Fazil Say is a real musician who has deserved to win prizesi not only in Turkey but all around the world. He’s a real master, found worthy of  Boston Metamorphosen Orchestra Soloist Prize,  Repertorie prizes, and Diapason d'Or…  
 

Fazil Say, who was born in 1970, and started being interested in music when he was just three years old; got his piano education from Mithat Fenmen and Kamuran Gündemir in Ankara, and from David Levine in Düsseldorf. He lives in USA now, and has a son.

He’s someone who prefers to express his feelings by music, trying to avoid from speaking, agressive but ablo the emphatize. He’s not afraid from telling that he’s unhappy. People who watch his performances know what we are trying to say. Piano becomes a different insturment with his hands, and everything that he has inside, transforms into his melodies. Fazil Say answered our questions and revealed his loneliness, mood and hopes to derKi. 
 
 

derKİ: There is a unique taste at your concerts. People listen to you with extra attention. How do you feel during your performances?

Fazil Say: This is a though question... People always feel different emotins in each of their experiences. By music, I try to reflect my inner conflicts to my listeners. Touching to the piano means speaking. In each melody, you lose yourself in different feelings. If you cannot express yourself by especially talking, you try to do it with the best thing you can do. This is something unique for artists. They live by creating and sharing their abilities, skills and products. For me, it’s not important for my artwork to be rewarded or my name to be known by a lot of people. What counts is transfering and sharing your feelings; and to achive this, one has to integrate with the piano.

derKİ: When you play the piano, it seems like your body is there, but your soul is in somewhere completely far and different. You have a techinc that no player has. “Integrating” must be meaning that...

Fazil Say: If the piano is a persons’s everything, it’s his life philosophy. I have been exercising other composer’s works 10-15 hours a day, and created my own compositions. Piano is a machine that makes me human. It’s a part of my body, my arm, my leg...

Now, my concern is not playing the piano but making music. I would have given an answer about piano technics or something else, however, at this time, the meaning of playing the piano for me, and the meaning that I experience while I play, is my “happinesses” and “unhappinesses.”

derKi: What is happiness for Fazıl Say?
 

Fazil Say: I confess openly that I’m an unhappy man. Happiness is freedom for me. I’m free while I’m making music and playing the piano. I have the luxury to create everything in the way I want when I do those things, and that makes me happy. But the war inside me, the war to excel myself is what makes me unhappy... 

derKi: Could you tell us about your inner world?

Fazıl Say: I am a tense person, you could tell it from my moves and even from my posture on stage. In general, the press in Turkey is also aware of that.  If I have to explain the word “tense”, it’s a type agressiveness caused by self struggle. It hurts nobody. The meaning of struggle is to take the world to a better spot. Isn’t it also the only reason why we don’t five up on life? This is my principle. He who gives up his hopes of toworrow and stops producing lives like a sheep. I, on the other hand, try to idolize the people who fight against themselves, sets many goals, and becomes succesful. Ofcourse I don’t mean copying what others do here. If what I did and will do is to be idolized one day, then I am succesful.

derKi: Do you have any upcoming plans about Turkish music?

Fazıl Say: I am trying to add Turkish motifs to the pieces I play. It’s not really possible to play the Turkish tunes with the piano. Piano is a tempare insturment consisting of 12 notes. However, Turkish music can only be composed by a system consisting of 24 notes. In spite of these, you can find Turkish motifs in my pieces. But since you cannot hit the same note, you cannot give the same feeling. For example; I am interested in the folk music… Aşık Veysel, let’s say. Even though we seperate the melodies of east and west, when they are used proparly, they make an amazing harmony. I love the rituals of Dede Efendi very much. Itri’s Nevakar for example, is very exciting to me. It’s really sad that these composers are hardly known even in Turkey. When you say Dede Efendi, all that people can think of is “Yine bir gülnihal,” . But his rituals, especially Ferahfeza is perfect to me…

derKi: Are you where you aimed to be right now?

Fazıl Say: To me there is no aim or final point. Everyday is a new day and nobody can know what tomorrow may bring. The aim you set for tomorrow, may not be an aim tomorrow anymore.  For a person to be happier eveyday, he needs to overcome his capacity. The person who overcomes himself day by day catches the happiness. Sometimes the situations we are in may change the size of our aim. Small or big… That’s why I think the biggest enemy of someone is himself. He who can defeat himself, his egos, can achieve anything.

derKi: If you were not a musicican, what would you be?

Fazıl Say: Let me tell you a secret of mine that nobody else knoes. I, when I was younger, used to be a really good soccer player. I was an outstanding striker until I was 17. If I continued, I think I would become someone important.

derKi: You mentioned that you are unhappy so many times that I cannot stop thinking maybe you could be happier if you chose another profession. What do you think?

Fazıl Say: I can only make a guess about this question. Let’s suppose… If I chose soccer over music, it probably wouldn’t dare me this much. Would I be happy less or more? That would be also a guess. But what I really know and the only thing I am sure of is that music is one of the hardest profession that one can choose….