Burhan Ocal’s Virtuosity Key to Ensemble

Burhan Ocal is one of the busiest percussionists in the world, shifting easily through gigs with Joe Zawinul, George Gruntz and a funk/hip-hop band with bassist Jamaladeen Tacuma. But the foundations of his art--Turkish folk and classical music--took center stage at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Saturday.

Leading his Gypsy Istanbul Oriental Ensemble, Ocal was a multi- instrument wizard. Starting out with the plangent-sounding, long-necked tambur, he moved on to the hourglass-shaped darbuka drum and the lute-like oud, adding a few vocals along the way. In a showcase number, he soloed for a good 10 minutes on darbuka, fingers flying, using his astounding digital dexterity at the service of a gripping, spontaneous musical invention.

The ensemble included Fefthi Tekyaygil, violin, Ekrem Bagi, also on darbuka, Alaattin Coskuner, kanun (a kind of zither) and Yasar Sutoglu, clarinet, maneuvering through the program’s tricky rhythms and rapid melodies with ease.

The most fascinating passages, however, were the individual improvisations--as essential to Gypsy music as they are to jazz. Sutoglu’s clarinet playing transformed the instrument’s Western precision into an expressive embrace of the microtonal intervals of the songs’ makams (or scales). Tekyaygil ornamented his keening melodies with shivering little twists and turns. And Coskuner and Bagi, serving as a rhythm section, propelled the music with enormous energy, even during such offset rhythms as the 7/4 meter of Ocal’s “Katar Caravanserai.”