Arion Firat Dogan

Arion Firat Dogan is a versatile musician and teacher, born in Izmir in 1982, who leads online lessons at the Tapadum Music Academy across a wide family of stringed instruments — the oud, the classical kemence, the baglama, the caglama, the kopuz, the bouzouki, and both classical and fretless guitar. He works with students from beginner to advanced level. His own path began on the baglama and grew outward from there, rooted throughout in classical Turkish music and the living folk traditions that surround it.

That range rests on formal training and rare mentorship. Dogan studied at the Ege University State Turkish Music Conservatory in Izmir — instrument making, performance, and Turkish music theory and solfege — graduating from its instrument-making program in 2022. In 2005 he moved to Berlin, working alongside musicians from many cultures and drawing close to flamenco, and in 2008, in Istanbul, he studied fretless guitar and kopuz with Erkan Ogur, the musician who did more than anyone to bring the fretless guitar into Turkish music. Few teachers of these instruments can point to a lineage that direct.

On record, Dogan’s most visible credit is Ahmet Ali Aslan’s 2018 debut album Gunasigi, released on Kalan Muzik, one of Turkey’s most respected labels for traditional and folk-rooted music; the album’s oud parts are shared between Dogan and Yurdal Tokcan, widely regarded as one of the foremost living masters of the Turkish oud. He also carries his own projects forward — the Ebren Trio and its album Yildiz Tozlari (2020), and the ongoing groups Sinadika (since 2017) and Murmurrica (since 2024).

Alongside his recording work, Dogan is active as a theatre musician. His credits include the music for Klakson Borazanlar ve Birtlar (2020), the Turkish staging of Dario Fo’s Clacson, trombette e pernacchi, and the independent production Isguzar Bir Tekerrur (2020). Theatre shapes a particular kind of musician — one who listens, responds in real time, and composes for the moment — habits that carry directly into the lesson room, whichever instrument a student brings.

Dogan’s connection to Tapadum runs through a long musical friendship with Volkan Incuvez, one of the principal wind players and instrument makers in Tapadum’s Izmir workshop circle — the same city where Dogan was born and trained. Their 2017 duo recording “Pangea”, captured at dawn on the Adriatic coast, remains the clearest public document of that partnership. Through the Academy, Dogan now opens that whole musical world — and the full range of Turkish string playing — to students everywhere.