Born in Turkey’s capital Ankara in 1989, Ilay started singing in front of a big audience at the age of 6.
To fulfil her intense desire of creativity and expressing, she’s been singing, writing, acting and drawing her whole life. Since being a little kid; she performed in many venues & festivals globally and won several singing competitions. She started playing with her rock bands in high school years, than her genre evolved to soul, funk and R&B. She was in college when she united with jazz related genres. She spent her college years and most of her professional career period in Istanbul, while she took stage with various projects in the most renowned music venues of Istanbul. She also got invited to festivals to perform in Netherlands, Germany and Russia.
Ilay entered IKSV Young Jazz Competition and won the same competition twice and performed at the prestigious Istanbul Jazz Festival for 3 years. As a dedicated performer, she also practiced Method Acting and she extensively starred in classic and modern plays, such as Bernard Marie Coltes’s Roberto Zucco, Shakespeare’s Romeo&Juliette, Neil Simon and Chekov’s Good Doctor, Jean Genet’s The Maids, to name a few. In addition to her acting, she also took part as Assistant Director, Musical Director and Singing Coach in the productions.
