About
Ömer Erdoğdular started studying music while still a child, initially learning ney from his father. He began studying ney with Ümit Gürelman, as well as Halil Can, who influenced his intellectual approach to art. In 1965, he started ney lessons with Niyazi Sayın, which continued for many years and beyond music. In the following two decades, he participated in many radio and TV programs, orchestras and concerts, in a period when ney just began to be rediscovered in Turkey. For many years he researched the techniques of Tanburi Cemil Bey through archive recordings, reflecting the musical makam qualities and a particular playing style and sound of Cemil Bey’s improvisations onto the ney.
In 1980 he first appeared in concert with the famous soloist Bekir Sıtkı Sezgin, and from then on played in most of his concerts. From 1984 to 1987, Ömer Erdoğdular was a neyzen in Ministry of Culture’s Classical Turkish Music Chorus led by Prof. Dr. Nevzat Atlig. He made several recordings, among them with Bekir Sıtkı Sezgin, tanburi Necdet Yaşar and kemençevi İhsan Özgen. He is a founding member of the Ministry of Culture State Classical Turkish Music Ensemble in 1987, led by Necdet Yaşar from which he retired in 2014. He is also a founding member of the group Bosporus, along with Ihsan Ozgen, Mutlu Torun, and Erol Deran, performing the first Turkish music concert in Greece in 1984. As a soloist, a member of the State Classical Turkish Music Ensemble and also the Necdet Yaşar Ensemble, Ömer Erdoğdular performed around Turkey and in Europe, United States, Japan and the Middle East participating in various festivals and concerts. He devotes a significant amount of his time to teaching, in Istanbul, as a faculty member at Medipol University, and in seminars abroad, such as the annual Turkish Music Institute Workshop in New York, Labyrinth Musical Workshop in Greece, Makamhane in Austria, and the Sufi Music Retreat in California.