The prestigious award, given in a different branch of art each year by the ministry to recognize artists who have contributed to the development of their respective areas of specialty in Turkey, is handed out by a committee headed by the culture minister.The committee decided to bestow the 2009 award on Sayın and Yaşar for “their efforts to carry traditional Turkish music culture to the next century and convey this culture to coming generations through their high quality performances as well as for improving the practice of solo virtuosity in Turkish music,” Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay explained earlier.
Saturday night’s ceremony at the Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall in Harbiye was attended by a crowded group of high profile guests that included Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Minister Günay, State Minister Hayati Yazıcı and İstanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş, among others, the Anatolia news agency reported on Saturday. Minister Günay, in a speech he delivered there, said Sayın and Yaşar, as two artists who have been producing in the field of classical Turkish music for over half a century, “deserve to be appreciated more than any other living artist in Turkey in the field of classical Turkish music.”
The 82-year-old Sayın and the 79-year-old Yaşar received their awards from the prime minister during the ceremony, where “Bir Yaşam Öyküsü” (A Life Story), a film by Fahri Tanır, which recounts the two artists’ lives and works, was also screened.
Yaşar, a founding member of the İstanbul State Turkish Music Ensemble, said in his acceptance speech that he was honored to receive the award. “I can truthfully say that -- with my fellow friend Niyazi Sayın -- we strictly obeyed the rules of our mentors all through our careers. … We cared for art, the discipline of art and its reputation. … Thank you so much. … If we hadn’t done this, we couldn’t have earned this much love and respect,” he added.
The versatile Sayın, also a master ebru (paper marbling) artist and photographer in addition to being one of the greatest ney performers in Turkey, said in his speech that he deemed the ney and the tambur as identical instruments, pointing to what he and Yaşar did as actually the same. “In fact these [musical instruments] are [embodying] the human. … We tried to serve this country in the best way we could,” he said.
