Hadi Elazzi

Hadi Nabil Elazzi (born December 7, 1973, Istanbul) is one of the founders of Turkish music production - management company and record label GRGDN. He is the manager of several renown Turkish artists like maNga, Gripin, Göksel, emreaydın and Vega.

Early years

Hadi Elazzi was born into a mixed family - a Muslim Turkish mother and a Christian Lebanese father. In 1993 he was among the founders of the first university radio in Turkey, "Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Radyosu", the radio station of Bosphorus University, which he studied at. During his university years he worked for several Turkish radio stations including Radio Contact, Metro FM, Show Radyo, Radyo 5. [ [http://www.milliyet.com.tr/1997/08/30/t/yasam/dj.html "Populer degil, radyocuyum (I'm not popular, I'm a disc jockey)"] - Milliyet, 30. 08. 1997.]

After finishing university he decided to move to the United States and started attending music administration classes at the University of California Los Angeles in 1997. In the same year he started working for Sire Records (Warner Music) in the marketing department. In 1999 he returned to Istanbul to work for Sony Music Turkey as a product manager. After Sony, he fulfilled the role of the marketing manager of BMG Müzik Türkiye. He was also employed at DMC Müzik [ [http://www.dmc.com.tr DMC Official site] ] and Balet Plak [ [http://www.baletplak.com.tr Balet Plak official site] ] at a later time.During his career he had worked with such artists like Gloria Estefan, Ricky Martin, Chumbawamba, Lou Bega, Apollo 440, Jon Secada, Morcheeba, Steve Vai or Eros Ramazotti. [ [http://www.grgdn.com/2007/index.html GRGDN website -- GRGDN menu -- Hadi Elazzi biography] ]

GRGDN

In 2003 he founded his own company, GRGDN, together with his childhood friend Haluk Kurosman. While Kurosman supervises the recordings (including mixing, editing as well as songwriting), Elazzi is responsible for the management and marketing of GRGDN artists. As an independent label they published the first album of Gripin, entitled Hikayeler Anlatıldı. Later they joined up with Sony Music and continue publishing audio cds in cooperation with Sony.

Hadi Elazzi has become a widely-acknowledged name in the Turkish music industry, giving his name to several projects outside of his own company's. For example, he was one of the jury members of the talent competition "Battle of the Bands" [ [http://www.netyorum.com/bolum/sanat/20050506-33.htm Battle of the Bands jury] ] , and recently has given advice for a music competition organized for university students, called "UniStar". [ [http://www.dreamtv.com.tr/news.aspx?newsId=312 UniStar - “Important names of the music world gave advice to young people”] ] .

Currently he is teaching music administration at the Galatasaray Communications, Technology and Music Academy. [ [http://www.galatasarayitm.com.tr/ogretmen.htm Galatasaray ITM Teachers' List] ]

References

External links

* [http://www.grgdn.com GRGDN Official Site]
* [http://www.myspace.com/GRGDN GRGDN MySpace]
* [http://www.basatap.com/?page=http://www.basatap.com/frame_content_detail.php?cID=545&p=1240&pages=24 Hadi Elazzi interview]