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Classical Origins and Jazz Chops Galore: A Chat with the Noted Composer and Pianist Amina Figarova

On this edition of our show, we speak by phone with the pianist, composer, and bandleader Amina Figarova, who was born in Azerbaijan in 1966 and is now based in New York City. She began to study music as a child, eventually attending the Baku Conservatory, and became a classical concert pianist while still a young girl. Later she was drawn to jazz at the Rotterdam Conservatory --- and later still at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. Figarova is married to flautist Bart Platteau, who likewise began his career in music as a classical performer, and who now works as a member of the Amina Figarova Sextet. This critically acclaimed sextet will soon perform a concert at the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in Downtown Tulsa, and Figarova --- whose ample gifts as a player and composes of jazz music have been likened to those of Toshiko Akiyoshi and Maria Schneider --- tells us all about this sextet, and about her latest CD, "Twelve," which is so named because it's her 12th album as a leader.

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.
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