Can Çakmur

The career of pianist Can Çakmur has developed rapidly, already encompassing a substantial recording catalog by his mid-twenties. Çakmur's reputation was propelled by several major prizes in the late 2010s. Çakmur (he gives the pronunciation as "Djahn Tchakmur") was born in Ankara, Turkey, in 1997. His family members were not musical performers but enjoyed music and encouraged him. Çakmur studied in Turkey with Leyla Bekensir and Ayşe Kaptan, then with Jun Kanno and Emre Şen. After his high school studies in Ankara, he moved to the Schola Cantorum in Paris for studies with Marcella Crudeli, graduating in 2014 with highest honors. Çakmur rounded out his education with lessons from Grigory Gruzman at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar and privately with Diane Anderson, also attending master classes with various other figures. His efforts paid off with first prizes at the Scottish International Piano Competition in 2017 and individual and chamber music top prizes at the Hamamatsu International Piano Competition in 2018. He was signed to the BIS label and released a collection of his Hamamatsu Festival performances on that label in 2019. A recording of Liszt's arrangements of Schubert's Schwanengesang song cycle followed in 2020. Çakmur has appeared at such major international venues as Wigmore Hall in London, the Glasgow Concert Hall, and Suntory Hall in Tokyo; at the latter, he performed in the Japanese premiere of Thomas Adès In Seven Days with the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra. Çakmur has appeared at most of Turkey's top concert halls and festivals, and he has been heard on radio in Europe, Japan, and Turkey. In 2022, Çakmur released the album Without Borders, featuring music by Bartók and others. Since then, his recorded output has been devoted to his "Schubert +" series, pairing works by Schubert with those of composers he influenced. The album Schubert + Brahms appeared on BIS in 2024. He is also an enthusiastic chamber music player and plans a recording of Beethoven's cello sonatas with cellist Alexandre Castro-Balbi. In addition to performing, Çakmur is in demand as a writer and speaker; he has written more than 50 articles for the Turkish classical music magazine Andante.
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