Composed in 2012 for three sopranos, piano and percussion, SES is a half- hour stage piece. The final section is a composition for Aziz Nesin's moving poem 'The Pain of Sivas.' The piece here is a solo piano version of that song.

The tune for Kumru is a melody which had accompanied me for years; the joy brought on by the birth of my daughter Kumru in 2000 encouraged me to arrange it as a dedication to her. In subsequent years various chamber music groups, guitarists and block flute players have set it to new arrangements. The piece here is the original arrangement, recorded in 2012 at Ahmed Adnan Saygun Culture Centre in Izmir.

Since I composed Black Earth in 1997, I must have performed it thousands of times. This piece is known among musicians as the 'Turkish version of the piano.'Throughout the intervening years since its inception, it has entered the repertoire of many internationally acclaimed pianists. The instantly recognisable timbre of Black Earth – the left hand pressed on the piano strings, in a wish to reflect the intermediate frequencies of Turkish folk music – was a new experiment. The piece takes its inspiration from Alevi bard Aşık Veysel's folk song of loneliness 'Sadık Yârim Kara Toprak' (My Faithful Beloved is the Black Earth). In this case, it represents the 'song of loneliness' of a pianist, a contemporary artist. And it is for this reason that even though there is some distance between it and Veysel's music, it shares the same DNA. Therefore my Black Earth is dedicated to Aşık Veysel, a true son of the Anatolian earth.

Nâzım is taken from the Nâzım Oratorio stage piece – Nâzım Oratorio, Section 6, 'Ben İçeri Düştüğümden Beri' (Since I Was Thrown in Gaol) – and which I have adapted as a piano ballad. It is like a typical Anatolian tune.

Sevenlere Dair (For Those Who Love) is a ballad which I composed for piano in 2002. I wanted to explain Love as being a source for both joy and sadness. The quick intermediate part represents a sort of lovers' dialogue. The Huseyni makam is used frequently in Anatolian folk music and I wanted this composition to reflect that rich musical heritage.

In the Four Cities sonata for cello and piano which I composed in 2012, I had taken as my subject the four Turkish towns of Sivas, Hopa, Ankara and Bodrum. I also adapted the last piece, Bodrum, for solo piano – it is a fast-paced, swing promenade through the celebrated street of bars in Turkey's most famous tourist destination. Within this swing tempo, you can hear the tunes of famous artist Zeki Müren's 'Yıldızların Altında' (Under the Stars) and Aşık Veysel's 'Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım' (I'm On a Long and Narrow Road), which everyone in Turkey knows.

I composed three jazz adaptations of Paganini's famous Caprice no. 24. The first was when I was eighteen years old, the second when I was twenty and the last time aged 25. The piece you are listening to is the third version. This theme of Paganini has been an inspiration to countless composers. As an interpreter of music I have played many masterpieces composed on this theme, from Brahms' piano version to the contemporary interpretation of Lutoslavski to Rachmaninov's orchestral variation. My version here represents my aim to carry this theme over into the world of jazz.

I have performed this piece many times since its composition in 1993; several interpreters and groups also include this in their repertoires. I particularly like to play it as a musical aside in concerts where I am performing Mozart's Turkish March. Sometimes we use music to narrate sad situations and dramas, sometimes it is a conduit for nostalgic memories and at other times we just want to 'smile' with the music.

Yine bir Gülnihal composed by the celebrated 19th century composer İsmail Dede Efendi, is one of the most well-known and much-loved examples of Turkish Classical Music, also known as Ottoman Palace Music, and it has been an inspiration to many musicians. In 1997 I performed a concert for the first time where I played only jazz. It was here that I also played Black Earth for the first time. It was also at this concert that I took Dede Efendi's 'Yine bir Gülnihal' and, using all the elements of jazz piano, referenced the piece as 'Yeni bir Gülnihal.' During the 1998 recording of the Bach CD in France, I played and recorded this in one go as a sort of 'digression' for myself and my sound recordist colleagues. It is this archive recording, which remained forgotten for years (and because it was recorded in 'one take', there are a few errors here and there) which we are publishing here because to me, it has a beautiful energy to it and is a fond memory.

I composed this piece for piano in 1990 and gave it the title Opus 1. To me, it is the work which allowed me to articulate myself as a composer now in a position to assign opus titles to his compositions. Nasreddin Hodja is a folk hero and is often seen as a 'Turkish Don Quixote.' These short piano pieces are constructed wholly on irregular rhythm beats, require a certain virtuosity and inject a note of raucous abandon into concerts. The section titles refer to the original Turkish names of these old rhythms: Devr-i Turan (7/8 time: 2+2+3), Devr-i Hindi (7/8 time: 3+2+2), Bektaşi Raksani (15/8 time: 3+2+3+2+2+3) and the final Şarkı Devri Revani Velvelesi (variations, 13/8 time: 3+2+2+2+2+2).

These are four piano pieces I composed in 1993 and to some extent they represent a continuation of The Dances of Nasreddin Hodja. The pieces are titled Vision, Elegy of Old Istanbul (the folk song 'Katibim' threads through the piece), A Dervish in Manhattan (in avant-garde jazz style) and Gypsy Girl (an experiment in oriental minimalism).

The mad genius composer Wagner and the equally mad genius philosopher Nietzsche occupy an important place in our human history. Here I have composed two musical portraits, a work which draws inspiration from their friendship, their personalities and the subjects on which they agreed or disagreed. Leaving aside all preconceived ideas about these two larger than life artists, gaining knowledge of the body of work they left behind adds so much to our lives. I first performed this piece at Wagner's festival at Bayreuth. The dramatic and harsh first part dwells on Nietzsche while the melancholic and solitary second section illustrates Wagner (with excerpts from the opera Tristan und Isolde).