Birol Yayla

Birol Yayla started his music education at the State Conservatory of Istanbul Technical University in 1980. He participated in the State Classic Turkish Music Chorus as a tanbur player. In 1999 he started performing with Aziz Şenol Filiz and founded the group “Yansımalar”. The name is from the plural of the Turkish word yansıma (reflection), giving yansımalar (reflections), which in English means both the reflection of the mirror and the reflection of the mind. They released albums: “Yansımalar” (1991) and “Bab-ı Esrar” (1995) before Engin Gurney (percussionist) and Alper Berksu (keyboard player) joined. After the new formation, they released three more albums: “Serzeniş” (2000); “Vuslat” (2001) (with duduk player Suren Asaduryan) and “Pervane” (2004). The album “Pervane” was a noted world music album in Europe. Besides them, Yayla continued composing traditional Turkish music. They contributed the music for several Turkish movies: Derviş Zaim′s first film, “Tabutta Rövaşata” (1996) (along with Baba Zula); the music for “Altın Kanatlar” (2002, TV documentary); “Ferhat′la Şirin” (2002, movie), “Esir Şehrin İnsanları” (2003, TV miniseries featuring Oktay Kaynarca and Zeynep Tokuş) and the soundtrack of the film “The Last Ottoman: Yandim Ali” (2007). With Aiz Şenol Filiz, Yayla was regular guest of music shows on BRT in 1999-2000 and on TRT in 2002-2003. As a Yansımalar group, Yayla has given many concerts not only in Turkey but also abroad including the USA, Germany, France, Romania, Egypt, Tunis, Belarus, Sudan, Bahrain, Bosnia Herzegovina and North Cyprus.

Reference: yansimalar.com; kalan.com; last.fm; biographicon.com; wikipedia.org