Antonio Forcione & Cenk Erdogan - Storytellers Antonio Forcione & Cenk Erdogan

The intimate and deeply lyrical duets of the album Storytellers bring together two world-renowned guitarists: Italian acoustic master Antonio Forcione and Turkish fretless guitar virtuoso Cenk Erdogan.

Both artists occupy highly celebrated positions within the global music community. Forcione, once hailed by critics as the "Jimi Hendrix of the acoustic guitar," boasts an illustrious career spanning over twenty albums and high-profile collaborations with legends like Charlie Haden and Paco de Lucia.

Meanwhile, Erdogan has solidified his international standing as a premier master of the fretless guitar, earning a Grammy Award in 2021 for his contributions to the world music scene alongside his highly acclaimed work as a film composer in Turkey.

They first met over two decades ago at an Istanbul guitar festival, where Cenk Erdogan, then a conservatory student attending Forcione's masterclass, deeply impressed the Italian maestro with the soulful, vocal-like honesty of his fretless guitar playing. An invitation to collaborate in London followed, but this partnership was delayed for nearly twenty years by administrative hurdles. When they were finally reunited by Jazz Plus for a concert in Sofia in 2019, the duo instantly rekindled their original musical chemistry.

After a series of live performances in Bulgaria and across the EU, this album was recorded in 2025 in Sofia. The resulting project features 10 originals, a mature dialogue where Forcione's percussive freedom and Mediterranean passion seamlessly blend with the microtonal Anatolian traditions of Erdogan's fretless guitar, creating tracks like Folk Song for Two and Leaving Home that function as musical postcards of nostalgia, love, and hope far beyond standard cliches.

"Even in our present moment of great richness in music of all kinds, it has the virtue of sounding like nothing else." - All About Jazz