For those unaware, Flying High Above, the 20th album from pianist and composer Amina Figarova, brings together the musical worlds that have shaped her life, from her childhood in Azerbaijan and long fascination with Afro-Cuban music to her career in New York’s international jazz community.

At the heart of the album is the three-part Suite for Havana, created after Figarova fulfilled a lifelong ambition to visit Cuba and perform at the Havana International Jazz Festival in 2025.

Released on her own AmFi Records imprint, the album combines music recorded with Cuban musicians in Havana with new compositions featuring her longtime collaborators in New York.

Figarova’s connection to Cuban music began decades earlier in Baku, where jazz and Cuban music were both widely heard. She recognized parallels between Cuba’s percussion traditions and the rich drumming heritage of Azerbaijan, while seeing the pioneering Cuban ensemble Irakere perform in Baku provided a direct encounter with the music that would remain an enduring influence.

Her 2025 invitation to perform in Havana finally allowed that long-distance relationship to become an active collaboration with Cuban musicians.

The resulting Suite for Havana unfolds across Vamos, Mirtha and Ya Llego, with Havana-based musicians including saxophonist Emir Santa Cruz Hernández, trumpeter Yasek Manzano and drummer Oliver Valdés contributing to the project.

Rather than approaching Cuban music simply as an outside influence, Figarova uses the suite to connect memories formed in Azerbaijan with the musicians and experiences she encountered firsthand in Havana, creating a personal dialogue between cultures and different stages of her musical life.

The remainder of Flying High Above was recorded in New York with an ensemble drawn from Figarova’s closest collaborators: flutist and husband Bart Platteau, bassist Yasushi Nakamura, drummer Rudy Royston, trumpeter Alex Pope Norris and saxophonist Troy Roberts.

Together, pieces including the title track, Focused, Sapphire Veil, Eternal Flame and Running Away demonstrate the breadth of Figarova’s contemporary jazz writing. Spanning 60 minutes, Flying High Above is both a culmination of a lifelong musical fascination and another step in the continuing evolution of Figarova as a pianist, composer and bandleader.

1. Flying High Above
2. Focused
3. Sapphire Veil
4. Eternal Flame
5. Running Away
6. Suite For Havana - VAMOS
7. Suite For Havana - MIRTHA
8. Suite For Havana - YA LLEGO

On an album that reconnects Amina with her childhood memories, along with making new connections to music and people who are so warm and so beautiful within her life, she opens this most astutely engaging new recording on the sonorous title cut Flying High Above and the bright and bubbly Focused and they are in turn backed seamlessly by the sheer elegance of Sapphire Veil, a resplendent Eternal Flame and the delicately hued Running Away.

Along next is the aforementioned Suite For Havana - which itself opens on the playfully perky VAMOS, before gifting us the luxuriant scope of MIRTHA, it all coming to a close on the robustly hypnotic hipsway of YA LLEGO.

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