Ahmet Tirgil, born in 1982 in Erzurum, completed his primary and secondary education in Samsun. He took folk instrument with three double strings lessons from Ali Özdolap, a retired teacher. He attended Karadeniz Technical University, Department of Music between 1999 and 2000. After one year, he enrolled at Marmara University, Department of Music in 2000. He completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Marmara University.

Ahmet Tirgil began playing violin at the university in 2000. He continued his violin studies with Olexander Samolyenko who is the chief violinist at Istanbul State Opera and Ballet.

Ahmet Tirgil continued his music studies at Paul Hindemith Music School in Berlin for a while in 2008. He also continued his violin studies with Matthias Leipold.

He returned to Turkey in 2009 and began to live in Dersim after the year 2010. He worked as a music teacher between 2010 - 2017 in Dersim.

Tirgil is married and has one child, who settled in Berlin in 2017 and is still living in Berlin.

During his musical career;

He went on tours with his group, the Metin&Kemal Kahraman Ensemble and Mehmet Atlı, in Turkey and abroad with the purpose of presenting samples of Anatolian Folk Music. He performed with orchestras such as the CRR İstanbul Symphony Orchestra, the Yeditepe University Astare Chamber Orchestra and the Marmara Univesity Academic Orchestra and gave various concerts.

He also made original documentary film music of "Diyarbakır 5 Nolu Penal House" directed by Çayan Demirel and "Hay Vay Waxt" directed by Nezahat Gündoğan.

Dertli Divani was born in the village of Kısas in Şanlıurfa in 1962. His father is Aşık Büryani, whose official name is actually Hamdullah. He learnt playing bağlama at a very young age and wrote poems and participated in Cem rituals in his childhood. He composed music for both his own poems and of his father and other poets’ as well. “Dertli Divani” is his pseudonym. This pseudonym’s first part “Dertli” was given to him by Emrullah Efendi in 1978, and Bektaş Efendi who visited their homes a few months after he took the first name gave the second name “Divani”.

Many of his songs have been sung by various musicians. Some of them are Arif Sağ, Zülfü Livaneli, Belkıs Akkale, Musa Eroğlu, İlyas Salman, Sabahat Akkiraz, Güler Duman, Gülcihan Koç, Deste Günaydın, Erdal Erzincan, Tolga Sağ, İlkay Akaya, Yavuz Bingöl, Kıvırcık Ali. Some of his well-known songs are ”Serçeşme”, “Diktiğimiz fidanlar”, “Kısas Semahı”, “Nurhak Semahı”, “Turnalar Semahı”, “Bilesin”, “Altım Üstüm Kaç Kuruşluk”.

Divani has got 5 solo albums. Moreover he sang in 12 different albums. His albums are respectively “Divane Gönül” in 1989 (the first album to which Arif Sağ accompanied with his bağlama), “Diktiğimiz Fidanlar” in 1992, “Duaz-i imam” in 1996, “Serçeşme” in 2000, “Hasbıhal” in 2005. He also participated in a lot of local and national TV programs. UNESCO accredited Dertli Divani as the “Living Human Treasure” in 2010.

Kemal Dinç was born in Istanbul in 1970. He moved to Germany after he finished the primary school. He started learning bağlama when he was 11 years old. He studied in High School of Music and conservatory in Germany. He lectured in Rotterdam Codarts Conservatory in Holland and in Köln University. His albums are Lir ve Ateş (2006) , Bağlama İçin Denemeler (2012), Geleneksel Yorumlar (2015) and Duo (2017).

Mahan Mirarab is an Iranian guitarist/composer based in Vienna, Austria. He has spent years learning about Persian music and the indigenous sound and cultures of the country such as Arabic, African, Turkish and Kurdish music, while refining his skills in Jazz music. Notably using fretless guitar, he specializes in blending the oriental microtonal system with jazz. After moving to Europe in 2009, he has become an acclaimed musician in European music scene. He has participated in various projects in world and jazz music as a performer, as well as a composer/arranger for multiple film theater, and music bands. He has since produced four albums; “Persian Side of Jazz”, “Choub”, “Sehrang”, and the most recent one “Derakht”, from his trio “Golnar & Mahan”.

He has also collaborated in various projects as the player of guitar, fretless guitar, Setar and Oud, with musicians such as Erkan Ogur, Vahag Hayrapetian, Alain Perez, Hadar Noiberg, Johannes Berauer, Omar Klein, Haggai Cohen Milo, Wolfgang Puschnig, Fawzi Chekili, Ariel Bringuez, Luis Guerra, Pablo Hernandez Ramos, Turgut Alp Beykoglu, Ahmad Hani Shukri, Pavel Urkiza, Matthias Loibner, Natasa Mirkovic, Sakina Teyna, Basma Jabr, Orwa Saleh, Wolfi Rainer, Robert Jukic, Peter Soleimanipour, Hamzeh Yeganeh, Golnar Shahyar, Alex Simu, Kaveh Sarvarian, Julien Teyekan, Herve du Ratuld, Habib Meftah Boushehri, Rumi Ensemble, Abrang Quartet, Choupan Trio, Sormeh...

Mehmet Günay Eser was born in 1992, in Mersin, Tarsus. Eser who graduated from Samsun Ondokuz Mayıs University Music Deparment in 2015, made some surveys on music in different regions of Anatolia, principally in Çukurova. He made presentations on the technics of bağlama in different universities.

