Senol Kucukyildirim

Senol Kucukyildirim was born in Istanbul, Turkey. He studied at Istanbul University and at Istanbul conservatory where he studied violin. Since his entire family were musicians, and his father was a drummer, he picked up drumming at a very early age. Ever since, he has been involved with many live performances in Turkey, Canada and in the USA. Meeting Don Cherry in Istanbul was very influential on him in terms of getting involved with other aspects of Jazz. This very incidental meeting with Cherry also influenced his decision to move to the United States where he continued his studies; He went to Berklee College of Music and studied privately with Ian Froman, Joe Hunt, Jamey Haddad (percussion), Giovanni Hidalgo (percussion). He had a few lessons with Ed Blackwell and Alan Dawson. Inspired by its Third Stream Department , he went to New England Conservatory. Studied with George Russel and Joe Maneri. He got involved with electronic music at Harvard University, where he had the opportunity meet and perform with Ivan Tcherepnin and John Cage. As a Jazz musician he played with Burn Nix, Cecil Taylor and Raphe Malik in NYC. He has met with Billy Higgins, Dewey Redman, Dave Liebman, and participated in some sessions. In the Boston area, he played with Aydin Esen, Joshua Redman, John Lockwood , Wynton Marsalis, Reggie Workman, Avishai Cohen, Raqib Hassan, Joe Morris, Nate McBride, Michael Adkins, Jim Hobbes, Timo Shenko, Eric Zinman and many others. Senol kucukyildirim now lives in Istanbul, travels in the Boston-NYC-Canada-Istanbul areas and performs in festivals, and radio programs.