Gerald Spaits

Eldar Djangirov Trio: Handprints

by J. Robert Bragonier
October 8, 2003

It was the summer of 1996, and Charles McWhorter, a jazz aficionado from New York, was attending a jazz festival in Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia, Russia. He could scarcely believe his eyes: the youngster creating the remarkably sophisticated piano jazz to which he was listening was only nine years old! McWhorter immediately invited Eldar Djangirov (pronounced John-GEAR- off) and his parents to the United States from their home in Kyrgyzstan in the former Soviet Union, and in 1998 ...