Candid talk with Elif Sanchez on her musical journey, first album

The musical journey of Elif Sanchez, known for her unique interpretation of folk songs from Turkey and Azerbaijan, started in her hometown Istanbul, where she majored in classical performance on oboe and English horn from the Istanbul University State Conservatory.

In 2013, she was accepted to Berklee College of Music with a scholarship and studied jazz oboe and vocal, majoring in performance and music business as a minor. She graduated from Berklee, winning the Bill Pierce Award and the Mediterranean Music Institute Award in 2017.

Afterward, she moved to New York to continue performing her project at concert halls such as Drom NYC, Rockwood Music Hall and The Well Brooklyn. She caught the attention of 14 Grammy award winner Javier Límon with her group "Mediant Collective," which she founded in 2015, and was invited to the "Refuge of Sound" project as a guest artist.

Sanchez uniquely interpreted her modern arrangements of Turkish and Azerbaijani folk songs, including "Ay Oğlan Yiğit Misin," "Almanı Attım Xarala" and "Bağlamam Perde Perde," alongside a well-known Spanish song called "Contigo Aprendí" by Armando Manzanero.

She released her first solo album with Pasión Turca.

"This album is basically a 40-minute-long biography and tells everyone who Elif really is. I grew up in Istanbul but under a roof that had Anatolian culture. I lived in the United States for a long time. I spoke English outside, but there was always Latin food and Spanish inside our home. I've always had multiple cultures in my life. This album represents all those cultures. Turkish and Azerbaijani folk songs with Jazz, Latin, basically world music influences," she says.

The first single chosen from Sanchez's debut album is "Ay Oğlan Yiğit Misin," which...