Turkey’s leading symphonic ensemble, the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra (BIPO) was founded in 1999 under Gürer Aykal who led BIPO as its artistic director and principal conductor until the 2008/9 season when Sascha Goetzel took over and Aykal became the Honorary Conductor. From the 2000/1 season on, BIPO regularly performed on both coasts of its home city accompanying world stars and in time has become one of the city’s cultural beacons. It had also been the resident orchestra of the Istanbul Music Festival between 2003-2018. BIPO released its first recording Respighi, Hindemith Schmitt in 2010 and performed that year at the opening festivities of the Salzburg Festival. Its second recording, Music from the Machine Age, followed in 2012 and its third disc of music by Rimsky-Korsakov, Balakirev, Erkin and Ippolitov-Ivanov was released in 2014 right after their successful BBC Proms debut under Goetzel. BIPO also released two recordings; Carmen with Ksenija Sidorova in 2016 and Tchaikovsky with Nemanja Radulović in 2017 under the Deutsche Grammophon label. BIPO went on European tours in February 2016 and in October 2017, performed at the Hong Kong Arts Festival in February 2017.