Dance of Fire is the third album released by Azeri jazz artist Aziza Mustafa Zadeh. It was released in 1995 with the sales of over 2.000.000 copies worldwide. It was very successful in Germany, Austria, USA, France and Japan.
Aziza comes from an exceptionally musical family. Her mother, who goes everywhere with her, was an outstanding folk singer before giving that up to manage her daughter. Her father is known as the architect of jazz in Azerbaijan. She started playing the piano when she was 3...
Dance of Fire is the third album released by Azeri jazz artist Aziza Mustafa Zadeh. It was released in 1995 with the sales of over 2.000.000 copies worldwide. It was very successful in Germany, Austria, USA, France and Japan.
Aziza comes from an exceptionally musical family. Her mother, who goes everywhere with her, was an outstanding folk singer before giving that up to manage her daughter. Her father is known as the architect of jazz in Azerbaijan. She started playing the piano when she was 3 years old, gave her first concerts with 14, and won her first international prizes with 17.
Aziza is an enchantress. Her music covers every tempo, her rhythms range from the simplest 4/4s to the most complex treasures of the music of her homeland, Azerbaijan. And yet not for a single moment does she release her hold on you or allow the mist to clear while she plays.
Perhaps it is this uncommon self-assuredness that led to recording with a great many fusion greats assembled to play her compositions. Al Di Meola plays guitar, Bill Evans, sax. Stanley Clarke, no less, takes up the bass while Omar Hakim drums. An astonishing group of musicians to be playing on a 25 year old’s album.
The album chrysalises much of what Aziza is about — a fusion of jazz and mugam (a traditional improvisational style of Azerbaijan) with classical and avant-garde influences.
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There's very little straight jazz on this record. What we get is a collection of mostly instrumentals of a heavily Caucasian nature, centered around Zadeh's excellent piano playing and vocals, and fleshed out by an impressive cast of Western fusion enormies (they're more than biggies): Al Di Meola (acoustic guitar), Bill Evans (sax), Kai Eckhardt Karpeh de Camargo and Stanley Clarke (bass), and Omar Hakim (drums). The tunes are very melodic and rarely meander outside of a normal human's attention span (a problem that has plagued jazz since the 1940s). As a set, they have a particular cohesiveness that makes the record sound shorter than it actually is.
The album's blend of worldly influences works really well and makes for a rocking piano-based "exotic" album.
Musicians
Aziza Mustafa Zadeh - Grand piano and vocals
Al Di Meola - Acoustic guitar
Bill Evans - Soprano and tenor sax
Stanley Clarke - Acoustic and electric basses
Kai Eckhardt - 5-string electric basses
Omar Hakim - Drums
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