June 2025, in a nondescript neighborhood in western Istanbul, Richard Laniepce, a Frenchman who has lived in the Turkish megacity for more than 20 years, walks into the wind instrument workshop of his friend Muharrem Gül. His goal? To develop the prototype of a new instrument, a cross between a rare wooden sopranino saxophone and the zurna, a kind of traditional Turkish oboe characterized by its flared end and its powerful, piercing sound.
Richard Laniepce is a saxophonist and founding member of the Franco-Turkish-Bulgarian band Kolektif Istanbul, founded in 2005. Like his friend Muharrem, he is also a wind instrument maker, the craftsman who builds and repairs this category of musical instruments, which includes flutes, saxophones, oboes and clarinets.
In this workshop, where raw wood is worked in the traditional way, as it already was in the last century, Muharrem makes instruments renowned throughout the Turkish-Balkan world. In a few hours, with the help of his partner Richard, he will bring an entirely new instrument to life from a simple piece of apricot wood.
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