Welcome to the Jazz Society of Oregon's Website
We are proud to be part of a vibrant Jazz community in the Pacific Northwest. On this site, you will find original articles on local clubs, musicians, and events, as well as, reviews of Jazz recordings, a great calendar and information about Jazz Society activities.
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May 2012 Highlights:
Andrea Niemiec is the featured musician for May. Updates have been made to the jazz calendar, the upcoming events, and the CD Reviews.
Become a member and you will receive the monthly JazzScene magazine containing features and articles not available on the website. The following is an article from the April 2012 edition.
Amina Figarova - calm amid the storm
Pianist and composer finds balance and inspiration in New York
By Lynn Darroch
Amina Figarova
This time, she’s here to stay.
When Amina Figarova first came to the U.S. to study at Boston’s Berklee College of Music in 1992, she knew it was the place for her.
“When we got here, I felt hope right away,” she recalled in a telephone conversation from her new home in New York City. “I loved the mentality in general -- ‘mind your business and work hard, and then you can get there.’”
But she and her husband, the flutist Bart Platteau (Belgian by birth), moved back to Europe; the city of Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, became their base for nearly 20 years -- until they crossed the Atlantic for good in 2010. This time, she even brought the piano.
“It’s a huge nine-foot instrument,” she said. “It used to sit in a big living room in the Netherlands, and here it’s crammed into a little New York apartment. I’m cramped and way more happy.”
Because in New York, she finally found what she needs.
“That extreme energy of New York, I need like water,” she said. “And the inspiration you get from everywhere -- it’s totally different, incomparable to any other city on the planet.”
Her new CD, “Twelve,” is a response to that environment.
“It’s from a totally different place,” she explained. “I feel so much more in balance here, totally in balance, actually; it’s easier to come to yourself here.”
Born in 1966 in Azerbaijan -- a predominantly Muslim country and a member state of the former Soviet Union -- Figarova grew up in a society of high-achieving women. In fact, women in Azerbaijan received the vote before a similar law was passed in the U.S.
“In my country, there was more equality [between the sexes] than in the Netherlands,” she said. “A woman in high position was a very normal thing.”
And her musical training, she believes, was superior to what was available in Western Europe.
“Culture was always a very important part of life,” she said. “In the USSR, it was always prestigious to be a musician .. .and the level of music education was extremely high.”
She started classical piano studies at age three, but in her teens was listening to Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea -- a natural, she explained, because “our folk music is based on improvisation.”
She grew up speaking her country’s native language as well as Russian, began studying English at age six, and acquired her unaccented Dutch later. “I’m trying to get rid of the Dutch now,” she laughed, “because it’s interfering with my English.”
Amina Figarova
She’s here to stay, you see, because amid the hustle of the city, she’s found herself.
“’Twelve’ -- the title tune of her new album -- “is a very quiet piece because that’s how I am now -- so much more relaxed and calm and in balance.”
All the compositions on this new CD, in fact, reflect her new state of mind and environment as she tries “to bring the visuality of the way I think more into the music,” she said, explaining how she paints, in sound, a picture of the vision in her mind’s eye.
“’NYCST,’ the New York CIty subway tango [from her new CD] … it’s taking a subway at night,” she said. “You see so many funny things around: the whole energy, the rats … It’s the mood. There’s no tango in the music, but tango is for passion; not of love but passion of night life. So the funny bass line in 11/4 time, going in different grooves and changing … it has a Latin feel underground, a very passionate underground ... So it's more a mood than just one thing.
"In 'Squeaky Seagulls,'" she continued, describing another piece from her new CD, "it's a very exact thing. I was searching for these very sharp corners and how squeaky these seagulls can be. It's usual for me to voice chords low to create this very warm sound, but here, I'm voicing things very high, so everything is very squeaky and the harmonies are very edgy -- you know how they scream and how sneaky they can be.
“It’s very different here,” she added. “Everything around makes me write different than before.” Even the piano sounds different in her New York apartment. Many of the elements that have distinguished her previous albums are still present on this New Yorkinfluenced disc, however. And the members of her sextet, including husband and musical partner Platteau, have remained with her for years. So
Figarova’s intricate, carefully composed yet spirited sound remains -- the sound that’s carried her to the main stages of festivals such as the Newport Jazz Festival and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and to many other prestigious venues in the U.S. and Europe. Figarova just finds it easier to come to herself, as she put it, now that she’s moved to the States, easier to expand the borders of what she used to do.
“Everything around makes me write different than before,” she said. “I’m full of a zillion ideas.”
The Amina Figarova Sextet is scheduled to perform at The Mission Theater, Thursday, May 17, 7:30 pm.
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