EREN GUMRUKCUOGLU
Eren was born in Istanbul, 1982. He grew up listening to his dad’s vast collection of LPs with a toy guitar in his hand. His early influences were progressive rock and classical music. As a young kid Eren wanted to play the flute badly, because of his admiration of Jethro Tull, but picked up the piano instead since he was told to be too young and small for playing the flute. A bit disappointed, he learned notation and some basic knowledge of music on the piano. At the age of 14, Eren’s parents bought him a guitar and his journey to discover music has officialy begun. Eren improved fast on the guitar and in 2 years he started winning some local awards from music stores for his soloing on the guitar. He always thrived for new information so he decided to move to US.
Eren’s next stop was Duke Ellington School of Arts in Washington, DC. He studied jazz guitar with Tom Newman, played in a big band (New Washingtonians Jazz Orchestra) led by Davey Yarborough. Thanks to his deep involvement in the school’s activities he had the chance to perform alongside jazz greats such as Grammy-award winning Shirley Horn and Dr. Billy Taylor. During his studies Eren had time to play in and around the greater DC area and frequented the Blues Alley. He toured with the New Washingtonians in festivals such as the East Coast Jazz Festival in US and Marciac Jazz Festival in Marciac, France. During 2000 he received a certificate of merit from Wynton Marsalis and a praise from Ron Carter for a performance he had with the New Washingtonians at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall. He graduated from Duke Ellington School of Arts with a Rick Dutka Award for Academic Exellence.

At the end of 2000, Eren received a personal invitation from Jimmy Bruno and a full scholarship to study at University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA but he chose to study at Berklee College of Music. And soon after starting his studies he got his scholarship there as well. Eren did a dual major in Jazz Composition and Film Scoring at Berklee. He studied composition with the leading professors in their field such as Ken Pullig, Ted Pease, Greg Hopkins to name a few. Alongside his compositional studies he studied privately with Mick Goodrick and Bruce Bartlett and in ensembles with Walter Beasley and Tiger Okoshi. During his 4 year stay at Berklee, Eren formed a band called Cardiazz that played his original compositions. Cardiazz was a quintet comprised of Eren on guitars, Ruslan Sirota (now Stanley Clarke Band and Seal) on piano, Gilad Ronen on saxophone, Yan Perchuk on bass and Jordan Perlson on drums. With the huge pressure from his peers at Berklee, Cardiazz went on to record an album titled “Looking Back” in 2003. Later on, the band changed forms a couple of times. One of those bands was Ergonomy Trio with Yan Perchuk on Bass and Ziv Ravitz on drums. They never got to record in studio. Eren made many friends at Berklee and had a blast playing with great musicians such as close friend Emir Isilay, Zulfugar Baghirov, John Shannon, Mitch Coen, Lee Fish, Christian Scott, Luques Curtis, Vadim Neselovskyi etc.

After Berklee, Eren moved to Hollywood, California in 2004. With his buddy Emir Isilay, and another Berklee-grad Daniel Götz, he started working under the Emmy-nominated film composer Philip Giffin. Under Giffin’s supervision Eren scored, arranged and orchestrated music and recorded the guitar for TV shows such as WB’s Summerland and ABC’s Eyes which was also broadcast in France and New Zealand. Along with TV serials Eren had the chance to work on a lot of Indie movies and shorts, TV/Radio advertisements, and album productions with Philip Giffin and Grammy-award winning sound engineer Francis Buckley. Eren finally became an accomplished studio player on classical, acoustic, electric and 12-string electric guitars thanks to long hours of recording in the studio for films and serials. Eren performed in studio with artists such as Gary Novak (Chick Corea, Alanis Morisette), Scott Kinsey (Tribal Tech), Mitch Forman and Jeff Richman to name a few.

In 2007, Eren was back in Istanbul, Turkey for fresh new projects. Eren spent some time playing for pop artists like YaÅŸar and Harun Kolçak in Turkey. But soon, he formed the Ergonomy Quartet with Tolga Bedir on drums, Ercument Orkut on piano, and Altay Sonmez on bass and they played in Istanbul’s prominent jazz clubs. After settling in Istanbul, he found his long time idol, the world renowned piano player and composer Aydin Esen. This meeting led to Eren playing in Aydin Esen Group which was a dream come true for him. In 2008, Eren had a chance to show off his writing skills for the Metropole Orkest led by Vince Mendoza in Amsterdam, Holland. Eren arranged three of pianist/composer Tulug Tirpan’s compositions for a 65 piece orchestra and received critical acclaim.
Also in 2008 Eren got a call from Sertab Erener (2003 Eurovision Song Contest Winner) to come and play for her. Since then, he has been a member of her band and have been playing in Turkey and Europe and touring excessively in summers.

Eren continues to work with Aydin Esen on a new album, and studying a Masters in Composition at Istanbul Technical University’s Center for Advanced Studies in Music.