Amina Figarova

An Azerbaijan-born pianist and composer, Amina Figarova is known for her harmonically sophisticated small and large group post-bop. Following her emergence in the mid-’90s, Figarova has split her time between work in Europe and her home in New York City. Collaborating with her husband, flutist Bart Platteau, she has earned praise for albums like 2005′s Come Escape with Me, 2015′s Blue Whisper, and 2019′s Road to the Sun.
Figarova was born in 1964 in Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan, which was then part of the Soviet Union. Her parents started her on piano lessons at the age of two and by the time she was six years old she was already composing. Classically trained, she was influenced early on by composers like Johann Sebastian Bach, Sergey Rachmaninov, and Claude Debussy, as well as the scores of Alexander Scriabin. However, her parents were also jazz aficionados and introduced her to albums by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson, and Ella Fitzgerald. Following her initial studies as the Baku Conservatory, Figarova moved to the Rotterdam Conservatory in the Netherlands and eventually to the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she further honed her jazz technique. It was while at Berklee that she met her husband and collaborator, flutist Bart Platteau. Along with being a gifted improviser, she developed into a fine modern jazz composer, inspired by the forward-thinking post-bop of artists like Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Miles Davis, and Wayne Shorter. She showcased her sound on her 1994 debut album, Attraction, which featured her original compositions and included contributions by flutist Platteau, bassist Ishaq van Niel, and drummer Sebastiaan de Krom.
In 1998, Figarova attended the Thelonious Monk Jazz Colony summer camp in Aspen, Colorado, and returned that same year with her sophomore album, Another Me. She also spent time as an artist-in-residence in the San Francisco Bay Area working with trumpeter Dmitri Matheny. She and Platteau then moved to Rotterdam, where they resided for much of the 2000s, issuing small group albums like 2000′s Firewind, 2002′s Night Train, and 2005′s Come Escape with Me. Also in 2005, Figarova released September Suite, which was dedicated to those who died in the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Above the Clouds followed in 2008. Away from her own work, she has performed bevy of top-tier artists, including James Moody, Larry Coryell, Winard Harper, Toots Thielemans, Claudio Roditi, and many others. As an arranger, she has collaborated with jazz vocalists Jackie Ryan and Lenora Zenzalai Helm.
Following 2010′s Sketches, Figarova and Platteau relocated full-time to New York City. Two years later, they issued Twelve. They next debuted their sextet with saxophonist Wayne Escoffery and trumpeter Alex Pope Norris on 2015′s Blue Whisper. In 2019, Figarova was awarded a New Jazz Works Grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. That same year, she released another sextet album, Road to the Sun. Persistence arrived in 2020 and found the pianist and her husband working with guitarist Rez Abbasi, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, and drummer Rudy Royston. ~ Matt Collar