Hüseyin Ertunç (1947-2018)

[clifford_thornton]

Turkish free music drummer and pianist (and also visual artist) Hüseyin Ertunç died yesterday at 71 after a lengthy battle with cancer. I was informed by his collaborator in KonstruKt, Umut Çağlar. 

Ertunç was a fixture in the early '70s Boston scene, playing with John Jamyll Jones' Worlds' Experience Orchestra, Cooper-Moore, Phill Musra, and Michael Cosmic, as well as sorties into New York to work with William Parker. He returned to his native Turkey in the mid-70s and then linked up again with Phill and Michael in Los Angeles in the late 1980s, where they had a short-lived group. Ertunç returned one last time to Turkey in the early/mid-90s, concentrating on visual art and performing/recording with KonstruKt, Okay Temiz, and visiting musicians like Parker, Peter Brötzmann, Marshall Allen, Evan Parker, and others.

His 1974 LP Musikî, privately released on Intex Sound, was my introduction to his music as well as that of Musra and Cosmic, and the rest is for me a deep personal well.

Though we never met and only communicated through Umut, Ertunç is someone I have long held in very high regard for his individuality and creativity. He will be missed.

[mjazzg]

That's a shame. KonstruKt are a fine band live and on record, although many of the albums I have by them don't have him playing (maybe due to his illness).

I do have the Holiday reissue of the trio LP so will spin that in his memory a little later