Born in Samsun in 2001, Buğra Kutbay completed his primary and secondary education in Samsun. From a young age, he was greatly influenced by the performances of drum and zurna masters, who were immigrants from Thessaloniki, at weddings in their village, and he became acquainted with wind instruments. At the age of 12, he started his musical journey with an old zurna that his uncle gifted him from an old instrument house. After meeting Raif Demirci, he began studying wind instruments such as the kaval, mey, duduk, ney, tütek, and sipsi. He had the opportunity to meet and work individually with musicians such as Halil Çokyürekli and Hüseyin Geçer.
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After graduating from Samsun İlkadım Fine Arts High School, he was admitted to the Instrument Education Department of the Faculty of Performing Arts at Ankara Music and Fine Arts University. During his university education, he took lessons from academic musicians such as Hakkı Alper Maral, Yunus Emre, Sinan Ayyıldız, Erberk Eryılmaz, and Önder Özkoç. In 2016, he passed the exam to become an Instrument Artist for the TRT Ankara Radio Youth Choir. In 2023, he graduated first in his class from the Instrument Education Department of the Faculty of Performing Arts at Ankara Music and Fine Arts University.
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In addition to festivals and project concerts in Turkey, he has performed at festivals in Mongolia, Kosovo, and France. He had the opportunity to meet and play with zurna virtuosos who have brought the instrument from local to universal recognition, such as Samir Kurtov, Aristidis Dramalis, Hasan Çakan, and Dursun Girgin. He has performed as a soloist in works written for orchestras such as the Presidential Symphony Orchestra, the State Polyphonic Choir, and the Gedik Philharmonic Orchestra. Kutbay is currently pursuing a Master's degree at the Faculty of Performing Arts at Ankara Music and Fine Arts University, where he also serves as a guest lecturer.
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He has had the opportunity to work with musicians such as Musa Eroğlu, Sümer Ezgü, Gülşen Kutlu, Emel Taşçıoğlu, Abdurrahman Tarikci, Bünyamin Aksungur, Ali Haydar Gül, Mustafa Acar, Uğur Önür, Umut Sülünoğlu, İsmail Altunsaray, Mustafa Mehmandarov, Eray İnal, and Ragnar Rasmussen. He has also appeared on programs featuring traditional wind instruments on TRT 2, TRT Music, TRT Avaz, and TRT Kurdi channels, such as Zamane, Bizim Sesler, Sade Saz, and Hevdeng.
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