A. Yunus Gencer is an Associate Professor of Music Theory at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University's (MSFAU) State Conservatory, where he also serves as the co-founder, coordinator, and chair of the organizing committee for the Istanbul Music Theory Symposium. An active pedagogue since 2007, he has taught across a broad range of subjects, including ear training, piano, music theory, music appreciation, music history, counterpoint, harmony, composition, and formal analysis.

In 2026, he presented his research on cross-cultural approaches to Formenlehre at the Dublin Music Analysis Conference (DubMAC 26), hosted by the Society for Music Analysis. His books, Dance Music in the Baroque Era I - II (2023), Interactive Accompanied Solfeggio I (2023), and A Saygunian Approach to the Study of Harmony (2021) were published by Kriter and Pan. His research on Ottoman Influences on European Music has been published in Volume 10 and Volume 14 of the CMR Project, published by Brill in association with the University of Birmingham. He also presented this research at the Intercultural Music Conference (2018). His analytical work on madrigal comedy and Adriano Banchieri’s Il Zabaione Musicale was published in the peer-reviewed MSFAU Journal of Social Sciences. In addition, he serves as a peer reviewer for journals such as the Rast Musicology Journal, Eurasian Journal of Music and Dance,Yegâh Musicology Journal, and Çukurova University Journal of Social Sciences. Outside the field of music, he published Disentangled (2021), a collection of his poems, essays, and aphorisms.

As a composer, Gencer's works have been performed across Istanbul, London, Essen, Boston, and Memphis. Recent commissions include Masalımtrak (2024), commissioned by the Anatolian Wind Quintet and premiered at the 3rd Adana Chamber Music Festival, and a Clarinet Concerto (2022-23), commissioned by Gedik Sanat and premiered at the Süreyya Opera House in May 2023. He also contributed scores for Gedik Sanat's Unvoiced Diaries (2020) and Quarantine Circumstances (2021) projects. He received the Smit Composition Award of the University of Memphis in 2015.

Gencer began his musical studies at the MSFAU State Conservatory High School, graduating with high honors before completing a double major in composition and music theory summa cum laude in three years (2010). He studied at the Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester, UK) through the Erasmus programme in 2011, and subsequently completed his Master’s degree (2013) and Doctor of Musical Arts (2016) at the University of Memphis (Tennessee, USA) on a full graduate assistantship. Between 2016 and 2020, he lectured across MSFAU, Marmara University, Okan University, and TEVİL, before joining the MSFAU faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2020 and earning his Associate Professorship in August 2023. Over the course of his training, he worked with esteemed composers and scholars including Volkan Barut, Adam Gorb, Özkan Manav, Gary Carpenter, Hasan Uçarsu, Kamran İnce, and John Baur.