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"re-imagination" receives 2007 Grammy Nomination for Best Contemporary Jazz Album!
Available Now!
Check Out Itunes, Amazon, or Visit the Sony Music Store to purchase your copy today!
New Performances Dates for 2008!
Eldar Celebrates 2007 Grammy Nomination!
Re-Imagination 2007 Grammy Nominee for Best Contemporary Jazz Album!
Eldar's October Performances at The 2007 CMJ Festival!
Did you miss Eldar on CW11 Morning News !!!
ELDAR FEATURED IN PASTE MAGAZINE PODCAST!
Eldar reaches #2 on Jazz Week Charts!
're-imagination" IS AVAILABLE ON VINYL!
Eldar on CNN Pipeline!
Amazon's Review of re-imagination!
Podcasts Available Now!
Re-Imagination Available Now!
Eldar Featured in CURRENT Magazine
Visit Eldar on MySpace!
Eldar is back with "re-imagination"
Recap of Eldar's Grammy Performance
Eldar performed "Place St. Henri" on last Sunday's Grammy Awards during a speech from Neil Portnow, the President/CEO of The Recording Academy. Here is his speech:
Over the past 50 years, The Recording Academy has awarded 7,578 GRAMMYs. And tonight, we'll be handing out almost 400 more in 110 categories.
Fifty years of awarding excellence is an extraordinary milestone. A simple idea hatched in 1957 launched an academy that 50 years later serves as the preeminent organization for the entire creative community.
With 20,000 members, headquartered here in Los Angeles, and with Chapters located in 12 major music markets across the United States, The Academy delivers its missions 365 days every year.
We accomplish this by serving our members, bestowing honors and awards, and helping music people in need — any time, any place — through our MusiCares Foundation.
We are at the forefront of archiving and preserving our recorded history, and we are extremely proud to announce the opening of our GRAMMY Museum, right here in the heart of L.A.'s most exciting entertainment center. It'll be a fitting legacy to cap off our 50th celebration when the GRAMMY Museum opens late this year.
We advocate for the rights of our music community in Washington, D.C., and all across the country. This year, we will fight to pass legislation to once and for all ensure that, just like in every other developed country in the world, all music creators are compensated for their performances when played on traditional radio. And just as we support our own songwriters, we congratulate our fellow writers in the film and television world for winning fair compensation for their unique and creative contributions.
And what about our kids? We're proud that our GRAMMY Foundation fights to ensure the cultural necessity and vital right of every young person to experience music and the arts in our public schools.
Now tonight, we have an incredible example of how we've had a real impact on that proposition. In 2000, a then 12-year-old music student was invited to appear on the GRAMMY stage to show the meaning of music education.
Well, eight years later, he's a GRAMMY-nominated artist. Performing a composition of the late, great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, please welcome Eldar.
[The development of young artists such as Eldar is] why The Academy can proudly say, "the next 50 is right here!"
As we look forward to our future, we will never forget our past.
New Performances Dates for 2008!
Happy New Year!
Check out Eldar's new tour dates for New York City, Anaheim, San Francisco and more! Visit this website for more information and don't forget to add Eldar as a friend on MySpace at www.myspace.com/eldar87 !
Eldar Celebrates 2007 Grammy Nomination!
One of the most formidable jazz musicians of this generation, the 20-year-old pianist extraordinaire Eldar has just received a Grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary Jazz Album category for re-imagination. His third Masterworks Jazz recording, which features nine original compositions by Eldar, was hailed by the San Francisco Chronicle as “Excellent…A celebration of Eldar’s boundless range and talent,” and prompted All About Jazz to comment: “Eldar’s solo piano mastery continues to amaze.”
“I’m so grateful to the many people who put so much work and effort into making this recording a reality,” the young artist commented, “especially the producers David Lai and Kirk Yano, and the musicians who put their own personal touch to the sound.”
In re-imagination Eldar performs on acoustic piano, electric keyboards and synthesizers and his works incorporate bebop, swing, blues, classical and rock. The songs Eldar has created for the recording reflect people, places and events in the pianist’s life and demonstrate his rapidly evolving personal style. Also included in the album is Oscar Peterson’s “Place St. Henri,” a tribute to “the first jazz pianist I embraced as a young kid” and a pianist with whom he is often being compared.
