Azernews.Az

By Sabina Idayatova

The 11^th Baku International Jazz Festival, organized by the Culture and Tourism Ministry jointly with the Culture Fund of Azerbaijan, ended at the Heydar Aliyev Palace on November 2.

The festival ended with a concert of Bob James and David Sanborn.

Sanborn is a famous American musician, one of the greatest saxophonists of all time, keyboardist, composer and arranger. The creative activity of Sanborn, a musician of international renown, a six-time winner of Grammy Awards, over the past few decades has defined the modern sounding of the saxophone to become a music reference point for a number of artists of different directions: rock, jazz, rhythm&blues, pop.

James is a famous American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, producer and one of the founders of such directions as jazz fusion, crossover jazz, smooth jazz. James was born on December 25, 1939 in Marshall, Missouri, USA. At the age of 4 years old, he began taking piano lessons at Catholic school in Marshall. His becoming a young and talented musician was contributed by regular classes with different teachers, who taught him the basics of music theory, harmony, and masterly performance.

The Baku International Jazz festival opened at the International Mugham Center on October 23. The concert programs of the festival took place at the Heydar Aliyev Palace, the State Philharmonic Hall, International Mugham Center and Jazz Center.­

During the festival, performances by Kerry Garrett, Avishai Cohen, Marcus Miller, and others was held. Along with foreign artists, the festival featured performances of well-known Azerbaijani musicians - Salman Gambarov, Emil Afrasiyab, Mirjavad Jafarov, as well as talented young musicians.

Jazz is a highly appreciated music genre in Azerbaijan. Annual international jazz festivals have been held in the capital of Baku since 2002.

At the heart of the festival is Azerbaijani jazz which has its own long history. Conquering the world at the beginning of the 20^th century, jazz as a musical genre reached Baku. Newspaper archives indicate that at that time bands were already performing jazz in Baku restaurants. It is likely that Robert Nobel and his brothers, Ludwig and Alfred, listened to jazz in Baku. Unfortunately, there are no early recordings to determine the professional quality of those performances.

In 1920, the Soviet regime gained control of the region, and soon the Soviet doctrine profoundly affected all aspects of daily life - even the attitude toward art and literature. Everything was subject to the Communist ideology and centralized control. Nothing escaped its scrutiny, not even music - including what to sing, what to play and what to listen to. Those decisions were all made at Kremlin in Moscow, not by local artists.

In the period of persecution and prohibition of jazz, Vagif Mustafazadeh, the founder of Azerbaijani jazz was born. We can see by delving into the past that Mustafazadeh turned into a bright ray of light for jazz at the time of musical darkness. He had long been an outcast and was not understood by people whose consciousness was dominated by the Soviet ideology.

However, Mustafazadeh managed to create Azerbaijani jazz, giving it a native element and something close to Azerbaijan's soul. He created a new sound - his own kind of jazz, a fusion of jazz with a form of indigenous Azerbaijani music, Mugham.

These days, Aziza Mustafazadeh and Isfar Sarabski, as well as other celebrities like Emil Afrasiyab, Elchin Shirinov, Afgan Rasoul, Ulviyya Rahimova, Diana Hajiyeva, Zaur Mirzayev and Sabina Babayeva are breathing a new life into the rich art of Azerbaijani jazz.