Baku to remember jazz doyenne Vagif Mustafazadeh

By AzerNews

The International Mugham Center in Bake is set to host a concert dedicated to Azerbaijan's great composer Vagif Mustafazadeh on February 28 at 19.00 pm.

The event has been co-organized by International Mugham Center and musical bands of Azerbaijani television and radio.

During the concert, "Sevil" vocal-instrumental ensemble named after Vagif Mustafazadeh and Jazz Band under the Symphony Orchestra named after Tofig Akhmedov are expected to perform. The concert is free of charge and open to the public.

Vagif Mustafazadeh has expressed the voice of Azerbaijani mugham in jazz. He discovered that three is much in common between the ancient mugham and modern jazz: Both are mysterious and marvelous, capable of exciting the human soul by stirring his deepest emotions and sentiments.

Jazz music occupies a large part of Mustafazadeh's legacy. He wrote numerous jazz compositions, including fugues, preludes, ballads and scherzos, many of them written in the 1970s. He released a total of eight albums, all with different line-ups, mood and style.

Winner of numerous jazz festivals such as "Tallinn-66", "Tallinn-67", Baku festival "Jazz 69", Donetsk 1977 festival, and "Tbilisi-78", Vagif Mustafazadeh could grab the attention of various listeners. He was he first musician who used Azerbaijani mugham in jazz and later became the founder of Azerbaijani jazz.