Onno Tunç

Onno Tunç — Biography

Born Ohannes Tunçboyacıyan on 20 December 1948 in the Şişli district of Istanbul, Onno Tunç was an Anatolian-Armenian composer, arranger, music director, producer and conductor, and the elder brother of musician Arto Tunçboyacıyan.

He began playing bass guitar in the 1960s with jazz-, soul- and pop-leaning groups such as Üstün Poyraz Set, Big Soul Band and Durul Gence 10, appearing on the 1969 album İlk Konser with the latter — his first recording credit. Joining the Şat Yapım studio in 1973, he worked as a session musician and arranger, shaping many of the era's singles and releasing his own first single under the name Onno & Co. By the mid-1970s he had largely stopped performing live and focused on arranging, handling every track on Ajda Pekkan's blockbuster 1979 album Süper Star 2 and becoming one of the most sought-after arrangers of the period. Throughout the 1980s he composed and arranged for Sezen Aksu's landmark albums Sen Ağlama (1984), Git (1986), Sezen Aksu '88 and Sezen Aksu Söylüyor (1988), producing some of Turkish pop's biggest hits, while also conducting orchestras for musicals and playing guitar and bass on select recordings.

His final collaboration with Aksu, Gülümse (1991), sold more than two million copies and became one of the best-selling albums in Turkish history, and he continued working on chart-topping records into the mid-1990s. Tunç died on 14 January 1996 when the small aircraft carrying him from Bursa to Istanbul crashed near the village of Selimiye in Yalova; he was buried at the Şişli Armenian Cemetery after a funeral service at the Üç Horan Armenian Church in Beyoğlu. Decades later he is still remembered as one of the most prolific and influential composers in Turkish pop music, with tribute concerts continuing to be staged in his honor.