JAZZ - LEONID CHIZIK MEETS TCHAIKOVSKY

In this jazz concert, recorded live from the Munich Klaviersommer, Leonid Chizhik (keyboard), Peter Klinke (bass) and Matt Wilson (percussion) improvise on themes by Tchaikovsky.

A classically-trained pianist, Chizhik pioneered jazz in the USSR in the early 1970s and he continues to be one of today’s most innovative and eclectic improvisers. He is a musician who loves classical music and jazz and blends elements from both genres in his own unique style of playing to create an organic, unified musical language.

Biography

" 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/

/