Mehmet Ali Sanlikol: whatsnext? (DÜNYA)

By David Luhrssen

Duke Ellington might have liked whatsnext?; Gil Evans and Lalo Schifrin might also have endorsed this recreation of orchestral jazz with a decided bent toward the jazz-influenced TV and movie scores of the ’60s and ’70s. Turkish born, Boston-based composer Mehmet Ali Sanlikol wields a big band with occasional jazz-rock fusion touches and carefully tuned references to rhythms and melodies that flourished within the Ottoman Empire. Unlike most careless “world musicians,” Sanlikol is wisely skeptical in fusing different musical languages and takes care to ensure that the syntax matches before vocabularies are combined.