Biography
Vaqif Mustafazadeh ((Azerbaijan: Vaqif Mustafazadə; 1940 - 1979), also known as Waqif Mustafa-Zadej, was an Azerbaijani pianist and jazz composer Mustafazadeh was born in the Old City of Baku on March 16, 1940. His mother was a piano teacher at a local music school and played a key role in his music education. In 1963 he graduated from the Baku State Music School and a year later was admitted to the State Conservatory of Azerbaijan. Ever since he studied he has given concerts and performed at parties and nights at universities and clubs, and soon became known as an important performer. While playing in clubs, he played mainly classical jazz, as well as blues and dance music.
During the 1940s and 1950s there were music bans in the USSR, jazz was banned, including Azerbaijan. Since there was no opportunity to get jazz records out of nowhere, Mustafazade listened to jazz tracks and learned from movies and the BBC radio. He listened to the radio and tried to recreate the music on the piano.
From the 1960s onwards, jazz bans were gradually lifted, and in the late 1960s and 1970s Baku became the center of locally inspired jazz. Mustafazadeh had gained a reputation and his name was often mentioned among other jazz musicians and he participated in festivals held in his homeland, as well as inside and outside Soviet countries.
In 1965, he left the conservatory in Baku and went to Tbilisi to lead the "Orero" ensemble. He later formed the jazz trio "Qafqaz" in Georgia. In 1970 he formed the female quartet "Levli" and in 1971 the vocal-organ ensemble "Seville". Mustafazadeh is the founder of the Azerbaijani mugham jazz movement, which emerged in Baku in the late 1960s and 1970s as a result of a mix of jazz and traditional folk music. His works and performance were praised by internationally renowned top musicians of the world,
He was twice married and had a daughter from every marriage, who became famous pianists. He died of a heart attack shortly after a concert in Tashkent on September 16, 1979.