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Jazz Articles about Amina Figarova

6
Album Review

Enrico Granafei: It's Hard to Say Goodbye

Read "It's Hard to Say Goodbye" reviewed by Nicholas F. Mondello


With It's Hard to Say Goodbye, multi-talented Italian guitarist and harmonica player, Enrico Granafei and a group of standouts offer eleven Latin-flavored jazz selections. The effort, recorded over an extended period, also features two artists who have unfortunately passed--trumpeter Claudio Roditi and pianist, Mike Longo. Granafei has dedicated the album to them and to the memory of Granafei's mentor, Toots Thielemans. “Claudinho," a Granafei original samba, opens the session. Upbeat in tempo, Granafei and Roditi make the ...

10
Album Review

Amina Figarova & Matsiko World Orphan Choir: Suite For Africa

Read "Suite For Africa" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Happenstance played a hand in two of pianist Amina Figarova's finest recordings. The first time around it was September Suite (Munich Records, 2005). Though based in the Netherlands at the time, Figarova was staying in New York City when the planes flew into the World Trade Center buildings on September 11th, 2001. The music for the album was her reaction to the event, to the grief and mourning it caused. Heading a superb sextet, she created a beautiful ode to ...

6
Album Review

Amina Figarova: Joy

Read "Joy" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Pianist Amina Figarova released an album in 2005 that was about as far away from the theme of “joy" as could be. September Suite (Munich Records) explored the deadly events of September 11, 2001 (she was in New York at the time; she experienced it). It is an album that she called: “An Ode to Mourning striving to articulate the various stages of grief in musical terms." In 2022 Figarova turns 180 degrees to embrace optimism and a ...

Album Review

Amina Figarova: Persistence

Read "Persistence" reviewed by Maurizio Zerbo


Il pregio della varietà sostanzia la cifra artistica della pianista Amina Figarova, non circoscritta entro i soli confini del jazz. Dopo il progetto orchestrale del penultimo CD, la musicista azera residente a New York apre la finestra del suo etereo pensiero compositivo verso i territori della fusion, del funk, del rap. Da queste premesse discende un disco ibrido nella sua eccellente realizzazione, che testimonia la continua evoluzione del jazz e la nobiltà dei suoi migliori protagonisti. A far da tessuto ...

13
Album Review

Amina Figarova: Persistence

Read "Persistence" reviewed by Edward Blanco


Veteran jazz pianist Amina Figarova embarks on a bold new step with her genre-bending Persistence, creating a new sound for the pianist with music that produces an electric-influenced groove mixing funk-jazz, jazz fusion, hip-hop, classical and R&B rhythms found on this new exploratory album. After two decades leading an acoustic sextet, her new quintet ensemble, Edition 113 (named after the block where she and her and husband, flautist Bart Platteau make their home) was assembled specifically to perform the eclectic ...

6
Album Review

Amina Figarova: Road To The Sun

Read "Road To The Sun" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Pianist Amina Figarova, born in Baku, Azerbaijin, experienced one of the United States' darkest days--the 9/11/2001 terrorist attack--up close, from the vantage point of a friend's apartment in Brooklyn. The experience resulted in the creation of perhaps the most poignant and heartfelt artistic representations of the event, Figarova's sextet recording September Suite (Munich Records, 2005), an “Ode To Mourning" of sorts for America. Figarova has stayed busy since then, releasing Above The Clouds (Munich Music, 2008), Twelve (In ...

9
Album Review

Amina Figarova: Blue Whisper

Read "Blue Whisper" reviewed by Dave Wayne


Pianist and composer Amina Figarova is truly a citizen of the world. Born and raised in Baku, Azerbaijan, she decamped to the Netherlands in the 1980s to study at the Rotterdam Conservatory, and then to Boston in 1989 to continue her studies at Berklee. Blue Whisper is her 12th recording as a leader, but her first to feature a band comprised primarily of US-based musicians. Aside from Bart Platteau (also Figarova's husband), the only holdovers from her excellent Netherlands-based band, ...


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