Great musician of the 20th century Vagif Mustafazadeh was born on March 16, 1940 in Baku. Vagif’s name was chosen by the renowned poet, Samed Vurgun, on the request of his mother. When he named this child Vagif, he didn’t know that this little child will become a great representative of Azerbaijani music in the future. Vagif’s mother was a musician, and love to music came from his family. He started to play the piano in his age of three. In 1963 he graduated from Baku State Musical Technical school named after Asef Zeynalli and a year later became a student of Azerbaijani State Conservatoire. At that times jazz music was banned in the Soviet society by Stalin. But all this couldn’t destroy little Vagif’s desire. As a child, he used to listen to jazz on BBC broadcasts and sing Meykhana rhythmic poetry, which had also been banned, with friends.
In the year of 1965 he graduated the conservatoire and went to Tbilisi to lead the “Orero” musical ensemble. Later he created the “Qafqaz” (Azerbaijani for Caucasus) jazz trio at Georgian State Philarmony. After Stalin’s death Vagif began to play jazz compositions in concerts.By the early 1960s, people were finally becoming more comfortable with jazz and Vagif had started to gain a reputation even outside of Azerbaijan as a great jazz musician. In 1966, Willis Conover, conductor of the “Jazz Time” radio program, even went as far as to say, “Vagif Mustafazadeh is an extraordinary pianist. It is impossible to identify his equal. He is the most lyrical pianist I have ever known.”
