Elchin Shirinov

Elchin never attended music school. He was tutored by great musical talents including Vagif Sadikhov, Aaron Goldberg, Kevin Hays, Jean Michel Pilc, and Yakov Okun. In his formative years, Elchin was influenced by a number of great musicians, most notably Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Brad Mehldau, through intense study of their music.

In 2008 he began cooperating with Jazz Center in Baku. Elchin then played several concerts in Germany, France and Switzerland with Sevda Alekperzade Band. Elchin has been part of the Rain Sultanov Quartet with which he appeared on festival stages in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Malaysia. In 2010, in 2011, in 2012, in 2013 and in 2016 he gave performances in Baku Jazz Festival with his own band – Elchin Shirinov Trio. 

From 2010-2017 he played at the Voicingers Jazz Festival in Poland. In 2013 he toured Poland with Polish jazz musicians Grzegorz Karnas, Michal Jaros and Sebastian Frankiewicz. In the same year he played at Montreux Jazz Festival with Sevda Alekperzade and at Jazzy Colors Festival in Paris with Elchin Shirinov trio.

In 2014 he began a collaboration with musicians from the London Jazz scene playing in Cannes with drummer Jon Scott and bassist Andrea Di Biase and later in Paris and Athens with Sam Lasserson. In the same year Elchin played at Baku Jazz Festival with american jazz stars Ben Street and Jeff Ballard and at Vomex Festival in Santiago de Compostela (Spain) with Ben Street and Adam Cruz. He then played in Vienna at Porgy and Bess Jazz club with Rain Sultanov, Yasuhito Mori and Peter Nilsson and at Kiev Jazz Festival with Grzegorz Karnas Quartet.

2015 was an intense year of concerts with Elchin Shirinov Trio with Italian bassist Andrea Di Biase and British drummer Dave Hamlett, including performances at Vigado Concert Hall (Budapest, Hungary), at Mugam Festival in Baku, at Sunside Jazz club in Paris, in various venues in Brussels and Moscow, in Palmengarten concert hall in Frankfurt and for the “De Soie et de Feu” Festival in Mulhouse (France). The year culminated with a concert at Baku Jazz Festival with Andrea Di Biase and Jon Scott. Oon 22 April 2016 he gave performances with Andrea Di Biase (bass) and Dave Hamblett (drums) at the Jazzahead exhibition and festival in Bremen, Germany. 

The concert at the Spice of Life on 13 July featured two musicians well-versed in Shirinov’s music – Italian bassist Andrea Di Biase and British drummer Jon Scott, with whom he has regularly collaborated for over two years.

Headlining after a set by the UK fusion band Alex Munk’s Flying Machines, he performed before a rapt audience, his Azerbaijani heritage being evident from the start with his version of the Azerbaijani folk song Durna, which began at a furious drum-led pace and was replete with eastern harmonies, microtones and repeated figures, urging on Scott towards increasingly daring and complex drum passages. This, in turn, prompted a staccato response by Shirinov before his pianistic pyrotechnics upped the tempo even further, reaching a new degree of excitement. Throughout the concert, Di Biase demonstrated that the legacy of the great lyric bass player of postbop jazz – Scott LaFaro – remains firmly alive. The concert two days later in the intimate surroundings of the Vortex jazz club gave Shirinov and Di Biase even more time to stretch out over two sets – this time collaborating with the drummer Dave Hamblett. Billed as ‘London’s Listening Jazz Club’, the attentive audience remained transfixed throughout both sets.