Evin İlyasoğlu

Born in Istanbul, Evin İlyasoğlu started playing the piano at the age of seven years with Marie Çobangil. She continued her music studies at the Istanbul University’s Conservatory (1957-1963) under the supervision of famed tudor, Ferdi Statzer. She graduated from the American College for Girls “Robert College” (1966). She attended the Musical Journalism and Comparative History of Music seminars at the Michigan State University in U.S.A.(1969-1971).

İlyasoğlu produced and presented classical and contemporary music programmes on Radio Istanbul for some twenty years. She was also the producer and presenter of a number of TV series.

Her literary and musical activities went side by side. She won the first prize of Yeni Dergi contest in criticism with her essay on Nazım Hikmet’s poem, “The Song of the Weeping Willow” (1968). She won the Turkish Language Society’s Radio and TV Language Prize (1978). Her book, Music Over Time with 10 CDs, was commisioned to her by the Yapı Kredi Bank, for its 50th anniversary and it made 9 editons selling more than 40.000 copies. Her reviews, essays and interviews have been published in numerous magazines (including Gramophone), newspapers and encyclopedias since 1980. Her novel Theodora’s Enemies appeared in 2005. She has written 20 books, almost all of them about general history of music and modern Turkish music including portraits of the musical celebrities.

Currently she is a lecturer at the Boğaziçi University and the organizer of the weekly classical music concerts of Albert Long Hall since 15 years. She has been a columnist for the Cumhuriyet Daily since 1991.