JAZZ - LEONID CHIZIK: SOLO PIANO

In a live concert from the Philharmonie concert hall in Munich, the leading Russian jazz pianist Leonid Chizhik plays a programme of piano jazz, displaying the technical virtuosity and musical sensitivity that have made him a star in his native country, selling hundreds of thousands of records.

After this concert, Chizhik was heralded as a real discovery for the West and the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote, “...his harmony recalls Scriabin, his technique that of Prokofiev and his sensitivity...is never sentimental because it never loses the sense of music as a hymn.  It seems almost superfluous to observe that the playing itself is of a stupendous perfection.”

Chizhik’s programme includes his own compositions, jazz standards such as All the Things You Are, Love is Here to Stay and Days of Wine and Roses, as well as extensive improvisation.

"Start with a solid base of swing, add a heap of technique, spice it with a dash of romantic spirit, blend together with free creative abandon, and you get Leonid Chizhik, master improviser and giant of Soviet jazz piano" (Keyboard - BD).

Leonid Chizhik

" Jazz is for me, a way of thinking, which allows the artist to react to the foreverchanging world. The world of sounds, the universe of music, unconstrained by the typical styles of jazz like swing, bebop, mainstream etc. or classical music, folk, avantgarde, pop or rock - everything we hear around us, express the birth of a new unifying language, which allows me or other musicians to communicate with everyone. It is Jazz." (L.Chizhik)

At the beginning of the 70's, after his studies in the Gnessin-Institute in Moscow with Prof. Theodor Gutman, Leonid Chizhik with his trio and also as a solo artist, succeeded in opening the most famous philarmonic concert halls in ther former Soviet Union to jazz. During the period of the Cold War, American critics considered Chizhik the best jazz pianist behind the Iron Curtain. The "Sueddeutsche Zeitung" described him as the "European answer to Keith Jarrett" and the "least known superstar in the world of music". The Soviet state artists' agency top priority to Chizhik's concerts, as it did to Swjatoslav Richter in the classical sector. Although he had been refused permission to travel in the West, when he was finally allowed to perform there (thanks to the support of Gidon Kremer), his concerts at the "Tokyo Summer Fetival", the "Jazz-Piano-Stars" festival in Brasil, the "Berlin Jazzfest", the "Zuerich Opera House", the "Gasteig" in Munich, the "Theatre de la Ville" in Paris, the "konzerthaus" in Vienna and the "Castle Festival" in Ludwigsburg, to name but a few, - were spectacularly successful.

Since 1991 Leonid Chizhik and his family have been living in Munich. He is professor for jazz piano at the universities of Weimar and Munich.

A brilliant artist, who knows no boundaries between classical music and jazz,- L.Chizhik continues to develop the idea of musical synthesis, creates and performs special programs: "Mozart and Jazz", "Mahler and Jazz", "Tchaikovsky and Jazz" or plays concerts with spontaneous improvisations on the pictures of M.Chagal or A. Matisse etc. In 2000 Leonid Chizhik recorded his "Fantasy-Variations" on the theme of Mozart's famous piano sonata in A-Major (op.331) with Gidon Kremer and his chamber orchestra "Kremerata Baltica".

Geseko von Luepke (Sueddeutsche Zeitung) accurately describes the opulent, androgynous phenomenon Chizhik: "When critics try to capture his music in words, they call upon the entire pantheon of pianists: Keith Jarrett and Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Art Taum, Skrjabin and Duke Ellington. Chizhik goes beyond mere synthesis: he doesn't cite models, but draws with technikal brilliance upon the history of sound".

Source: http://www.leonid-chizhik.com