Mehmet Günay who has an extensive interest in harmonics has many compositions including Üçtelli, bağlama, piano, violin, four violins and orchestra. He carried out workshops and gave concerts to the participants coming both from abroad and different cities of Turkey in 2017 Music Village of which he is the general art director. He is the general art director of Üçtelli Quartet with which he visited Jeonju and Seoul in Sout Korea and this quartet took Üçtelli to abroad for the first time.

Mikail Aslan was born in 1972 in Dersim. When he was ten years old, he and his family were obliged to move to Kayseri. He completed the High School here and began studying Maths in Malatya in 1991. After studying there for 2 years, he was suspended from school due to political reasons, then he decided to build a professional career on music. He composed a few songs like “Dayika ma” and “Şuwara Dersimi” and they played a role in awakening a forgotten cultural treasure in the minds of the young people of this culture. He migrated to Germany in 1995. His dream of producing an album in his mother language became real in 1999 with the album titled “Agereyis” (Return).

He started studying Classical Guitar Teaching department in 2001 in Mainz Peter Cornelius Conservatory. He chose saxophone as a side instrument.

After “Agerayis” which designated his way in his career, he made another album titled “Kilite Kou” (The Key of the Mountains) in 2003. This album was about the history, mythology and the cultural identity of Dersim region and it marked a significance in the context of Dersim Authentical Music.

He carried out another dream – which was to bring traditional music with a Symphony Orchestra in 2005. The composition titled “Connections - Remayıse Munzuri” was accompanied with some pieces of Beethoven and Bach in a performance collaborated with German composer Gerhard Fischer-Münster. This work won a great amount of appreciation from German media. In this period, he graduated from the Conservatory and completed another album titled “Miraz”. He combined old times’ musical motifs with other different traditions proving that all the world’s musical genres can be combined besides building an individual and authentic cultural existence.

Özgü Bulut has been working as an academic in Ondokuz Mayıs State Conservatory since 2014. He is giving lessons on “Games-Dance and Music” at the level of bachelor degree, “Body Percussion” at the level of masters degree and doctoral degree, and “Music and Dance” in the department of Early Childhood Education. He participates in festivals, workshops and conventions regarding his field.

Sylvain Barou, from Brittany in France is considered as one of the best flute players of his generation. Having played mainly Irish and Breton traditional music over the last 30 years, Sylvain has been part of some of the most exciting projects of the genre and played with the foremost bands and musicians such as Donal Lunny, Padraig Rynne, Guidewires, Altan, frères Guichen, Alain Genty, Denez Prigent, Jacques Pellen-Celtic Procession, Erik Marchand, Gildas & JB Boclé, Dan Ar Braz, Yann-Fanch Kemener, Gilles Le Bigot, Soig Siberil, Yvan Cassar, Liz Carroll, John Doyle, Andy Irvine, Mairtin O'Connor, Julie Fowlis, Paddy Glackin... After much traveling the last few years, Sylvain devoted most of his time to learn indian classical music (hindustani) on the bansuri flute, and then also turkish, armenian and persian music through the studying of duduk, zurna, ney and also adapting all these techniques and influences to his main instrument the wooden flute.

since then he has played and recorded with many artists such as Keyvan Chemirani, Trilok Gurtu, Prabhu Edouard, Vincent Ségal, Sandip Chatterjee, Karim Ziad, Adnan Joubran, Stelios Petrakis, Efrén Lopez, Eléonore Fourniau, Hamid Khabbazi…

he has been seen playing at some of the major festivals and venues such as Glasgow Celtic Connections, Festival Interceltique de Lorient, Festival des Vieilles Charrues, Les Tombées de la Nuit, Transmusicales, Paléo Festival, Ennis Trad Festival, FMM Sines, Théatre de La Ville, Jazz à Vienne, Bercy, Stade de France, Musiques Nomades in Nouakchott, Tanger Festival, Dranouter Folk Fest, etc...

Theodora Athanassiou was born in Athens. She holds a degree in Education Studies from the University of Patras.

She turned to music at the early age of six, teaching herself the bouzouki the baglama and taking part in school music bands and clubs. At eleven, she took up classes on repertoire and modes of folk guitar under the guitarist Nikos Protopapas.

She has been working in live music clubs as a guitarist since the age of nineteen.

For the last ten years she has been focusing her studies on the eastern system of melody types (makam) for lavta (the Constantinople lute) and yaili tanbur under Christos Tsiamoulis and Eugenios Voulgaris, as well as on rythmology for traditional percussion under Sergios Voulgaris, as part of a five-year course in the Department of Greek music and Instruments at the Municipal Conservatory of Patras.

Since 2004, she has attended a number of master classes on the technique and repertoire on lavta (2005) under Pericles Papapetropoulos and other eastern music traditions (afghan rabab, 2004 / KhaledArman, Persian radif, 2006 / Darius Talai) with Labyrinth Musical Workshop in Crete.

Since 2005 she has been tutoring and giving courses on theory, technique and repertoire for Greek folk guitar, lavta and yaili tanbur. She is also a teacher and tutor of Eastern music theory, with a focus on broader repertoire of eastern Mediterranean regions.

Since 2009, she has formed and presented a number of active groups collaborating with remarkable emerging Greek musicians and received widely favourable reviews both in Greece and abroad; (Giouf trio, Happy duo, Ap’ allou duo, Karpos trio, Terpnon ensemble, Garlic duo, Mpam trio, Theodora Athanassiou trio) with a focus on the role of guitar and lavta in music ‘idioms’ from Greece and the broader Mediterranean.