 He began to play the tanbur quite early in his youth and by the age of 20, his renown had already spread among the tamburis of Istanbul.Reforming the traditional playing technique of the tambur, he developed an energetic technique based on a rich and agile picking style, lightening to a great extent the sonority of this instrument.Later on, he set about playing the Turkish classical kemençe and attained an astonishingly high level of technique, so much so that the virtuosity level of the Ottoman kemençevi of Greek-Gyspy origin Vassilis (1845–1907), considered as then as "the reference", came to be thought of by certain amateurs to be outmatched...