Ali Doğan Gönültaş | Festival Pasaulis Skamba

In 2025, GM Gyvai presents the festival “World Sounds” in everyone’s favorite St. Catherine’s Church. This is an ideal place in Vilnius for cozy and sensitive world music concerts.

ALI DOGAN GÖNÜLTAŞ
The Genius of Kurdish Music

The blazing voice of Eastern Anatolia, Ali Doğan Gönültaş, invites you to immerse yourself in a rare authenticity. Gönültaş will present Eastern Anatolian melodies full of feeling, depth and authenticity at St. Catherine’s Church and invite you on a timeless journey.

Ali Doğan Gönültaş was born in the mid-1980s in the village of Kiğı in the rugged mountains of Eastern Anatolia, to a Kurdish family where music was an essential way to convey the history of the nation. After his family moved to Istanbul, Ali’s singing talent was soon noticed, as he already had a natural gift for musicality, but he did not limit himself to it – Ali studied archaeology and cinema at the university. His studies gave him a wide field of opportunities for research and analysis of sources – he was able to combine his education with music and create a very attractive artistic language based on heritage, talent and excellent scenography.

After ten years and hundreds of concerts, in 2022 Ali Doğan produced and released his first album Kiğı – the result of fifteen years of research, conversations with elders and work on musical arrangements. The album opened the way for performances on the most famous stages in Europe. The impeccable international evaluation of his follow-up album Keyeyi (2024) only confirmed this magic. In 2023 and 2024, Ali performed in 18 countries in Europe and the Middle East, including sold-out prestigious venues such as the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Fundação Gulbenkian, the Rudolstadt Festival, WOMEX 2024.

Artists

Ali Doğan Gönültaş – tanbur, guitar
Zilan Hasret Yıldız – percussion
Fırat Çakılcı – clarinet

Videos
https://youtu.be/x0jfRSXJ_xA?si=SatS2_Q54gB1BKf3
https://youtu.be/NzLM3CTFoEA?si=DA53vJ7vLjbp_fN2

A 20% discount applies to seniors, disabled people, schoolchildren and students

Festival information partner: LRT
More information: www.gmgyvai.lt