Selen Gülün - KAPI (2023)

Longtime friendship of Marcello Allulli, Emanuele de Raymondi, and Selen Gülün has led the three musicians to come together and create this multicultural project. Emanuele de Raymondi had already begun to compose some of the pieces in this album and wanted to record Marcello’s saxophone playing to create samples to build up original sketches. When they dreamed about the future sound together, they thought Selen Gülün’s piano playing and vocal timber would fit just perfectly to this music, and asked her to join the project. Creating and performing music separately with Marcello and Emanuele before, Selen found the idea charming and the project started. When they met in Rome in March 2013, Selen and Marcello brought ideas to the prepared compositional sketches, helping to shape the pieces with their musical voices. Any time the trio had the chance to come together to perform, they used these original forms as sketches to improvise, and to layer more sounds and ideas on top. Finally, they recorded the album live at the Istanbul Bilgi University Music studios in February 2015 in Istanbul. Together they also recorded some of Selen and Marcello’s compositions. Because it took a few years to complete, the music in this album is the result of many layers of time, travels, places, and experiences. Through real teamwork, each of the compositions found their deeper soul.