Amina Figarova | |
---|---|
Background information | |
Born | Baku, Azerbaijan | 2 December 1964
Genres | Jazz |
Occupation(s) | Musician |
Instrument(s) | Piano |
Years active | 1990s–present |
Website | aminafigarova |
Amina Figarova (born 1964) is an Azerbaijani jazz pianist. Trained as a classical pianist in Baku, she became interested in the local folk music, later specializing in jazz. Since the late 1980s, together with her husband, the flutist Bart Platteau, she has performed in jazz festivals around the world. [1] [2]
Born in Baku on 2 December 1964, Amina Figarova learnt to play the piano as a small child and began composing when only six. She attended the Baku Academy of Music where she studied to become a classical concert pianist. In 1988, while at the Moscow Jazz Festival, she was invited to study at the Rotterdam Conservatoire where she soon developed an interest in jazz. She completed her education at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. [1] [2]
While in the United States, she became involved in the Thelonious Monk Jazz Colony in Aspen, Colorado. Together with the flutist Bart Platteau whom she later married, she began to perform in jazz concerts around the world. [1]
Her albums September Suite and more recently Blue Whisper were inspired in part by the events of 11 September 2001 when she was in New York playing at the Blue Note Jazz Club. [3] Chicago critic Neil Tesser rates her as one of the leading contemporary jazz composers both with September Suite and Come Escape With Me. [4]
Figarova's compositions include the musical Diana, [5] and Tehora which she wrote for the Israeli singer Shlomit Butbul. [6] She has released 13 albums, becoming one of DownBeat's Rising Star Composers of the year in both 2014 and 2015. [7]
Claude Bolling was a French jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and occasional actor.
Dave Douglas is an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and educator. His career includes more than fifty recordings as a leader and more than 500 published compositions. His ensembles include the Dave Douglas Quintet; Sound Prints, a quintet co-led with saxophonist Joe Lovano; Uplift, a sextet with bassist Bill Laswell; Present Joys with pianist Uri Caine and Andrew Cyrille; High Risk, an electronic ensemble with Shigeto, Jonathan Aaron, and Ian Chang; and Engage, a sextet with Jeff Parker, Tomeka Reid, Anna Webber, Nick Dunston, and Kate Gentile.
Foreststorn "Chico" Hamilton was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He came to prominence as sideman for Lester Young, Gerry Mulligan, Count Basie, and Lena Horne. Hamilton became a bandleader, first with a quintet featuring the cello as a lead instrument, an unusual choice for a jazz band in the 1950s, and subsequently leading bands that performed cool jazz, post bop, and jazz fusion.
George Allen Russell was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and theorist. He is considered one of the first jazz musicians to contribute to general music theory with a theory of harmony based on jazz rather than European music, in his book Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (1953).
Myra Melford is an American avant-garde jazz pianist and composer. A 2013 Guggenheim Fellow, Melford was described by the San Francisco Chronicle as an "explosive player, a virtuoso who shocks and soothes, and who can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn't seem to have been designed for."
Stanley William Tracey was a British jazz pianist and composer, whose most important influences were Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. Tracey's best known recording is the 1965 album Jazz Suite Inspired by Dylan Thomas's "Under Milk Wood", which is based on the BBC radio drama Under Milk Wood, by Dylan Thomas.
Thomas William Ellis Smith is a Scottish jazz saxophonist, composer, and educator.
William Henry Cunliffe Jr., is an American jazz pianist and composer.
Irene Louise Rosnes, known professionally as Renee Rosnes, is a Canadian jazz pianist, composer, and arranger.
Martin Louis Paich was an American pianist, composer, arranger, record producer, music director, and conductor. As a musician and arranger he worked with jazz musicians Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Kenton, Art Pepper, Buddy Rich, Ray Brown, Shorty Rogers, Pete Rugolo, Ray Charles and Mel Tormé. His long association with Tormé included one of the singer's earliest albums, Mel Tormé with the Marty Paich Dek-Tette. Over the next three decades he worked with pop singers such as Andy Williams and Jack Jones and for film and television. He is the father of David Paich, a founding member of the rock band Toto.
Wayne Escoffery is an American jazz saxophonist.
This is a timeline documenting events of Jazz in the year 1959.
This is a timeline documenting events of Jazz in the year 1958.
Dmitri Matheny is an American jazz flugelhornist.
Sherry Finzer is an American flutist and composer based in Phoenix, Arizona. A national award-winning musician known for her contributions in the genre of flute and New Age music, Finzer is known predominantly as a soloist, but in recent years has formed the supergroup Trialogue with guitarist Darin Mahoney and percussionist Will Clipman. She performs extensively with local, national and international musicians, encompassing a variety of musical styles, including new-age, Latin, flamenco, classical, pop and jazz. Finzer tours worldwide as a Guo Flute and Pearl Flute Performing Artist, as well as in support of her album releases for the Heart Dance Records label, which she founded in 2006. Heart Dance Records represents 80+ artists in the New Age, Ambient, Acoustic, Electronic and Chill genres, as well as the radio promotions and PR company Higher Level Media.
Clotilde (Rullaud) is an artistic director, singer, vocalist, flutist, composer, filmmaker, producer and vocal coach.
Valerie Coleman is an American composer and flutist as well as the creator of the wind quintet Imani Winds. Coleman is a distinguished artist of the century who was named Performance Today's 2020 Classical Woman of the year and was listed as “one of the Top 35 Women Composers” in the Washington Post. In 2019, Coleman's orchestral work, Umoja, Anthem for Unity, was commissioned and premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Coleman's Umoja is the first classical work by a living African American woman that the Philadelphia Orchestra has performed.
Enrico Intra is an Italian jazz pianist, composer, conductor.
Iqua Colson, born Kristine Browne in Chicago, Illinois, USA, is an American vocalist, composer, lyricist, arts administrator, and educator.
Nat Bartsch is a pianist and composer based in Melbourne, Australia who creates lyrical, meditative work that explores the space between classical and jazz genres.