Emin Fındıkoğlu

Born in Istanbul in 1940, Emin Fındıkoğlu started making music in late 1955 by playing the mellophone in the orchestra of Saint Joseph High School. He had to learn a musical instrument with which he could repeat what he heard before while listening to jazz records. While on the one hand he was studying trumpet at the conservatory, on the other hand Fındıkoğlu was developing his music knowledge together with his friends who were all older than him and interested in jazz, at the house of Cüneyt Sermet. He never broke off the bond to the well-respected jazz critic Sermet by visiting him frequently at his house at Didim. In 1956, Fındıkoğlu, first came across the İsmet Sıral Sextette at “Küçük Sahne” and then the Dizzy Gillespie Grand Orchestra at “Saray Cinema”, from that point on he started observing the jazz masters visually and aurally and contributed to İsmet Sıral’s group, to Arif Mardin’s and Gillespie’s orchestras and to Ernie Wilkins with his first-class arrangements. In 1959 Emin Fındıkoğlu quitted playing trumpet and started taking harmony and arrangement lessons from Arif Mardin, who had recently returned from Boston. As a matter of fact, the combos that Fındıkoğlu established during his maturity years, benefit from Mardin’s technique of obtaining big sounds created by small ensembles. In some experimental studies, even if only a little, the impact of Norwegian pianist, arranger and orchestra conductor Jon Balke can be sensed. Combining these impacts with his own perspective, he created his own individuality. In 1962 after completing his military service Fındıkoğlu won a scholarship and started studying at the Berklee Music School in Boston, where he took classes in arrangement by Herb Pomeroy, piano by Ray Santisi, improvisation by John LaPorta, orchestration by Bill Maloof and counterpoint by James Progris. In 1963, he arranged two Mercer Ellington compositions for the eighth of Berklee's "Jazz In The Classroom" album series with the title "A Tribute To Duke Ellington" Volume VIII: A Tribute To Duke Ellington. After returning to Istanbul in 1967, he began playing piano in the quartet of the Swedish saxophonist Lennart Jansson. Fındıkoğlu founded his first big orchestra “Big Soul Band” in 1968. The ensemble that played soul, which can be considered as a brother of jazz and definitely black music, attracted attention with the arrangements of Emin Fındıkoğlu, the funky accompaniment of bassist Onno Tunç and the vocals of Erkut Taçkın. In 1970, he opened the jazz club called “The Rhythm Section” in Elmadağ/Istanbul, which was turned into a cabaret theater the year after. He signed for a musical with İsmet Küntay and one with Haldun Taner. In 1971, he was the musical director of the Hair musical at the “Engin Cezzar-Gülriz Sururi Theater” and the Brecht Cabaret at the “Dostlar Tiyatrosu” in 1979. In 1978, he also opened a music school called “Polifon” with Onno Tunç in Taksim/Istanbul. In the 1980s, Fındıkoğlu who had been working in Scandinavia and Western Europe for four years, founded several ensembles together with Tuna Ötenel. In 1985, Emin Fındıkoğlu and Mustafa Kemal Ağaoğlu founded the “Bilsak Jazz Festival”, which was the first international modern jazz event in Turkey that jazz masters from around the globe attended.