Like many people, I met Yil Ozpay while walking. I had just left Louise's where I had gone to hear jazz. It was a sunny, warm, late Sunday afternoon. As I walked north along the busy waterfront tourist area I began to hear a wonderful, smooth sound from across the street. I looked for the store I at first assumed it was coming from.Instead I saw a musician next to a portable electronic rig with an amplifier and speakers. Here is Yil Ozpay's spot. The brick wall behind him acts much like a sounding board, smoothly, sweetly spreading music across the moving crowd.
Yil, like an outcropping along a stream, gave shape to the flow of people around him. Some stopped. Some talked. Some bought tapes or CD's. Some stood and swayed back and forth, left and right. Some moved by rapidly. All seemed to bathe appreciatively in the sweet gentleness of that sound.
Yil Ozpay plays engagements across the country and plays a couple of days a week on the street in San Francisco (head for the north end of the street from Pier 39, toward the beach). In his liner notes Yil states that before moving to the US he arranged and played in England, Ireland, Paris, the Caribbean, South America and Canada. In 1984 Downbeat magazine honored him as an up-and-coming musician.