Alp Ersönmez

İzmir, a business degree, and a free trip to Kuşadası

Ersönmez was born in İzmir in 1974 and finished school at Bornova Anadolu Lisesi in 1992. The instrument arrived by accident rather than calling: he told Cumhuriyet in March 2021 that he took up the bass because his friends' band needed one and the job came with a free holiday in Kuşadası. That is the whole origin story, and he has never dressed it up as anything else.

The academic route ran alongside it and took a long time to converge. He took a business degree at Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi, finishing in 1997, and only afterwards went formally into music, graduating from the jazz composition programme at İstanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi in 2003. By then he was already working in İstanbul studios, which meant the degree functioned less as a start than as a way of organising what he had been doing by ear for a decade.

The session player Turkish pop keeps on retainer

The part of his career that pays is largely invisible on the sleeve. Ersönmez has held the bass chair for Tarkan, the single biggest export in Turkish pop, and for the singer-songwriter Nil Karaibrahimgil, and he works as musical director of the band behind the pop singer Yalın. It is the kind of CV that keeps a player in constant work and out of print.

He also crosses into the arranging and production side of those records. He arranged and played bass and keyboards on Athena's album Pis in 2010, and in 2015 he was arranger and co-producer on Dilek Türkan's Suya Söyledim — a classical Turkish vocal record, a long way from a rock band's rhythm section. Within jazz his credits run through Erkan Oğur, Erik Truffaz, Bugge Wesseltoft, Butch Morris, Eddie Henderson, Arto Tunçboyacıyan and Papa Dee of Brooklyn Funk Essentials, plus standing membership of MadenÖktemErsönmez, Wonderland, FOURinthePOCKET and Sonic Boom, whose single Got It appeared in 2022.

Two careers running in parallel like this usually produce a player with a reliable sound and no particular voice. The records under his own name were the argument against that reading.

Yazısız, then eight years of Cereyanlı

His first album as leader, Yazısız, came out in 2011, drawing on contemporary harmonic writing across several styles rather than settling into one. The follow-up took the best part of a decade, and the delay is documented rather than mythologised: recording for the electro-jazz project Cereyanlı began in February 2013, and Ersönmez told Cumhuriyet that the sessions wrapped just as the Gezi protests broke out, after which the record sat.

Cereyanlı finally surfaced in 2020, with the first instalment issued as an EP, Cereyanlı-A, on the Space Goats label. He calls the music dans kokulu caz — dance-scented jazz — built from sequencer and computer-assisted arrangements that he then has to make work with musicians in a room. The guest list is unusually wide for a bassist's solo project: Truffaz, Wesseltoft, Erşahin, Papa Dee, Arto Tunçboyacıyan and the trumpeter İmer Demirer. He presented it at Akbank Sanat on 10 April 2020 as part of the venue's Evin Caz Hali programme.

In the same interview he was plain about the format he misses. Records used to arrive as objects worth waiting for, and he said he misses that excitement while accepting there is nothing to be done about it — a remark that reads differently now that Istanbul Sessions are pressing gatefold vinyl again.

Istanbul Sessions and the building of Mahalle

İlhan Erşahin launched Istanbul Sessions in 2008: the Stockholm-born saxophonist who founded the Nublu club and label in New York's East Village, working Turkish scales, club rhythms and jazz improvisation into instrumental music meant to be danced to. Erşahin has described the aim as a rock-dance feel played for an audience that would move to it, not study it. Ersönmez has been the bassist and, increasingly, the co-architect throughout.

Mahalle, the band's sixth studio album, was released on 16 January 2026 through Nublu Records, produced by Ersönmez and Erşahin. It was recorded at Babajim İstanbul with Cihan Barış engineering, mixed by Caio Carvalho and mastered by David McNair. The core line-up is Ersönmez on bass, Turgut Alp Bekoğlu on drums and İzzet Kızıl on percussion. Its eight tracks are named after İstanbul districts — Yedi Tepe, Asmalı, Galata, Haliç, Tünel, Karaköy, Odakule, Tersane — and while most of the writing came out of the group, several pieces are Ersönmez's alone.

The release was staged rather than dumped: pre-orders opened in October 2025, limited 7" singles went out ahead of the album, and the gatefold LP followed in March 2026.

How Mahalle landed

Reviewers reached for the same word, cinematic, and largely agreed on what the record is not. Writing on 8 January 2026, Nostalgia King called it the band's most cinematic work to date and singled out Ersönmez's bass as the compositional spine across several tracks, with Kızıl's percussion supplying the traditional texture against it.

Ljubinko Zivkovic's review for Echoes and Dust made the point that Mahalle is a portrait of İstanbul that deliberately declines to lean on recognisably Turkish sounds, threading them through a modern soul and R&B groove instead; he judged the quartet precise without excess, and concluded that combining Erşahin's Turkish roots with soul groove and jazz touches can be a winning combination. Neither review treats the record as a novelty import, which is a shift from how the band was written about a decade ago.

Where he is in September 2026

The touring year has been split between the band's home room and European festivals. Two dates went on sale at Blind İstanbul in Asmalımescit for the end of September: 29 September, which was cancelled, and 30 September, which remains on sale at 21:00 with tickets from ₺850 on Biletix and from ₺1,000 on Bugece, both listings carrying an 18-plus restriction. The same quartet played Blind on 3 March 2026 around the album's release.

Three days after the İstanbul date the band are at the FORUM Jugendkulturzentrum in Mannheim on 3 October 2026 for Enjoy Jazz, at €32.90 in advance and €36 on the door — and with a changed rhythm section: Matteo D'Ignazi on drums and Arto Tunçboyacıyan on percussion alongside Erşahin and Ersönmez. Substitution at that level is normal for this group and tells you something about how the music is held together, which is by the bass and the groove rather than by fixed parts.

His own Cereyanlı band continues separately and in seated halls rather than clubs; the most recent date listed on his own site was CSO Ada in Ankara on 24 December 2024, with Engin Recepoğulları on tenor saxophone, Barış Doğukan Yazıcı on trumpet and Ediz Hafızoğlu on drums.