Eldar has appeared on national television, including Late Night with Conan O’Brian, CBS Saturday Early Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live, CBS Sunday Morning and is the youngest pianist ever to perform on Marian McPartland’s venerable NPR show, Piano Jazz.
Re-Imagination 2007 Grammy Nominee for Best Contemporary Jazz Album!
Great news! Eldar's latest release, "re-imagination", has received a 2007 Grammy Nomination for Best Contemporary Jazz Album! We could not have done this wihout you! Spread the news and to purchase this release :
Available Now!
Check Out Itunes, Amazon, or Visit the Sony Music Store to purchase your copy today!
Eldar's October Performances at The 2007 CMJ Festival!
Eldar will be performing on Thursday Oct 18, at the CMJ Festival College Day breakfast at the Kimmel Center in New York City at 9am.
Spread the word and stay tuned for more news and updates on Eldar and his upcoming CMJ show performance!
Did you miss Eldar on CW11 Morning News !!!
Eldar recently performed on CW11 Morning News and we have video of his performance. Check it out!
ELDAR FEATURED IN PASTE MAGAZINE PODCAST!
Check out Eldar's music featured Paste Magazine's podcast. You can download it here.
Eldar reaches #2 on Jazz Week Charts!
Eldar has jumped to Number 2 on this weeks Jazz charts on national radio! Keep listening and requesting Eldar's new release, re-imagination, at your local station!
're-imagination" IS AVAILABLE ON VINYL!
For the first time, you can purchase Eldar's new release, "re-imagination", on VINYL! Check out Sundazed to purchase your copy from their online store!
Eldar on CNN Pipeline!
ELDAR FEATURED ON CNN
Catch a piece about Eldar's new album recorded during sound check for his Joe's Pub release party. You can watch it on cnn.com now.
ELDAR REVIEWED BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Russian-born Eldar, who exploded on the jazz scene as a ridiculously gifted teenager and is now all of 20, just keeps dazzling and growing in his third Sony BMG CD, "Re-Imagination," a keyboard tour of several styles, including honky-tonk, cool and acid jazz, and a few cuts that are as musically inventive and baroque as Keith Jarrett at his best. Eldar's keyboard technique can be blisteringly electric one moment, tender and thoughtful the next. In addition to solo cuts, the album finds him getting powerful support from drummer Ali Jackson Jr. and bassist Carlos Henriquez. DJ Logic steps in to add contemporary turntable effects on cuts such as "South Bixel" and "Polaris." The CD is a celebration of Eldar's seemingly boundless range and talent.
-Reviewer : David Wiegand
ELDAR FEATURED ON CBS's SECOND CUP CAFE
From (CBS)
At 20, Eldar has outgrown the title of "prodigy," but the young man who Billboard magazine said has "the fastest hands in jazz" is what his fellow musicians would reverently call a "monster."
He visits Second Cup Café today to share music from his third major label album, "re-imagination."
Eldar Djangirov was born in the Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, where at age 3 he would sit at the piano and play, note for note, compositions he learned from listening to the recordings of the legendary Oscar Peterson.
His mother began giving him formal piano lessons at the age of 5 and it wasn't long before he began performing.
When the late arts patron Charles K. McWhorter heard the 9-year-old Eldar at the Novosibirsk Jazz Festival in Russia, he immediately arranged for the youngster to attend music camp at the prestigious Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.
The family moved to a suburb of Kansas City when Eldar was 10 years old and he continued to study technique, harmony, improvisation and arranging through high school.
In 2001, at the age of 14, Eldar took first place over many older competitors at the International Lionel Hampton Jazz Piano Competition.
Eldar's self-titled 2005 major label debut won great reviews, including one from the New York Times which read, "Eldar combines Art Tatum's superhuman velocity with echoes of Oscar Peterson's grandeur ... an all-things-to-all-people prodigy whose formidable technique is wedded to a mature grasp of musical structure."
Last year, he released "Eldar Live At The Blue Note" which featured guest appearances from trumpeters Roy Hargrove and Chris Botti.
Of his new album, Eldar says, "This is the first record I've done where I focus more on composition than playing standards or working in the standard setting of a trio."
ELDAR ON CBS's THE SATURDAY EARLY SHOW JUNE 30th!
