music quartet Böseblick with Alessandra Eramo, Kirsten Reese and Ariel Orah will play at Istanbul’s gem of a music venue Borusan Music House on May 3, 2024.

Pep Talk combines poetry, mainly from Charles Lindsay’s wonderful book Recipes for the Mind on Terranova Press, strange lyrics, beats and other elements from pop music with improvisation and composition. Cansu and I have been collaborating on several fronts since 2017 including theater music for the play Krampus at Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin (2021) and several improvised music concerts (video of our XJazz Festival pandemic concert below). This concert will be the debut concert by Pep Talk.

Böseblick is an experimental electro-acoustic quartet comprising of me and Kirsten Reese on laptop, Alessandra Eramo on voice, cassette players and effects, and Ariel Orah on electronics. It was founded right after a concert at Sowieso in August 2021 and has since played at KM28 Berlin, Klub Katarakt Festival Hamburg, Berlin School of Sound and Cashmere Radio. An excerpt from our KM28 concert cann be viewed below.

Borusan Music House has been a major supporter of “strange music” in Istanbul for over a decade and they have been very generous to me over the years. Including two concerts I played in Berlin that was co-organized by them, I will have played 13 concerts there since 2011.

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Ephemeral Fragments goes on tour!

Posted on March 7, 2024 by Korhan Erel

The improvising trio of Ephemeral Fragments was founded in 2019 in Essen, Germany and has been playing and recording since then. It consists of cellist Emily Wittbrodt, tubax player Florian Walter and me on electronics. We released our debut album “Mit Gefühl” on Umland Records in 2022. After playing various venues in Germany in the last four years, Ephemeral Fragments goes on tour in March. Actually, there will be two separate tours: one in the German State of North-Rhine Westfalia and the other in Estonia, Finland and Denmark:

The NRW tour consists of three concerts in Essen, Bochum and Cologne

09.03 Bürgermeisterhaus, Essen
10.03 Q1, Bochum
12.03 Plattform nicht dokumentierbarer Ereignisse, Cologne

On March 18, Ephemeral Fragments will hop on a ferry from the German port of Travemünde towards Tallinn to play their first out of three concerts on their Nordic / Baltic tour. The schedule is as follows:

March 20, Tallinn in the concert series Improtest at Estonian Centre of Contemporary Music
March 22, Helsinki in the concert series Suhina Klubi at Myymälä2
March 26, Copenhagen at Klub Primi

This tour is kindly supported by Goethe Institut in the framework of their funding series “Touring Green”. As the idea is to use only environment-friendly means of transportation, we will be taking two very long ferry rides from Germany to Tallinn and then from Helsinki to Stockholm, and then a train to Copenhagen. Exciting!!

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