Ensemble FisFüz

Oriental Jazz - The Ensemble FisFüz was established in 1995 in Freiburg/Breisgau by Murat Coşkun and Annette Maye. They initially began as as duet with darbuka and clarinet, played folk songs and dances from Turkey as well as instrumental art-music from the Ottoman empire and grew one year later into a trio accompanied by the lute player Karim Othman-Hassan. The repertoire of the group expanded itself: along with the Turkish folk songs, music-pieces also came from Turkish shadow- theater, Greek and Arabic songs and instrumental music as well as the first self-compositions.

The Ensemble FisFüz was complete in 1998 with Wolfgang Maye on the bass. The quartet quickly gained itself a high profile nationwide, toured throughout Northern and Southern Germany and won the 1998 SWR World-Music prize in Stuttgart. The Ensemble FisFüz then began to also play on international stages: during performances in Austria and in Switzerland, concert-tours followed up in Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, France, Luxembourg and Portugal. Finally, they also crossed the European border to Morocco, Tunisia and Iran.

Meanwhile, the band had changed its musical focus to performing self-compositions. The compositions originated from all band-members comparatively and were arranged together with continuous rehearsal. In 2001 to 2004 Michael Bornhak accompanied the Ensemble FizFüz on the contrabass. Since 2006, the Ensemble FisFüz again plays as a trio together with the native Istanbul Ud player Gürkan Balkan. It is in this mold that the current program “Yakamoz” originated which can also be heard on the current album of the same title.