Eldar and his band taped for "The Saturday Early Show" to be broadcast nationally on Saturday June 30th on CBS at 7am. Make sure you tune in!
Amazon's Review of re-imagination!
Check out Amazon's awesome review of "re-imagination"! You can purchase this release at Amazon.com
Jazz piano phenomenon Eldar's newest project, re-imagination brings him to a new level of artistic confidence, resulting in what will certainly be recognized as his finest release to date. Eldar's rapidly evolving personal style defines every aspect of this project, blending a bold originality with a fascinating, sophisticated new take on classic jazz standards. re-imagination takes Eldar's distinctive sound and moves it in a new direction with the help of famed producer DJ Logic, who incorporates Eldar's virtuosic playing into an expanded sonic context. Eldar also gets assistance from highly prized sidemen Ali Jackson, Jr. (drums) and Carlos Henriquez (acoustic bass), best known for their work in Wynton Marsalis' quintet.
Podcasts Available Now!
Masterworks Jazz is pleased to present the first in a three part podcast series
exploring the new album 're-imagination' by jazz phenom Eldar. You can
subscribe directly via Itunes or via RSS. For more information about this
album, be sure to check out www.eldarjazz.com
Enjoy!
Re-Imagination Available Now!
Available Now!
Check Out Itunes, Amazon, or Visit the Sony Music Store to purchase your copy today!
Eldar Featured in CURRENT Magazine
Eldar was recently featured in Newsweek's CURRENT Magazine. You can read this article here.
"...Eldar Djangirov was just nine years old and still living in Kyrgyzstan when the late New York City jazz aficionado Charles McWhorter first saw him perform at a jazz festival in Novosibirsk, Russia. Struck by his mature talent on the piano, McWhorter urged Djangirov’s parents to bring him to the U.S. so their son could develop his already blossoming musical gift." Read the rest here.
Eldar is back with "re-imagination"
Eldar, the young jazz piano phenomenon Billboard calls “astonishing” and the Washington Post hails as a “prodigious talent,” breaks new creative ground on re-imagination, his forward-looking third album for SONY BMG Masterworks, available on June 5.
On re-imagination Eldar fully explores his talent as a composer. His rapidly evolving personal style defines every aspect of the project, from the bold originality of his new songs to a fascinating, sophisticated take on a couple of classic jazz standards, collaborating with a few new friends who give the project a fresh and surprising sound.
Master turntablist DJ Logic brings a distinctive edge and texture to the music of re-imagination. Also joining Eldar for the recording are drummer Ali Jackson Jr. and Carlos Henriquez on acoustic bass – both acclaimed for their work in Wynton Marsalis’ quintet – as well as rising guitar star Mike Moreno.
The songs Eldar has created for re-imagination reflect people, places and events in the pianist’s life, which has already been an remarkable adventure at the age of twenty. Emigrating from Russia to the U.S. at age ten, Eldar has toured the world, recorded three albums, and performed at most major jazz festivals and prestigious jazz venues in the decade since. The New York Times praises his "prodigious technique,” and Jazziz marvels at his "encyclopedic knowledge, and endless imagination.”
The opening track on re-imagination – “I Remember When” – is “a song for my parents” says Eldar, adding, “Now and always, I will remember having two of the most wonderful parents one could hope to have.” “Prairie Village” recalls the time he spent in his first American hometown – “a little town … a suburb of Kansas City. It’s where I grew up from the age of ten, when I came to the United States, until I was sixteen. So many kind and special people. A wonderful place to grow up.” Also featured on the disc is the Oscar Peterson tune “Place St. Henri,” which Eldar includes as “a tribute to the first jazz pianist I embraced as a young kid. Oscar Peterson is the biggest influence on my approach to jazz piano.”
Eldar will tour U.S. tour this summer and fall, and will visit Europe and Russia before the year's end.
