İstanbul will next week gain yet another international festival dedicated to music when the inaugural Yorgo Bacanos International Oud Festival of İstanbul gets under way on Monday for a weeklong celebration of traditional oud music. The festival is named after one of the best known virtuosos of oud music in İstanbul during the 20th century, Yorgo Bacanos, whose 100th anniversary of birth is being marked in 2010. The festival is the newest effort by the İstanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Agency’s classical Turkish music directorate. Hosting numerous virtuosos of the oud from various generations and countries, the festival is aimed at celebrating the legacy of the oud, a musical instrument that is shared by many cultures around the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Cairo-born Australian based virtuoso Joseph Tavvadros; Hungarian virtuoso Omar Bashir, who is the son of renowned Assyrian lute player Münir Bashir; Greece’s Periklis Tsoukalas and Georgios Marinakis; and Belgium’s Tristan Driessens are some of the younger generation oud masters expected to take to the stage at the festival. All concerts and recitals will be held in the historic Sepetçiler Kasrı in Sarayburnu. The musicians taking part in the festival will not only perform in concerts but also hold workshops and seminars throughout the weeklong event, running Oct. 25-31. Admission to all events in tlıe lineup will be free of charge. İstanbul Today’s Zaman.