Arion Firat Dogan

Arion Firat Dogan came to lutherie the way the best makers often do — as a player first. Born in Izmir in 1982, he began on the baglama and worked outward across the Turkish string family before formalising the craft of building at the Ege University State Turkish Music Conservatory, graduating from its instrument-making program in 2022. Years of performance and years at the bench feed one another in his work: he builds the instruments he himself plays.

His making centres on the classical kemence — the small, pear-shaped, three-stringed bowed lute, carved from a single block of wood and held upright on the knee, that carries the voice of Ottoman court and classical Turkish music. It is among the most demanding instruments a maker can take on: the curve of the body, the thickness of the soundboard, and the set of the short neck all decide whether the bow draws a clear, singing tone or a thin one. Building it well asks for the ear of a performer as much as the hand of a craftsman — precisely the pairing Dogan brings.

That work sits inside the same Izmir music circle Tapadum draws on. Dogan performs with the Ebren Trio — whose album Yildiz Tozlari he shares with Tapadum’s own kanun maker Ozgur Gurbuz — and with the ongoing Sinadika ensemble, and his long friendship with wind player and instrument maker Volkan Incuvez reaches back to their 2017 duo recording Pangea. Among these players and makers, the classical kemence is a living instrument, not a museum piece.

For Tapadum, a classical kemence from Arion Firat Dogan is the work of a maker who knows the instrument from both sides of the bench — conservatory-trained, shaped in Izmir, and finished by someone who will pick it up and play it.