About Deniz
Deniz Taşar is an Istanbul based singer, songwriter and a multidisciplinary artist. Her music and art can be defined as an interdisciplinary, personal storytelling with lots of room for improvisation and a genre and medium bending musical and artistic approach.
Deniz started her artistic journey in her high school years with the Robert College Orchestra where she remained as the lead singer for four years as well as taking parts in plays and musicals at the RC Theater Company whilst broadening her vision with courses like Studio Art, Modern Drama and Film & Literature and attending the Pre-College Program for Drawing and Painting at The School of Visual Arts in New York.
She went on to study Communication Design, majoring in Interactive Media Design at Yıldız Technical University’s Arts and Design Faculty in 2009 and started performing with her bands around Istanbul. She took Video Art, Multimedia Project, Acting and Voice Over courses at New York University in summer 2011 and studied in Escola Superior de Artes e Design’s Communication Design and Multimedia and Digital Art departments in Porto, Portugal as part of an Erasmus exchange program in 2012. When she came back to Turkey, she formed Deniz Taşar Quartet with students from the Jazz Performance Department, recorded her first jazz standards and entered the three major jazz competitions in Turkey while graduating as an honorary student from her university.
She won Nardis Young Jazz Vocal Competition, Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts’ Young Jazz Competition and Akbank JAmZZ Competition ‘Best Interpretation Award’ in 2013 and since then she has been performing in prestigious jazz venues and festivals such as International Istanbul Jazz Festival, Akbank Jazz Festival in Turkey, International Nomme Jazz Festival in Estonia, Venice Jazz Festival in Italy and XJAZZ in Germany. She was awarded by Akbank Jazz Festival to attend The New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music’s collaborative Jazz Workshop with the Veneto Jazz Festival happening in Venice, Italy where she took several courses including a Jazz Vocal Masterclass by the renowned jazz vocalist Amy London.
Deniz released her highly praised debut album Uykuda Bir Bulut in 2016. The album concentrates on a theme of struggle, telling personal stories showing her take on the Turkish jazz music, with all lyrics and music written by her. Same year she also released Chapter One with her bass-vocal duo project Songs From A Breeze, an album comprising of 8 songs, music co-written and lyrics written by her.
In 2019, three of her songs were included in ‘the 100 outstanding jazz songs from Turkey in the 2010’s’ playlist curated by renowned jazz critics and writers. Same year, she released her highly anticipated single Onu Ona Ona Onu, a manifestation of her musical and visual aesthetic, experimenting with genres like soul, contemporary jazz and alternative while taking us on a journey through variety of emotions. The song comes with a - ten minutes long - short film with art direction by Taşar herself.
In 2020, she began the year with the ceramics exhibition OTUZ that showcased Taşar’s multidisciplinary attributes followed by the release of her song Uzaktan, from her upcoming album that later served as Taşar’s directorial debut with a music video for the same song. She co-wrote, performed and released The Unfold for the first Turkish Netflix original film One-Way to Tomorrow directed by Ozan Açıktan. She was the youngest singer-songwriter that was featured in Akbank Jazz Festival’s 30th year compilation album Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, released in October 2020 with her song A Thank You Card.
She released her second solo album Pişman Olunmayan Dünler (Yesterdays, Not Regretted) in February 2021. The album evolves from jazz with its approach to arranging and performing and with its ways of creating space for improvisations while varying in sound by incorporating elements of genres like indie pop, alternative rock, hip hop and electronic music. Each song, unique with its sound and soul is connected through Taşar’s characteristic vocal style to paint a picture and tell the tales of her “Yesterdays, Not Regretted”. It tells the story of growing, reasoning and getting wiser while showing different sides and the new direction of Taşar’s songwriting.
Her latest releases include collaborations with artists from varying backgrounds, whether it’s a commissioned piece for a Disney+ original show, a hip-hop track enriched by jazzy vocals, a world-fusion track with Taşar’s rapping or some mainstream jazz pieces filled with rich storytelling, the artist always finds a way to nurture her creativity by the exploration of different genres, methods and mediums.
Sharing the stage with the likes of Michael League, a four-time Grammy award winner and the man behind the globally renowned band Snarky Puppy, the influential British jazz saxophonist and rapper Soweto Kinch, jazz musician, author and a political activist Gilad Atzmon, internationally acclaimed New York based clarinetist Oran Etkin and many other exceptional jazz musicians around the globe, Taşar loves collaborating and taking part in creative projects.
In these past two years, she designed the content, wrote and performed a six-part YouTube series Journey to Music with Deniz Taşar, produced for children in collaboration with IKSV Alt Kat and Istanbul Jazz Festival, sponsored by the US Consulate. She took the role of co-musical director of an all-women’s ensemble supported by the British Council and in collaboration with Serious from London and Pozitif from Istanbul for the Women of the World Festival held in Müze Gazhane, bringing together musicians from Turkey and the UK. She created and recorded the podcast series Pişman Olunmayan Dünler that features conversations with other creatives and gives insight to her music from the latest album with the same name. She took part in the still active Silk Road Songbook that features artists from China to Turkey and is curated by artists from the US and Canada where history, music and video art intertwine and the performances of original music is still being exhibited worldwide.
She founded her record label SOLAS Records where she releases most of her music. She has an art and design platform TAŞARart that takes care of all the visuals for her projects whether it’s an album cover or a set design. Her work was showcased in her latest exhibition ESKİİZ / OldTrace in a month long exhibition in December 2022 at Bant Mag. Havuz / Bina in Kadıköy. Taşar was recently awarded the title "Best Jazz Artist" of the year by the prestigious radyo boğaziçi Music Awards.
She released the singles Söyle Deniz and Damlaya Damlaya and then released her latest album OVERFLOWING with music videos up on her YouTube channel. OVERFLOWING defines Taşar's version of pop music, bringing together pop, R&B, hip hop and dance music while derailing into the experimental and the alternative approaches of creating, expected of the artist. The album was played live for the first time at Babylon on the 30th of May, celebrating the artist's third solo album.