The 20-year-old has earned widespread recognition and praise for his talents: He was the youngest pianist ever to perform on Marian McPartland’s venerable NPR show Piano Jazz, and has appeared on national television, including CBS' Sunday Morning, Late Night With Conan O'Brien and the 2000 telecast of the Grammy Awards.
www.eldarjazz.com www.shorefire.com www.sonybmgmasterworks.com
Track Listing
(all songs by Eldar unless otherwise noted)
1. I Remember When
2. Interlude #1
3. Prairie Village
4. Out of Nowhere
5. Interlude #2
6. Back Home
7. Place St. Henri
8. Tears
9. South Bixel
10. Dream Song
11. Polaris
ELDAR re-imagination BIOGRAPHY
With the release of re-imagination, his third CD for Sony BMG Masterworks, jazz pianist Eldar documents his transition from youthful prodigy to a creative artist with something to say. The release follows the 2006 CD Live at the Blue Note, which featured Eldar and his working trio with jazz trumpeters Chris Botti and Roy Hargrove as guest artists, and cemented Eldar’s position as one of the most formidable jazz musicians of his generation.
“[Eldar’s] velocity is astonishing: totally clean two-handed unison lines at wind-spring tempos, single lines that twist and pivot through jagged harmonies, bass rumbles that erupt and explode into complex passagework in the mid or upper register,” wrote Robert Doerschuk in a 4-star Downbeat review of Live at The Blue Note. “Other pianists have made similar impressions over the past several decades... Nobody, though, has quite reached the impossible, Conlon Nancarrow-like blizzard of stride, parallel chords, embellishments and general fireworks that Eldar ignites in his unaccompanied two-and-a-half-minute rampage through the closer, Take the A-Train... Few musicians on any axe swing like Eldar...his groove is intense and overwhelming. It’s not the flash and fire that should stir interest in Eldar. It’s what he does when the razzle-dazzle dies down and we sense substance within and beyond his pyrotechnics.”
Live at the Blue Note and Eldar’s self-titled 2005 Sony Classical debut were recitals, on which the pianist interpreted and presented serially a mixture of originals and well-chosen standards from the American Songbook and canonic jazz composers, revealing, as the New York Times noted, a “formidable technique wedded to a mature grasp of musical structure.” But on neither album was he able to focus fully on expressing his own emerging musical vision.
On re-imagination, recorded last December, Eldar, then six weeks shy of his twentieth birthday, had something more ambitious in mind. He conceived the project as a sort of suite, weaving together nine originals, the songbook standard Out of Nowhere and Oscar Peterson’s rollicking Place St. Henri into a narrative arc. Joining him are three different trios (bassists James Genus, Carlos Henriquez, and Marco Panascia and drummers Terreon Gully, Ali Jackson, and Todd Strait), while guitarist Mike Moreno and turntable guru D.J. Logic augment the sonic palette.
“This is the first record I’ve done where I focus more on composition than playing standards or working in the standard setting of a trio,” says Eldar. “Unlike anything I’ve done in the past, it’s a very personal statement rather focusing on a certain tradition or vibe, or on genres or labels. It's more an enhanced version of a piano trio that’s just making music.”
“Of course, it’s a very pianistic record,” Eldar adds, “It states certain things that only a piano player would say, because of the way piano is laid out—horizontally, like a symphony orchestra—and the way the ideas flow. Compositionally, I didn’t want to restrict myself. I wanted to write in a more rhapsodic way, compositions with freer forms where you make the puzzles fit within a free-flowing expression.
“Many jazz records are made as a snapshot, a document of a moment that’s been captured, and because of their intrinsic honesty and expression they become classics that people listen to for a long time. I wanted to cross the lines—to present very organic tunes, things with a more produced sound, and also some solo piano songs. It’s meant to be a journey, not a departure.”
Eldar accesses a wide range of references to tell his stories. As always, he draws on the legends—Oscar Peterson, Art Tatum and Benny Green for orchestral swing and impeccable technique, McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Kenny Kirkland for harmonic palette. But Eldar’s heady 21st century brew incorporates information from a broad range of late 20th century sources. Among the pianists he cites as heroes are Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Danilo Perez, Brad Mehldau, Bill Charlap, Esbjorn Svensson, and Jason Moran. Composer-improvisors like Pat Metheny, Michael Brecker, and Kurt Rosenwinkel enter the mix. So does the jazz-hiphop synthesis of Roy Hargrove; the sophisticated pop of Radiohead, Bjork, Sting, Soulive and the Beatles; the classical pianists Evgeny Kissin and Arcadi Volodos.
It makes sense that Eldar feels a particular affinity for the latter pair, both ethnic Russians, and for Rubalcaba, who was trained in Cuba by Russian teachers. Himself of Russian descent, he spent his first ten years in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, a province on the eastern border of the then-Soviet Union, where his father, Emil, was a mechanical engineer and his mother, Tatiana, was a professor of music studies.
