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Jimmy Figueras

About Me

My Jazz Story

As a child of the '80s who grew up listening to movie soundtracks, pop, classical music on TV and songs from past decades, I saw anything that wasn't mainstream music as a strange, feared and almost non-existent musical world. Following my high school graduation and being tired of pop and rock, I wanted something more profound, which is what led me to jazz. The very first jazz album that I bought was Michel Camilo's On Fire, which was an excellent choice to immerse in myself in the world of jazz, followed by Chick Corea's Akoustic Band studio album. After listening to those 2 albums, I stopped seeing jazz as strange music and began seeing it an exciting and liberating world; other artists that I began listening to was Harry Connick Jr. through his "20" album, which still blows me away to this day with his New Orleans jazz piano sound that I love! I also like are latin jazz, stride piano, cocktail jazz, bebop, hard bop, post bop, jazz-blues, funk-jazz and swing. As I continue to grow, my musical tastes change, listening to what resonates with me the most in the given moment. Since I live in the Carolinas, unfortunately the only jazz programming that I can find on the radio is "Jazz Night in America with Christian McBride", which is very limited and wish there were 24/7 jazz stations that I could hear on the radio.