Ilhan Ersahin started Istanbul Sessions in 2008 in Istanbul, Turkey. He has been very connected with the music scene in Istanbul since awhile. He would say it started 1994 when he did his first show there at the Akbank jazzfestival. Since then he has kept going there steadily to perform and the in the last few years it has become more and more. Until 2004, when he started his other Istanbul project called Wonderland, he always went to play in Istanbul with musicians from NYC.

Then after meeting musicians from there and jamming with many of them it just became apparent to him that he needed to form another project based out of Istanbul. The sound and feeling he went for from the beginning was more almost like a rock/dance feel. He wanted to take instrumental music to a stand up dancing audience basically , without doing that through electronics but with just real playing. Alp Ersonmez, the bassman, plays steadily with Turkey’s biggest pop star, Tarkan,and is used to big stages and bigger sound. Turgut alp Bekoglu, the drummer, is also used to big stage playing, he is playing and has played with lots of famous singers in Turkey such as Sezen Aksu, Ajda Pekkan etc and Izzet Kizil the percussion player has played on a numerous of studio recordings as well as live. This contributes to the live shows spirit and song writing for this band. It’s all instrumental and he only play saxophone in this band, no keyboards or other sounds.