“There’s a very direct correlation between the way I approach the piano—the way my parents shaped my approach from a very young age—and the Russian school of music,” he says. “It comes from a formal tradition of classical music and classical training. From day one, my mother taught me to form a perfect arch with my hand, as though there’s an apple in there as you play. I was told how many inches I should sit away from the piano on the stool, the pressure points on the keys—all the little details that make it art.
“My father worked all around the ex-Soviet Union, and every time he went to Moscow or St. Petersberg, he found a way to get records—that’s how I first heard Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock and Bill Evans. In the old USSR, when he was 13 or 14, he heard jazz at night on Voice of America and BBC, and he fell in love with it for life. So from my earliest years, I was constantly hearing music; it was part of the atmosphere, and it became a part of me.”
Eldar’s path from Bishkek to the United States is the stuff of jazz legend. At nine he performed at a jazz festival Novosibirsk, in Siberia, and impressed the late Charles McWhorter, a New York based jazz patron. McWhorter obtained a scholarship for Eldar to attend summer camp at the prestigious Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, where he spent each summer between 1998 and 2001. In 1998, he and his parents moved to the U.S., beginning their new life together in Kansas City.
During these years, Eldar continued to develop and impress everyone who heard him. Marian McPartland invited Eldar to appear on her NPR series Piano Jazz after McWhorter sent her a tape of his playing. Dr. Billy Taylor encountered him at a Charlie Parker symposium in Kansas City and booked him for an appearance on CBS’s Sunday Morning. Also in Kansas City, Eldar played for the Jazz Musician Foundation, before Michael Greene, then head of the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences, who booked Eldar to play on the 2000 Grammy Awards telecast. In 2001, Eldar participated in the jazz piano competition of the 2001 Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival and won the top prize. The following year, he won first place in the Peter Nero Piano Competition.
From then until now, Eldar has performed on the international festival, club, and concert circuits, while pursuing his education in jazz harmony and improvisation with Kim Park and John Elliott. His family moved to San Diego in 2003, and in Fall 2005, he matriculated at the University of Southern California, where he studied improvisation with pianist Shelly Berg.
Now a full-time musician, Eldar is happy with the trans-genre approach. “I’m not looking at labels,” he says. “I’ve never heard music as one style or another—as bebop or swing, or the Romantic or 20th century period of classical music. It’s more about whether music connects, whether it has a message. The message is the most important thing. I want to be a musician and I want to be an artist—not just a piano player.
“I’m going to be playing jazz, or some form of it, for the rest of my life. It encompasses so much; there’s so much room for self-expression.”
March 2007
Buy | re-imagination
Release Date: June 05, 2007 Track listing for CD Longplay (705837) |
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Buy | Live at the Blue Note
Release Date: May 30, 2006 Track listing for CD Longplay (674745) |
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Buy | Eldar
Release Date: March 22, 2005 Track listing for CD Longplay (092593) |
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| 5/15 | Kansas City benefit - Carla Aday | |
| 5/16 | Livermore Valley Performing Arts Center | Livermore, CA |
| 7/09 | Hollywood Bowl | Hollywood, CA |
| 7/13 | MacArthur Park | Los Angeles, CA |
| 8/29 | Waterfront, CA | |
| 10/17 | McCarter Theatre | Princeton NJ |
| 10/19 | Rockford, IL | |
| 10/25 | Herbst Theatre | San Francisco, CA |
| 01/24 - 02/01/2009 | Playboy Jazz Cruise | |
| 03/15/2009 | PAC | Cerritos, CA |
| 5/03/2009 | Jazz Workshop | Topeka, KS |
Management
Alan Wolmark & Debbie Tirone
CEC Management - New York
Phone: 212-206-6765
Fax: 212-807-9288
Email: cecus@aol.com
debbie@cecmgmt.com
Peter Felstead
CEC Management - London
Phone: 0207-837-2517
Fax: 0207-278-5915
Email: peter@cecmanagement.com
Website: www.myspace.com/cecmanagement
Booking
Chriss & Co. - Joel Chriss
Phone: 212-353-0855
Email: JChriss@aol.com
Website: www.jchriss.com
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