Necati Çelik was born in 1955 in the province of Konya, Turkey, home of the Mevlevi order of dervishes. At the age of seven he began playing the bağlama and in the early 1970s he was introduced to the oud. In 1973 he took part in the Mevlevi rituals for the first time, and it was here that he would meet some of Turkey's foremost oud masters, who helped him to increase his mastery of the instrument. Two years later he established his own private music school in Konya, teaching oud to hundreds of students, after which he worked briefly as an oud teacher in the Music Department of Konya's Seljuk University. In 1986 Çelik joined the Turkish Ministry of Culture's State Classical Music Ensemble, and at the same time began to teach oud at Ege University in Izmir. By 1989 he had joined the Istanbul State Classical Turkish Music Ensemble, and was also the leading oud player in the Necdet Yaşar ensemble, performing with them each month in Istanbul and across Turkey. Following an invitation to the USA in 1993 for a series of solo performances, Çelik has returned to California and New Mexico each year to give oud lessons and recitals, and has also taught and performed every August at the Middle Eastern Music Camp held in Mendocino, California. He is currently an active member of the State Classical Turkish Music Ensemble in Istanbul.
Yasemin: Classical Turkish Oud Music
(7/8 Music 079803)
The Turkish oud master perform a series of improvisations and compositions by the great Turkish classical composers, such as Tanburi Cemil Bey and Cinuçen Tanrıkorur.
