The studio

Çiğdem Aygün

Curator of Classical Silences

Çiğdem Aygün grew up in a household where the radio was never truly off—just turned low enough that the music became part of the architecture. Classical stations in Istanbul during the nineties had a quality that modern streaming cannot replicate: the feeling that someone, somewhere, had chosen this particular piece for this particular hour, and you happened to be listening.

After years working in music curation and arts programming, she founded Radio Atmosphere in 2024 as an attempt to recreate that experience—a continuous stream of classical music selected not by popularity metrics, but by the intuitive logic of a human ear trained on decades of attentive listening.

The station operates from a small studio overlooking the Bosphorus, where the shipping lanes and call to prayer provide a kind of ambient counterpoint to whatever is broadcasting. She believes that classical music needs neither explanation nor defense—only a reliable channel and an audience willing to be still.